The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

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I suspect that white females see a brighter future for themselves as
opposed to a minority female and if that is true...some of your minority
females are more vulnerable and get tied into the relationships and for
some there is also a money angle, freedom.
There were also those who believed the lack of a stable family created hostility for both
blacks and whites.
Distrust of System
Most officers felt that black youth are more distrustful of the system than white
youth. Much of this is believed to stem from the family and past discriminatory practices.
Well, I think that for some of our minority youth there are parents that
aren’t real trusting of the systems, either they have been involved in the
system or for various reasons they are just not trustful and I think they
provide an attitude for the kids that they don’t have to do or isn’t
important that they do what we say down here.
. . .if I’m just dealing with the kid, it doesn’t seem to be an issue.. .you get
a lot of distrust of me being white from the parents or form the
grandparents. They’ll project a lot of that several different times in the
situation. They think I’m sending the kid up the river because I’m white
and part of the system...That’s where you get a lot of the distrust, from the
older generation. There’s more history there.
Responses from the closed ended questions concerning black/white differences in trust of
the system parallel the sentiments that emerged from the interviews (Tables 6, 7). Eightyeight
percent of the decision makers felt that black families are more distrustful of the
system than white families