Study: Most Black Americans feel the police and government plot against them

A new study has found that a majority of Black Americans feel the current political, economic, and criminal justice systems are holding Black people back.

The survey comes from the Pew Research Center and highlights that 76% of Black adults believe that Black public officials are singled out to be discredited.

The same percentage also reported feeling that police do little to stop guns and drugs in Black communities. Meanwhile, 74% said they thought Black people were disproportionately incarcerated so prisons could make money.

The survey highlights a stark reality for Black Americans and the growing distrust the demographic has in US institutions.

While speaking with Axios, Kiana Cox, a senior researcher on Pew Research Center’s Race and Ethnicity team, shared that the survey saw researchers ask the participants if they’d ever heard of certain racial beliefs dubbed conspiracy theories. If they had, researchers then asked them if they believed them.

“We asked this in stages,” Cox said. “We didn’t phrase it as ‘conspiracy theories’ in the survey because that term can be a little charged. For black people, these types of narratives are also grounded in history.”

Among the other findings brought forth in the survey included 67% of respondents thinking that businesses market luxury items to Black people to keep them in debt, 55% thinking medical researchers experiment on Black people without their knowledge or consent, and 51% thinking the government uses birth control and abortion to keep the Black population small.

The survey was released on Monday but was conducted from Sept. 12-24, 2023, and included responses from 4,736 US adults. There is a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.