Many young black Americans think the government treats most immigrants better than it treats most black people in the USA, according to a national study being released Thursday. It asked 15- to 25-year-olds about issues from politics and government to sex, marriage, health and hip-hop.
Researchers at the University of Chicago's Black Youth Project compared the views of 1,590 young people of different racial and ethnic groups and found that the black experience — and the perception of blacks' experience by others — suggests a demographic group that sees a lot of obstacles.
Among the findings:
•48% of blacks, compared with 18% of Hispanics and 29% of whites, believe the government treats immigrants better than it does blacks.
•68% of blacks believe the government would do more to find a cure for AIDS cure if more whites were infected, compared with 34% of whites and 50% of Hispanics.
•61% of blacks say it is hard for young black people to get ahead because of discrimination; 45% of Hispanics and 43% of whites agree.
•54% of blacks say blacks receive a poorer education on average than whites; 40% of Hispanics and 31% of whites agree.
•79% of blacks, 73% of Hispanics and 63% of whites believe the police discriminate "much more" against blacks than whites.
•14% of blacks say they grew up in a very good neighborhood, vs. 16% of Hispanics and 30% of whites.
Cathy Cohen, a University of Chicago political science professor who heads the project, says the focus on this age group is particularly important as the country looks to the 2008 election and the likely candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who is black and exploring a presidential run.
"I thought it important to put these young black people into that discussion because they suggest that — far from being a completely open society even in this post-civil rights moment — they still face discrimination, limited opportunities and feelings of secondary status," Cohen says.
Though the study suggests that discrimination is a fact of life for blacks, 49% of blacks said they were "rarely or never" discriminated against because of their race.
Researchers asked 240 questions during 45-minute telephone interviews in 2005 with 635 blacks, 567 whites and 314 Hispanics. The remaining interviewees were either Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American or didn't claim a group. The margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Although larger studies of black Americans have been conducted for 30 years by researchers at the University of Michigan, those 18 and older were the focus of the research until 1999, when the studies included adolescents ages 13-17.
Cohen calls her study a more generational approach.
Rebecca Bigler of the Gender and Racial Attitudes Lab at the University of Texas-Austin, who is not part of the Chicago study, says the topic needs academic attention because young blacks are a group that academics have "ignored and understudied."
