{"id":16426,"date":"2010-07-06T09:18:22","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T13:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=16426"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:38:32","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:38:32","slug":"lack-of-trust-affects-political-behavior-of-african-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/07\/lack-of-trust-affects-political-behavior-of-african-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"Lack of Trust Affects Political Behavior of African-Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Shayla<\/a>
Shayla Nunnally, assistant professor of political science. Photo by Daniel Buttrey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How African-Americans live their lives \u2013 even 150 years after slavery ended \u2013 is influenced every day by race.<\/p>\n

Their lives are different from those of white Americans not only because of differences in income levels, socio-economic status, business success, education, or even the geographic region of the country they live in, but also by the trust they place in government, other people, and institutions around them.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the finding of a recent survey by Shayla Nunnally<\/a>, assistant professor of political science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust affects how people live their lives,\u201d says Nunnally. \u201cRacial uncertainties can affect everything they do. They may not have been discriminated against in a particular circumstance, but they may fear they might be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nunnally, whose book In Whom Do We Trust? Black Americans, (Dis)Trust, and the Vestiges of Race<\/em>, will be published next year by New York University Press, says that trust levels among African-Americans are declining, yet counter to what might be expected given the history of race in America, older blacks are more likely to have more trust than younger ones. This, however, depends on the personal experiences that black group members have with race in their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a perceived psychological injury there,\u201d she says, \u201cand that has implications for democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nunnally\u2019s research focuses on black Americans\u2019 trust in social and political contexts, their intra-racial and inter-racial attitudes, their racial and political socializations, and their political development.<\/p>\n

A national survey Nunnally performed in 2007 of whites, blacks, and Latinos shows that blacks are less trusting in general than other groups of people are and that a lack of trust affects their political behavior, inter-group relations, and even whether or not they vote. They trust other African-Americans more than people from other groups.<\/p>\n

The survey shows that African-American voters trust black candidates more than others, but that how they think about candidates and others depends on whether they received messages about race from their parents that emphasized getting along with others across racial groups or taking more precautions and being more distrusting of others. <\/strong>So skepticism influences not only who they vote for but whether or not they trust in government or other people in society, she says.<\/p>\n

Respondents in the survey were less trusting if they experienced more racial discrimination, Nunnally found. Some noted that stories of discrimination were handed down through the generations in their families. But the influence of the stories was not as powerful as personal experience \u2013 many black respondents in the survey reported feeling the sting of discrimination personally. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe survey suggests that African Americans have a different way of learning about race and that their perception about race influences their trust in political and social situations,\u201d says Nunnally, honored with the 2009 National Conference of Black Political Scientists\u2019 Fannie Lou Hamer Award for Outstanding Community Service and the 2009 Young Professional Member of the Year Award for the Northeastern Region of the National Urban League.<\/p>\n

A lack of trust can influence various political outcomes, she says, and the extent to which one trusts can affect blacks\u2019 willingness to interact with others. The research shows that blacks trust more in certain situations \u2013 such as in a religious community — than in other situations, but that they remain skeptical even in these contexts.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost crucially, this affects group socialization,\u201d Nunnally says. \u201cRace is part of how African Americans perceive society. It affects how they live their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

A graduate of North Carolina Central University, Nunnally earned her master\u2019s and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Duke and was an Erskine A. Peters Dissertation Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. She has a joint appointment with the African-American Studies Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A UConn political scientist says the history of race continues to shape trust levels among blacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-16426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 19:23:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16426"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36732,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16426\/revisions\/36732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16426"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=16426"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}