For the Record - Sept. 19, 1985

The black community as a whole tends to have more conservative views on issues than the people most often identified as black leaders, according to a study described in an article that will appear in Public Opinion, a quarterly published by the conservative-oriented American Enterprise Institute. Linda Lichter, co-director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which conducted the study, said it was based on simultaneous surveys of people most often quoted in the media as black leaders and of a nationwide random sample of 600 blacks. “The surveys revealed a surprising divergence between black leaders and the average black American on a broad spectrum of concerns, including some at the very heart of race relations,” Lichter wrote.