Here We Go-New Poll Concludes that Minorities Don't Trust Each Other

I just happened to hear a news report this morning that a new poll affirms that the three predominant minorities (African-Americans, Asians and Latinos) do not trust each other. This is disturbing on a myriad of levels. People of color in a nutshell need each other. Of course, it would be more politically correct to state that we ALL need to trust each other but the dynamics of this country dictate that racial lines are demarcated between Whites and then others. The issues that separate these groups are pretty predictable-immigration, crime and business/patron relationships. Check out this excerpt from The New York Times as it relates to this issue:

The poll was published by New America Media, a national association of about 700 ethnic media organizations that promotes better relations among racial and ethnic groups. It was conducted by Bendixen & Associates, a polling organization in Miami.
Sergio Bendixen, who conducted the poll, said it was the first national survey to look into relations among the leading minority groups in the United States. The Asian languages used were Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog, which is spoken in the Philippines.

The sample of respondents reflected the demographic makeup of the three groups in the United States population, Mr. Bendixen said. About half of Hispanics and about four-fifths of Asians in this country are immigrants, while 90 percent of blacks were born here. The survey did not ask about the legal status of the immigrants.
It reported that 93 percent of Hispanics, 92 percent of African-Americans and 73 percent of Asians said racial tension was a very important problem in the United States.

But the groups’ perceptions of one another are not all negative. While 51 percent of African-Americans in the poll said Hispanic immigrants were taking jobs and political power from blacks, another large group of African-Americans — 45 percent — disagreed that they were losing ground to Hispanics. And while 44 percent of Hispanics said they feared African-Americans, identifying them with high crime rates, half of Hispanics had no such fear.
Views of the criminal justice system differ widely among the three groups. Among blacks, 71 percent said the system “favors the rich and powerful,” while 45 percent of Hispanics and only 27 percent of Asians agreed.
The three groups tend to socialize among themselves, mixing infrequently with the others. Nearly three-quarters of Hispanics and Asians and 61 percent of blacks said they had never dated someone who was from either of the two other groups or who was white.

There were signs of optimism, however. More than 60 percent of each of the three groups said they expected race relations to improve in the next decade. Large majorities of Hispanics and Asians credited American blacks and the civil rights movement with making life easier for them here.

Check out the remainder of the Times article
here

What do our readers think about this revelation? Are you surprised? And if not, what can be done to rectify these attitudes between groups that ultimately have more in common than one would suspect.