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June 15, 2024 Story by: Editor
A recent Pew Research Center survey reveals that most Black Americans feel that political, economic, and criminal justice systems are rigged against them.
This study underscores widespread beliefs among Black Americans, rooted in real discriminatory events, highlighting deep-seated distrust in U.S. institutions stemming from generational trauma.
As general distrust in institutions grows among Americans, Black Americans particularly express deep skepticism toward the police, media, and healthcare, driven by decades of oppression.
Key Findings: Conducted in September 2023, the survey of nearly 5,000 Black adults found that:
- 74% believe the prison system is designed to hinder Black success.
- 67% feel the political system is set against them.
- 65% think the economic system is stacked against Black people.
The survey also showed that most Black Americans are aware of and believe in specific racial ideologies about U.S. institutions.
Source: Axios
- 82% of Black adults have heard that Black people are more likely to be incarcerated because prisons profit from their incarceration, with 74% agreeing this is true.
- 76% believe Black public officials are discredited more than their white counterparts.
- 67% think businesses target luxury product marketing to Black people to financially harm them.
- 52% say the news media is designed to hold Black people back. Source: Axios
Kiana Cox, a senior researcher at Pew, told Axios that the study was developed by asking Black participants if they had heard of certain racial beliefs, later referred to as conspiracy theories in the findings. Researchers then asked if participants believed these were true.
“We asked this in stages,” Cox said. “We didn’t phrase it as ‘conspiracy theories’ in the survey because that term can be a little charged. For Black people, these types of narratives are also grounded in history.”
Historical instances fuel these beliefs:
- In the 1990s, the CIA released a report acknowledging its lack of priority in addressing drug activity in its Central American operations during the inner-city cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early ’90s.
- A disputed San Jose Mercury News series alleged the CIA flooded Black communities with crack to fund a Latin American guerrilla arm.
- Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, spoke about these conspiracies in the 1990s, urging Black students to rise.
The ideologies in the Pew survey are distinct from recent online conspiracy theories like QAnon or election fraud because they are based on retold stories of painful racism.
Jesse Holland, associate director at The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, remarked that it’s not surprising some Black Americans believe these events are ongoing.
“It is not a conspiracy theory that the U.S. government is willing to experiment medically on African Americans,” said Holland, citing the Tuskegee experiments as proof.
Former President Donald Trump has attempted to connect with Black distrust of the criminal justice system by relating it to his recent business fraud case.The survey included 4,736 U.S. adults identifying as Black and non-Hispanic, multiracial Black and non-Hispanic, or Black and Hispanic, conducted from Sept. 12-24, 2023. This included 1,755 Black adults on Pew’s American Trends Panel (ATP) and 2,981 Black adults on Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel®. The margin of sampling error is ±2.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
