EclectEcon

From Linda Chavez, writing in Commentary [h/t to Execupundit, which has a lot of very good material that I do not see elsewhere]:

A single statistic tells the tale. As against the 10 percent or fewer of American whites who hold negative views of blacks, the same mid-1990’s survey of intergroup attitudes cited above registered over three-quarters of blacks holding negative views of whites. ...

As I have already suggested, a dishearteningly large number of black Americans do indeed harbor extreme attitudes toward white America and toward other American ethnic groups. One of the most in-depth studies of this issue, conducted by Paul M. Sniderman and Thomas Piazza for their book Black Pride and Black Prejudice (2002), found blacks significantly more likely than whites to hold anti-Semitic views, a finding consistent with several other studies. Regarding whites in general, one-quarter of those surveyed said they believed white doctors had invented AIDS in the laboratory in order to commit genocide, and nearly half said that the CIA and FBI had flooded black neighborhoods with drugs and guns so that blacks would harm one another—findings that suggest Jeremiah Wright is no outlier among blacks.

These wild conspiracy theories are themselves rooted in racial animus. Indeed, the data demonstrate that the greater the animus, the more likely an individual is to impute bigotry against himself and his group to others. In sum, Sniderman and Piazza conclude, “what encourages blacks to believe that others are prejudiced against them is their being prejudiced against others.”

It isn't as if black Americans haven't had good reasons to be suspicious of whites in the past. But these numbers and results would have shocked me if I hadn't seen the responses of students in predominantly black schools to the not-guilty verdict in the OJ trial; it was clear they perceived the trial as "them-against-us" rather than a contest of evidence and skill between the prosecution and the defence that OJ's lawyers clearly won. That reaction, coupled with the information provided in this article, are still more evidence that there is a wide gulf between whites and blacks in the US that requires bridge-building from both sides.