Trust is an important construct in understanding the social dynamics in interpersonal and race relations. Several studies have concluded that blacks tend to mistrust both whites and the predominantly white government. The consensus among theorists and researchers supports the social learning view that accumulated life experiences critically determine the individual's level of trust and mistrust. More significantly, past experiences with individuals or reference groups influence the level of trust or mistrust in relation to those individuals or groups. Racial prejudices and biases are most apparent to those victimized and such biases influence the level of mistrust in interracial interactions. The tendency to define normality as whatever tendencies occur most frequently in the population and abnormality as those traits that occur less frequently disregards legitimate cultural variations and imposes white norms as the standard for judging minorities in such areas as intelligence testing, achievement tests, and personality inventories. While cultural mistrust may not necessarily contribute directly to psychopathology, it may contribute indirectly to the decline of both the physical and the psychological well-being of individuals. A sense of racial injustice, inequity, and racial mistrust and suspicion produces a level of stress and physical symptomatology particularly central to our understanding of the level of wellness in black Americans. (NRB)