A majority of Black Americans who responded to a recent Pew Research Center survey said they believed the news media has held them back.
“We found 52 percent of Black Americans felt the news media held them back a great deal or a fair amount,” says Kiana Cox, a senior researcher on the Race and Ethnicity team at the Pew Research Center.
The survey — “Most Black Americans Believe U.S. Institutions Were Designed to Hold Black People Back,” — builds partly on two previous surveys; one published in January looking at how Black Americans defined success and what factors contributed to it, and one released last year by another team at Pew that examined how Black Americans felt they were represented by and in the media.
“We wanted to dig a little deeper into that and ask Black people how often do you come across information you think is inaccurate about Black people,” Cox says. Almost 90 percent of Black people said they come across it at least some of the time. We asked a follow-up, at least some of the time or more, how much do you think those inaccuracies were created on purpose or do you think they are the result of normal human error. Almost 80 percent see these as they were created on purpose and about 25 percent think they were the result of normal human error. It’s a similar pattern of distrust, like with other institutions, but it’s replicated here even in the questions of how often do you think these inaccuracies were a mistake or intentional. A majority of Black people who see inaccuracies think it’s intentional.”
The responses to the latest survey showed how poorly this particular community believes it is being treated almost across the board, according to Cox.
“We published the success path, what Black people say contributed to their success, and then we published this (survey) about the factors they think contribute to their setbacks, or things that might be challenges to them or barriers,” Cox says. “That web of lived experienced history, collective experience, and then the warning stories Black people tell among themselves about institutions and what to look out for, how to protect yourself. That’s what we wanted to tap into: What are the stories, what are the beliefs about institutions.”
This also included asking where those disparities came from and whether respondents placed any blame for those challenges on any particular cause or reason. The survey allowed respondents to reply on a scale ranging from “this institution doesn’t hold Black people back at all” to “this institution holds Black people back a great deal.”
“I didn’t want to assume people would automatically say ‘Yes,’ to that,” Cox says. “The idea of what do people think about an institution was a great complement to the survey published in 2022, about how much do Black people think institutions treat them unfairly.”
One series of questions asked about the three different segments of the criminal justice system: prisons, courts and police. “The questions about the criminal justice system featured the highest shares of these opinions, with 70 percent or more of Black people saying the prison systems, the courts and police were designed to hold Black people back a great deal or a fair amount. We didn’t ask about the criminal justice system overall, we asked about each of those parts individually.”
Additionally, about 65 percent of respondents said the same about political and economic systems in the United States, with about 50 percent of respondents feeling the same about media as a whole and the health care system, Cox says.
Kiana Cox, senior researcher on the Race and Ethnicity team at Pew Research Center, discusses the recent Pew report entitled: “Most Black Americans Believe U.S. Institutions Were Designed To Hold Black People Back.”
