Data from the General Social Survey in the United States for the years 1972 to 1994 show that blacks have much lower levels of socalled generalized trust than do others in the society (Patterson 1999, 175, 190–91). This could follow for various reasons. Life in poor ghettos and in broken families most likely tends to offer less trustworthy relationships than does life in more prosperous conditions. If these conditions produce little experience of trustworthiness in early life, they might lead to a pervasive distrust that is hard to overcome through later experience (see further chapter 5). In addition, blacks individually have proportionately far more interactions with whites than whites have with blacks. This follows from the simple mathematics of the differences in the sizes of the two groups. (Suppose there are eight whites for every black and that on average each black has eighty interactions with whites every month. Then on average each white has only ten interactions with blacks every month.)

XREF: Group-size asymmetry logic parallels other contexts where minority groups have more intergroup contact than majority groups—relevant to networks and trust formation.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 465