Alexis Abdulian

            Alexis Abdulian 

In the article, "Re-thinking the decline in trust: A comparison of black and white Americans," Rima Wilkes explains the decreasing trust Americans have for one another. Using the United States General Social Survey, Wilkes examined the dates between 1972 and 2008 on the trends, specifically generational and period, for trust in white and black Americans. Wilkes already knew that the number one factor of how much people trust each other is race, so decided to pry further into the topic by adding generation and period trends to the research. The findings were that the most trusting was the generation of war babies for white Americans, but there were not any generational factors for black Americans in regards to trust. The dependent variables in this article were the generalized trust index, trust, helpfulness, and fairness. The independent variables were age, male, married, education years, unemployed, religious attendance, and southern residence. The data shows that in all areas of trust, helpfulness, and fairness whites are more likely to see the good in people versus blacks. In general, over the years, trust has declined; however, there is a large race gap between blacks and whites when it comes to trust, helpfulness, and fairness. Throughout the charts that compare these three ideals with people's race, it is fairly clear to see that blacks have stayed rather steady in their beliefs, while whites have had some jumps in periods of time where they were a lot more trusting.

            In Pamela Braboy Jackson and Sarah Mustillo's article, "I Am Woman: The Impact of Social Identities on African American Women's mental health," they research the idea that the situation of some African American women negatively affects their mental health. The data they used was from the National Survey of Black Americans from the time of 1979-1980. The dependent variables used was mental health, which they broke into the three sections of psychological distress, happiness, and antisocial behavior.  Their mediating variable was the idea of self-concept, which is measured by self-efficacy and self-esteem. The independent variables were body image (skin color, physical attractiveness, and physical impairment), perceived role performance, racial/ethical and gender discrimination, and social class. There were three background variables that were used as controls which were age, marital status, and region. They found that mental health status is directly related to discrimination. They also found that women who obtain a higher income are less stressed than women with lower incomes. Having poor self-concepts had a direct affect on mental health of African American women. They stated that this study done with African American women is consistent with those done on white women within certain variables. In this study they found that racism did not affect mental health as much as sexism did, but state that it needs to be further studied because they did not directly have the people in the study identify as an African American or a woman.