Roots of African American Violence : Ethnocentrism, Cultural Diversity, and Racism [1 ed.] 9781626376434, 9781626376052

Citation preview

Roots of African American Violence

Roots of African American Violence Ethnocentrism, Cultural Diversity, and Racism

Darnell F. Hawkins, Jerome B. McKean, Norman A. White, and Christine Martin

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2017 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2017 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hawkins, Darnell Felix, 1946– author. Title: Roots of African American violence : ethnocentrism, cultural diversity, and racism / by Darnell F. Hawkins, Jerome B. McKean, Norman A. White, and Christine Martin. Description: Boulder, Colorado : Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016049418 | ISBN 9781626376052 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Crime and race—United States. | Crime—Sociological aspects. | African American criminals. | African Americans—Crimes against. | African Americans—Violence against. | Violence—United States. | United States—Race relations. Classification: LCC HV6197.U5 H39 2017 | DDC 303.6089/96073—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049418

British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

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Contents

vii ix

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments

1 Exploring the Roots of African American Violence

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2 Looking Back, Moving Forward: Theories of Race and Crime

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3 Toward a Theory of African American Violence

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4 Science, Ideology, and the Study of Ethnocentrism

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5 On the Conceptual Roots of Ethnocentrism

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6 Boxed In: Ethnocentrism and Urban Violence

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7 Old Guards and Newcomers: Ethnocentric White America

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8 Melting Pot Blues: Ethnocentric Black America

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9 A Tale of Two Cities: Race and Homicide in Chicago and St. Louis

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10 Public Policy to Prevent Violence

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References Index About the Book

231 255 267

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Tables and Figures

Tables 2.1 Victim and Offense Characteristics for Homicides by Race of Offender, 1980–2012 3.1 Race and Number of Homicide Victims and Offenders, New York City, 1800–1874 3.2 Race and Number of Homicide Victims and Offenders, Chicago, 1870–1930 3.3 Ethnicity and Number of Homicide Victims and Offenders, New York City, 1800–1874 3.4 National Identity and Number of Homicide Victims and Offenders, Chicago, 1870–1930 9.1 Black and White Population Trends in Chicago, 1900–2010 9.2 Black and White Population Trends in St. Louis, 1900–2010 9.3 Homicide Trends in Chicago, 1900–1930 and 1965–2013 9.4 Homicide Trends in St. Louis, 1976–2011

33 49 50 51 53 194 196 201 205

Figures 2.1 2.2 3.1 6.1

Black Percentage of Arrests for Homicide, 1933–2012 Ratio of Black to White Arrest Rates, 1980–2012 The Shaw and McKay Model of Social Disorganization Social Context of Ethnocentrism

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Acknowledgments

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he theory aimed at explaining patterns and rates of homicide among African Americans that we present in this book is the result of a multiyear collaborative effort among our team of coauthors. Nearly four years ago, we agreed to work together to write the book we now introduce to readers. As scholar-activists, we were alarmed that rates of homicide among urban youths of color showed an upward climb despite a drop in overall rates of crime and violence in the United States. Each of us had become involved in various national and local efforts aimed at violence prevention and peace promotion activities. As academics, we also wanted to make our voices heard via our writing. This meant the development of a theory aimed at explaining not only the widely noted upsurge in youth violence, but also the persistence of racial disparities in overall rates of homicide in the United States over the last century. Like many others writing in the Internet era, we communicated primarily through the use of e-mail, interspersed with an occasional phone call. The conversations among us were prompted by Darnell Hawkins’s sharing of an idea drawn from his more than thirty years of research on the themes explored in this book. During our subsequent sharing of points of view and leanings that reflected our personal pasts and areas of specialization, we debated the merits of that initial idea. In doing so, we began to rethink not only that conceptual starting point, but also others of the varied perspectives on race, ethnicity, and crime that we all had favored when conversations began in 2013. The result is a book that none of us could have written alone because it represents the melding of the diverse views we shared. The coordination of nonstop e-mail exchanges over a period of four years proved to be both challenging and rewarding. But we benefited ix

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Acknowledgments

from the sometimes contentious and always earnest interactions that took place among us. As a result of those interactions, each of us grew both personally and intellectually. We are grateful to Peter St. Jean, a former collaborator, who helped keep the momentum going during the first two years. We regret that other personal and professional obligations required that he leave the team before the project was completed. But we are pleased that his violence prevention initiatives have achieved crossnational notice. The successful completion of our book also required the assistance and advice of an almost endless list of colleagues and associates from the various disciplines whose findings we sought to incorporate into our theory-making effort. All whom we approached were willing to listen to our often impassioned efforts to sell our ideas to them verbally or in writing. Some were also bold enough to review and comment on those sketchy and obtuse ramblings that were the essence of our early (and often later) drafts of the manuscript. For tolerating us and offering advice that improved our work immensely, we thank Biko Agozino, Elijah Anderson, Judith Blau, Rodney Coates, Joe Feagin, Shaun Gabbidon, John Hagedorn, Charis Kubrin, Amanda Lewis, Janet Lauritsen, Patrick Mason, Aldon Morris, James Pratt Jr., George Tita, Stuart Tolnay, and James Unnever. We also thank those who offered us assistance and words of encouragement to move forward, but for whom work commitments or other obligations prevented their reading of the full manuscript. These include Delores Jones-Brown, Robert Bursik, Robert Crutchfield, Tyrone Forman, Cedric Herring, Mosi Ifatunji, Kenneth Jackson, Verna Keith, Donald Linhorst, Rolf Loeber, Lauren Krivo, Bruce Lockett, Nell Painter, Ruth Peterson, Alex Piquero, Katheryn Russell, John H. Spears Jr., and Geoff Ward. Finally, we express our appreciation to the editorial staff of the publisher. Andrew Berzanskis saw merit in our writing project despite its initial appearance. Later, Alexander Holzman and anonymous external reviewers contacted by the publisher provided the guidance we needed to finish the project. Our multiyear collaboration has hardly resulted in the elusive perfection all scholars seek. Nevertheless, despite the flaws that remain in our book, we are hopeful that readers will find that our efforts have resulted in an informative and innovative accounting of the roots of violence in Black America and beyond. Darnell F. Hawkins, Jerome B. McKean, Norman A. White, and Christine Martin

1 Exploring the Roots of African American Violence

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s our title suggests, this is a book about violence in African American communities. The question driving our theory-making venture is rather straightforward: What accounts for more than a century of higher than average rates of homicide and other criminal violence among blacks when compared to other ethnic and racial groups in the United States? But, in the pages that follow, we also tell a story of crime and punishment that is not limited to the black community alone, and that is not exclusively an analysis of homicide rates and trends. Instead, we seek to show the ways in which the story of group disparities in rates of crime and violence is part of the much broader story of our nation’s ethnic and racial divides. Substantial disparities in rates of crime and punishment across America’s diverse ethnic and racial groups have been well documented. That documentation, however, has not gone uncontested. It has spawned an ongoing debate among crime analysts regarding the imprecision of crime measures and, thus, the extent to which they can be used to assess the group differences they are said to reveal. Although we accept and incorporate within our work much of the essence of that critique, what we have written reflects our belief that group disparities require explanation. The reader will find that what we have written reflects the views expressed by Pepinsky and Jesilow (1984) and Bohm and Walker (2006)—that much of the study of crime in the United States is shrouded in myth and stereotype. But we also believe that only through careful examination of all of the evidence on ethnic and racial disparities can we determine the causes of these disparities. Our work is propelled by the fact that, despite being informed by data from official sources, self-reports, and observational studies that 1

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show much higher rates of crime and violence among African Americans, those engaged in the study of crime and society have been slow in answering the call for, and have had only limited success in, specifying causes. If success is measured by the development and promulgation of fully articulated and well-tested theories specifically designed to explain group rather than individual differences, social scientists are found wanting. While one may dispute the precise reasons for this state of affairs within the crime research enterprise, the lack of forward progress in explaining intergroup disparities in rates of crime has not gone unnoticed. Griffiths (2013); Hawkins (1983, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2003); Hawkins, Laub, and Lauritsen (1998); Jaynes and Williams (1989); Kubrin and Weitzer (2003a, 2003b); LaFree (1995); Reiss and Roth (1993); Sampson (2012); Sampson and Lauritsen (1997); Sampson and Wilson (1995); Short (1997); Sowell (2005); and Unnever and Gabbidon (2011) are only a few among those who have called for greater explication of observed differences. The absence of theory designed specifically to explain ethnic and racial differences is puzzling and paradoxical in many ways. Those involved in Hirschi and Rudisill’s (1976) “The Great American Search [for the] Causes of Crime” have had at their disposal a vast storehouse of crime data. Also, more recently, they have had at their disposal an impressive array of advanced analytic tools and statistical modeling techniques that have been put to use in exploring those data. Through the use of such methods and models, it was anticipated that researchers would move quickly beyond the stage of mere accumulation of data showing ethnic and racial differences in rates of criminal offending and victimization to begin to explain them. That is, the result would be the promulgation of a fully articulated theory designed specifically to explain such differences. Echoing Hirschi and Rudisill, Sampson and Lauritsen (1997, 311) suggested during the late 1990s that “research on race and crime has become a growth industry in the United States.” Thus, the lack of progress toward fully explaining the linkages between race and crime cannot be attributed to a lack of scholarly activity. Whether one considers the current growth industry they described or the broader longerterm enterprise described by Hirschi and Rudisill, there has been no lack of research and inquiry. Much midnight oil has been burned, reams of paper consumed, careers established and enhanced, and political elections won and lost through the production and utilization of work designed to explain why and at what levels individuals commit crime and why race and ethnicity seem to matter. Nevertheless, nearly two

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decades into the twenty-first century, the criminological research enterprise devoted to the study of race, ethnicity, and crime can rightly be characterized as data rich, but theory starved. In the absence of holistic theory, what has been the nature of the work done to date within criminology and allied disciplines? We suggest that regarding their theoretical frames, most past and recent scholarly works within criminology tend to utilize (1) popular classic criminological theories of crime causation, many of which have not been tested or do not appear to be applicable to the study of ethnic and racial differences; (2) theories imported from other social and behavioral science disciplines that are thought to show some promise for explaining ethnic and racial group disparities in crime, but for which the verdict is out as to whether they are actually capable of doing so; (3) theories designed with the intent of accounting for race and ethnic differences but instead have often found currency within criminological and social science circles for reasons other than their ability to do so; or (4) no apparent theory at all, or alternatively, implied or presumed theoretical frames embedded within or inferred from informative but largely quantitative analyses of race disparities in rates of offending and victimization. Throughout our book, we engage in a line of discourse that is designed to help readers better understand the nature of the seeming paradox of scant theorizing amid a plethora of data showing ethnic and racial disparities. We believe that crime analysts must strive to take new approaches to the study of the nation’s now well-documented disparities in rates of criminal violence. The work we describe in this book aims for such innovation. Toward that end, what we have written defies in numerous ways the theoretical, conceptual, and analytic orthodoxies that have shaped the study of ethnicity, race, and crime among contemporary social and behavioral scientists. Our theorizing effort defies such orthodoxy in the following ways. • Our discussion is as deeply rooted in the study of race and ethnic relations in the United States as it is in the criminological study of racial disparities in rates of crime and violence. In our view, the study of racial disparity in crime is inextricably linked to the study of intergroup relations across lines of race, ethnicity, culture, and social class. • Our analysis of the paradox we have noted is grounded in the sociology of knowledge and science. That is, we assess not only the known “facts” about group differences in rates of crime but also examine with a critical eye the social, institutional, and ideological forces

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that have shaped the accumulation of the facts that are said to constitute that body of knowledge. • Our analysis is grounded further in an attempt to use history to guide our understanding of group differences in crime rather than follow the decontextualized and often ahistorical approaches now quite commonplace in the criminological sciences. • In comparison to past work on the subject, our approach emphasizes the importance of variations in offending within those groupings commonly designated as African Americans and whites. We contend that largely ignored in past investigations of race and crime have been identity-based and affinity-linked alliances that take place within those culturally diverse groupings labeled as “races” in the United States. We propose that a better understanding of those intrarace dynamics is vital for any effort to explain what are presumed to be racial differences in rates of crime and violence. • Finally, our writing is guided by the presumption that the study of the causes of crime cannot be separated from societal responses to it, and to those persons or societal groupings who wear the label of “criminal” (Hagan 2010).

Criminology as a Social Institution: The Search for Meaningful Theory More than half a century has passed since Gerard DeGre (1955) proclaimed that all of the sciences, from astrophysics to biology to chemistry to geology to sociology, have one trait in common: they are all social institutions. Thus, regardless of whether they are labeled in modern times as natural or social sciences, all modes of scientific inquiry and the theories and methods they embody are products of the social contexts in which they emerge. Scientific worldviews and research findings are also time-stamped in the sense that they bear the markings of the historical period during which they were operative. Science itself, like other aspects of human culture, is often beset by biases and misconceptions that can lead to false turns, blind alleys, misconceptions, and distortion of facts. They can also lead to ill-advised and harmful social policies. The study of ethnicity, race, and crime bears all of the markings of DeGre’s social institutions. It exhibits many etiological twists and turns— and often unforeseen consequences. And many of these twists and turns have arisen from outside of social science as much as they

Exploring the Roots of African American Violence

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have from within that research enterprise. Criminology provides a classic example of the interplay between internal and external forces that determine the ways that racial and ethnic criminal differences are socially constructed and the kinds of explanations that are offered for them. In the discussion that follows, we will show that many of the responses to what is considered “crime” in the United States are in essence responses to the nation’s immense ethnic and racial diversity and the historical legacies associated with it. Criminologists in the United States, unlike their European counterparts, have faced the challenge of developing theories designed to explain differences in crime and punishment seen within the majority white population but also crime and punishment among a postcolonial, postslavery assortment of peoples of color. By providing the reader with a more contextualized and historicized discussion of the topic at hand than is found in many contemporary renderings, we acknowledge that the paths we take to achieve these objectives are at times circuitous. But, we believe that by following the etiological pathways we have chosen to tread, the reader will be rewarded with a much richer and more nuanced understanding of ethnic, racial, and other group-level differences in crime and punishment in the United States than those found in the extant literature. Therefore, the ideological hurdles one encounters in confronting the nation’s color line have figured prominently in efforts at theorizing in response to evidence of racial disparities. Quantitative Analysis and the Search for Theory Ironically, the paradox of robust findings of group differences in crime and violence alongside a paucity of theory aimed specifically at explaining those differences may also be linked to methodological considerations. It may be rooted in the ascendancy of quantitative methods and statistical modeling within the social sciences during the last half century. It is true that all theory-making, and all science, is ultimately grounded by necessity in the kinds of data accumulation and analysis these quantitatively oriented research paradigms embody (e.g., see Zuberi 2001). However, while skilled data analysis can be just as useful for the devising of theory as for the testing of theory, many of the trends within the study of crime during the last half century appear to militate against the translation of numbers into a viable theory. For example, the increasing subdisciplinary specialization found within the study of crime and society is often associated with narrowed

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and specialized approaches to data analysis. The methods themselves often tend to drive the topics of interest within the study of crime and society rather than being guided by or carried out in search of a plausible and well-thought-out theory. This increasing specialization has often served to create a body of scientific research in which there is an overabundance of enumerated trees that prevent analysts from seeing the theoretical forests of which they may be a part. Obviously, this broad brush cannot be applied to the whole of the criminological enterprise. Much effort has been made, as we will show in Chapters 2 and 3, to link theory and method and to offer potential explanations for ethnic and racial differences. Indeed, it is the firm grounding in crime statistics that has led crime analysts to make appeals for the greater explication of the individuallevel, situational, contextual, environmental, and structural forces that may drive observed ethnic and racial differences. Thus, while we have criticized the discipline’s failure to produce holistic explanations for ethnic and racial differences in crime and violence, the findings from the numerous studies that have utilized an assortment of analytic and statistical modeling have not been useless. Often these carefully crafted quantitative analyses have shown that many of the quasi-theoretical and meta-theoretical assumptions and presumptions embedded within them, including those based on seemingly commonsensical and plausible notions about the etiology of crime, do not seem to account for the large ethnic and racial differences observed. Despite this flaw, there has been some forward movement in the effort to pinpoint the causes of the large racial gaps we see, even if only through the processes of attrition and elimination. Also, the explanatory powers of quantitative analyses utilized to test some of the most popular extant theories have demonstrated deficiencies in their ability to account for racial and ethnic differences. For example, findings of unexplained variance when attempting to account for the persistence of high rates of nonviolent crime and criminal violence among African Americans often seem to open the door to more retrogressive and partly racist explanations for racial differences. In that, unaccounted for variance not rightly attributed to structural sources has erroneously and tacitly or explicitly been attributed to race-linked criminality. The likelihood of a drift toward racialist/racist explanations is increased by the fact that findings from many of the most popular and frequently used analytic models appear to suggest that the widely touted effects of economic deprivation alone do not seem to account for observed racial differences in many instances.

Exploring the Roots of African American Violence

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This fact has tempted some scholars to ground their explanations in perceived race- or class-anchored defects of character, morals, personality, and biology. These critiques of data-driven theoretical analyses seem to open the doors to reconceptualization and rethinking of current theories that their null findings have engendered. However, true theory builders among mainstream criminologists have been few. Apart from some attempts at the refinement of extant data-driven models, reviews of the social science literature reveal that few fully elaborated theories aimed at accounting for race differences have appeared. And those that have appeared have not been in response to the seeming failure of most past models and extant theories to fully account for group disparities. Ethnography and the Search for Theory Beyond statistical modeling and mainstream criminological theories, an additional reservoir of both explicit and implicit theory has also been tapped in attempts to explain racial differences in crime, including crimes of violence. It comes from a research tradition that is often seen as the polar opposite of the quantitative modeling studies we just described. These include a now voluminous body of work done by anthropologists and sociologists who employ ethnographic, participant observational, and field studies to describe the social lives of a diverse range of populations and a wide array of social behaviors among them. While crime and antisocial conduct are not always the primary targets of their data-gathering and analyses, their work has been consulted in the search for a plausible theory. Understandably, of great interest to crime analysts attempting to explain crime rates in the United States have been those past and more recent ethnographic studies of those populations displaying the highest rates of crime. These include older and more recent ethnographic studies of (1) the Latino rural poor (Lewis 1959, 1968); (2) disadvantaged urban white ethnics (Whyte 1943); (3) inner-city African Americans in Chicago (Anderson 1978, 1990, 1999; Suttles 1968; Venkatesh 2000, 2006, 2008; and (4) residents of both urban barrios and black ghettos in the city of Los Angeles (Rios 2011). In the wake of the upsurge in rates of violence among urban black and Latino youths during the 1980s, the more recent of these studies have been widely cited and the earlier ones consulted for their insights into the race-crime conundrum. For many who take on the task of explaining ethnic and racial differences, the takeaway message from the ethnographic literature has

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been a tendency to focus on the etiological significance of “subculture” as an explanation for varying crime rates. That is a line of theorizing and explanation to which our theory directly responds. For now, we simply note that in response to ethnographic studies, many quantitative data analysts have attempted to incorporate within their statistical models various measures associated with conceptions such as the subculture of poverty, the subculture of violence, the code of the street, and so on. In highlighting and attempting to measure these kinds of constructs, criminologists have also reached back to consult the much earlier nonethnographic, more theory-driven work on the topic of crime and culture, such as that of Wolfgang and Ferracuti (1967) and Curtis (1975), who sought at that time to develop an integrated theory of the causes of crime with a focus on group differences. Subcultures of poverty and violence have come to be seen as the driving forces behind high rates of crime and violence among the urban poor. Many of the numerous quantitative analytic models of crime rates and patterns that have been conducted since the early 1990s now contain among their choice of variables those measures seen as allowing for a testing of the causal effects of these subculture constructs. That work is ongoing. But, despite decades of such qualitative analyses, the utility of the subculture construct for predicting and explaining crime rates and patterns remains the subject of much debate. The very notion of a subculture of poverty has been hotly contested for nearly a half century. And the utility of such newer constructions as Anderson’s (1999) “code of the street” has been both supported and questioned (Berg and Srewart 2009; Brezina et al. 2004; Brookman et al. 2011; Drummond, Bolland, and Harris 2011; Jones 2008; Matsuda et al. 2012; Parker and Reckdenwald 2008; Stewart, Schreck, and Simons 2006, 2010; Stewart and Simons 2006; Taylor et al. 2010). At the same time, it is clear that the more recent ethnographic studies have made valuable contributions to the study of race and crime— and to a better understanding of high rates of African American violence. By continuing a much older research tradition and infusing it with more discussion of race difference in many instances, they have opened the door to potentially new ways of thinking that could lead to greater numbers of and more refined and holistic theories of race and crime. Toward that end, they have already helped to stimulate efforts by contemporary researchers and theorists to rediscover earlier work within sociology and criminology that has offered more ecological and placecentered approaches to the study of race and crime. Further, there has been a movement among contemporary scholars to extend this work and

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examine the personal ecology of individual lives within the context of often racialized and economically distressed communities (Loeber and Farrington 1998, 2001). This represents an intersection of research traditions that we will explore in more detail later in this work. Our theory of race and interpersonal violence also highlights the importance of culture, cultural differences, and culture conflict to explain the ethnic and racial disparities seen in rates of crime in the United States. It builds upon some of the insights gained from work done within the subculture traditions within the social sciences. But, as the reader will also learn, our discussion of the nature and the role of culture leans much more toward traditional anthropological frames than toward criminological and sociological ones. Moving Beyond the Notion of Subculture Though relied upon within a wide array of the social sciences, the concept of culture and its relevance for the study of crime often remain illdefined and elusive (Kornhauser 1978; Kubrin 2015; Kubrin and Wo 2016). Given our use of the idea as a guiding conceptual frame within the theory we propose, let us briefly examine the complexities that lead to those conceptual deficiencies and their relevance to the study of ethnicity, race, and crime. The notion of culture informs our work in several ways. We build upon a long-standing but still emerging tradition within criminological theorizing that has been labeled “cultural criminology.” Hayward and Young (2004, 259) describe this approach to the study of crime by noting, Above all else, it is the placing of crime and social control in the context of culture; that is, viewing both crime and the agencies of social control as cultural products—as creative constructs. As such, they must be read in terms of the meanings they carry. Furthermore, cultural criminology seeks to highlight the interaction between these two elements: the relationship and the interaction between these two elements.

With this cultural criminology frame as a conceptual and analytic guide, we take issue with some of the central tendencies found within the subculture analytic frame. We contend that much of the extant work within this tradition appears to divide the social world into culturalanalytic dichotomies, such as mainstream versus peripheral, dysfunctional versus functional, or order/ed/ly versus disorder/ed/ly. We contend that while these make for useful heuristics, they often result in a

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kind of good culture versus bad culture view of US society. On the other hand, the more globally oriented, quasi-anthropological, and cultural relativity view of the social world to which we adhere takes a different approach. We view human social groupings as operating on a relatively level playing field regarding those attributes that make for differences and attributes defined as cultural. Our theoretical conceptions described throughout this book include a conceptual balancing act that seeks to make evaluative judgments regarding the social consequences that derive from group interactions without resorting to a priori negative labeling of the cultures that appear to shape the contours of those interactions. Having described the theory-making needs that now confront the criminological enterprise and the challenges those pose, we conclude with a brief summation of our theory. • Ethnocentric impulses linked to group-level identities, affinities, behaviors, and other dimensions of culture characterize life among humans throughout the world and are a defining feature of human social organization. • Within-race ethnocentric group identities and behaviors have been downplayed in both public and scholarly discourse in the United States despite much countervailing evidence that attests to their salience and social relevance. • The adherence to modernity and assimilationist narratives that discount the existence of ethnocentrism has resulted in a body of social theory that largely ignores the ways that the social and social psychological forces derived from ethnocentric impulses and conflicts affect ethnic and racial differences in criminal violence. • African American communities, especially within the urban context, are comprised of distinctive but largely unacknowledged demographic groupings that share common and hisoricially grounded cultural characteristics, traits, and patterns of behavior. The socio-emotional affinities that bind them are linked not only to their racial identities but also to more localized places of origins within the United States. Ethnocentric intergroup conflict among those diverse affinity groupings has been an enduring, but often ignored, feature of life in Black America. • Intrarace, ethnocentrism-driven conflict as a contributor to heightened levels of noncollective, interpersonal violence has also been an enduring but underexamined feature of the social lives of Americans of European heritages and possibly Americans of other races as well. Hence, the broader sociocultural, demographic, and ecological forces that produce patterns of intergroup relations conducive to interpersonal violence in the United States are race neutral. But, historically systemic

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racism in the United States has set in motion social forces that (re)configure and amplify those forces in ways that contribute to the excess of violence found within black communities. On the surface, many of the refinements and amendments to extant theorizing on race, crime, and interpersonal violence may appear to be mere quibbles regarding the varying degrees of emphasis placed on the factors nearly all social analysts agree to be of vital importance for understanding ethnic and race differences. However, we think that our work offers new and unique insights into these extensively studied phenomena.

On Hidden Diversity Among African Americans Given the emphasis we place on culture-linked differences among subpopulations of African Americans, it is important to acknowledge that we are not alone in making such claims. Caldwell-Colbert, HendersonDaniel, and Dudley-Grant (2003) noted the often unacknowledged complexity and diversity of social life in Black America. Like we do, they view such diversity as arising from or correlated with myriad culturelinked characteristics including skin color, ancestry, geographical region, and dialect. Lott (2011) describes African Americans as having a culture within a culture, where she observed generational differences in ideological views among African Americans as well as differences based on socioeconomic status. Others have also noted the need to avoid viewing black communities as undifferentiated wholes. Jargowsky (1996) described hidden economic diversity within black “disadvantaged” urban communities. Both ethnographers and psychologists have alluded to or described cultural variations among black Americans. Anderson’s (1999) accounts of “street folk” and “decent folk” point to cultural differences that are more than markers of social class. Robinson’s (2014) ethnographic study highlighted the existence of often unacknowledged rural-urban and regional differences within Black America. Many African American psychologists have also noted the need to move beyond simplistic notions of black communities as comprised of a singular subculture to develop more nuanced descriptions of cultural differences within them (e.g., Boykin [1983] and Jagers [1996]. When discussing violence among urban black males, Jagers, Mattis, and Walker (2003, 304) describe “the complex intersections of culture, class, and race” that lead to “multiple moral communities among urban African Americans.” They propose the existence of four racialized cultural identities within

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urban Black America, each representing moral cognitions and emotions that prompt or inhibit violence by members of distinct identity groups. In Chapter 6, we incorporate these earlier insights into our theory. The reader will soon learn of our heavy reliance on Berlin’s (2010) informative and well-researched accounting of the African American past. As a guidepost for our work, it proved to be an invaluable resource. His well-researched analysis documents and offers a historical perspective to the kinds of cultural diversity within Black America that our theory presupposes. Like Berlin, we emphasize the need to see race as a social construct. By treating both Black America and White America as complex human aggregations in the pages that follow, we seek to avoid the pervasive tendency toward racial essentialism that permeates much public discourse regarding group differences in the United States and beyond. Unlike Berlin, however, we have chosen to make cultural heterogeneity among African Americans the conceptual fulcrum of our work. Finally, we note the sage words of Oliver Cox (1948, ix), who pointed to the need for a theory such as ours, when he said, “Caste, class, and race are social concepts widely employed in discussions of current social problems, and yet neither the theoretical meaning nor the practical implications of these concepts, as they apply to concrete situations, have been satisfactorily examined.” By examining these concepts within the framework of our largely criminological treatise, we cover a vast conceptual terrain that has been explored in much greater detail by others. Although we cite much of that work in support of the claims we make, the need to condense and summarize our findings and the use of time-stamped secondary sources comes at at cost. At times, it means that our discussion conceals the complex, nuanced nature and intensity of the ongoing debates found within those research arenas. To obtain a firmer grasp of the conceptual underpinnings of our work, the reader must examine more of that storehouse of research on conceptions of culture and subculture, ethnic and race relations, homicide, and the histories of Black and White America. As exemplars, we recommend to the reader James Short’s (1997) examination of ethnicity and vilolent crime and his (2003) illuminating discussion of ethnic segregation and violence in the United States, which offer exceptions to tendency among criminologists to ignore explanations of ethnic racial disparity. In the intergroup relations arena we recommend Charles Hirschman’s (1983) excellent review of the literature on American ethnic and racial diversity. Bates (2006) and Fenton (2013) informed our discussion of the concept of ethnicity.

2 Looking Back, Moving Forward: Theories of Race and Crime

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aving noted the scarcity of theories that attempt to explain or appear capable of explaining ethnic and racial differences in crime, we explore in this chapter some of the possible reasons for this state of affairs. Why is there so little theorizing? Among extant criminological theories, which ones show the greatest potential for explaining longstanding ethnic and racial disparities in rates of crime? Why has that potential not yet been fully realized despite decades of data-gathering and the emergence of race and crime studies as a growth industry? In search of answers, we describe several institutional and ideological inclinations that appear to constitute significant impediments to achieving a better understanding of the causes of ethnic and racial differences. We conclude with a discussion of recent innovative research findings and approaches within criminology and allied disciplines that serve as guideposts for our theory-making effort. In describing the study of race and crime below, we have chosen to paint with a broad brush devoid of exemplary citations. But we believe that our summary of disciplinary trends comports with many of the findings and observations made by others.

Disciplinary and Ideological Origins of the Race Invariance Thesis Based on their relative scarcity within the criminological literature, one might conclude that mainstream criminologists have an aversion to ethnicity- or race-specific theories of criminal offending. Criminological texts that catalog popular criminological theories contain few theories 13

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that are designed specifically to take race or ethnicity into account in explaining the causes of criminal involvement (e.g., see Radzinowicz and Wolfgang 1971; Vold 1958, 1979; and Vold and Bernard 1986). Such disciplinary surveys are said to reveal a preference among criminologists for “race-neutral” or “race invariant/invariance” theories to explain and predict levels of criminal involvement. The latter term had a prior existence but was popularized by the work of Sampson and Wilson (1995), whose theory of race and crime we examine later. They used the term to describe their theory’s central thesis regarding the causes of ethnic and racial differences in crime. In the aftermath of their work, the label is applied retrospectively to various theoretical constructs found within criminology. Typically, it is the lack of any mention of the etiological importance of ethnic or race differences within the theories that leads to such labeling rather than the kind of explicit directives seen in the work of Sampson and Wilson. That is, the actual framers of theories subjected to such labeling are most often largely silent on the question of race as an etiological construct. Our review of the criminological literature suggests that the vast majority of all classic and most contemporary theories of crime can be described as embodying a race invariance thesis. What explains such leanings? Since many of the architects of such theories were fully aware of both ethnic and racial disparities in rates of crime, their race-neutral leanings do not appear to arise from an inattentiveness to that glaring reality. Nor were they unaware of the nation’s history of ethnic and racial inequality and conflict. We believe that such leanings may arise partly from efforts by contemporary criminologists to distance themselves from the discipline’s rather inglorious past. Looking back to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century criminological work in both Europe and the United States, many of the widely referenced and respected theoretical frames aimed at explaining the causes of criminal conduct were the polar opposite of race-neutral renderings. Race and ethnicity were said to matter immensely in determining patterns of social behavior. Notions of crime as a product of racial and ethnic differences, and/or other perceived genetic deficiencies, were trademarks of criminological research and theory. Modern US criminology in the pre– and post–World War II eras arose both within the throes of, and as a replacement for, this decidedly ethnocentric and racist research tradition. That past has become both a strength and a weakness regarding its ability to fully confront and explain contemporary ethnic and racial differences in both crime and punishment. A perusal of early to mid-twentieth-century criminological

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writings reveals an effort by many prominent criminologists to counter the racialist and classist biases found in the criminological work of the last century as well as among some of their contemporaries. In response, many took decidedly progressive, antiracist, and activist stances concerning the study of crime and society. This progressive counterpunch within the criminological enterprise was particularly evident before World War II, when much of the work that they sought to counter was still a prominent part of the criminological landscape. In the immediate post–World War II period, these revisionist propensities within what was a new and still emerging discipline set the stage for a realignment of the discipline’s self- and public images. These efforts toward remaking the profession reverberate today and have shaped the study of ethnicity and race differences. They also have much to do with the penchant for race invariant theorizing. This image remake within criminology in response to its past embodied an effort to depict criminology as a purely fact-driven enterprise and the criminologist as an objective and nonpartisan scientific observer of crime in society. This impulse within criminology and allied social sciences contributed to the push for rigorous quantitative analysis rather than theorizing as the discipline’s signature achievement. Crime counts were thought not to bear the stigma of partisanship. The desire to remain apart from a politically and ideologically slanted and often racist research regimen carried out under the guise of criminology is laudable, even if crime counting alone does not counter the racist and classist notions they sought to counter. However, in this instance, the search for perceived scientific objectivity and neutrality may have led to a disinclination among some modern criminologists to become involved in the thorny debates of the immediate post–World War II years to the present regarding ethnic and racial discrimination, economic inequality, and the quest for racial justice and civil rights. To a great degree, as we later show, the question of how to account for ethnic and racial differences in crime and punishment is an inextricable part of those thorny debates.1 The seeming failure of criminologists to confront head-on the question of the causes of racial differences belies the fact that just before and since World War II, the discipline has witnessed a theory-making boom. Although the remaking of their professional image and the nature of their intellectual mission impacted their choice of theoretical frames, clearly it did not result in the absence of theorizing. As part of the effort to construct a “new criminology,” criminologists have displayed an eagerness to demonstrate their capabilities at devising their own theo-

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Roots of African American Violence

ries as opposed to simply utilizing theories derived from allied disciplines. Before the rise of much more data-driven research during the last three decades, this focus on theory was one of the trademarks of the new, modernizing discipline and its quest for respectability. The interest among modern criminologists in theory-making means that there now exists within criminology a relatively large body of theory that was developed in response to earlier conceptualizations within the discipline. Both to make these new theories “universal” in their scope and reach, and also to counter that questionable past, efforts were made to devise theories that explained the causes and spatial distributions of crime without regard to the race or ethnicity of either offenders or victims. Although social class invariably figured into many of these etiological equations, race and ethnicity were omitted as variables of interest.

The Ten-Ton Elephant in the Nation Our depiction of criminology as an insular and self-directed research enterprise does not mean that forces outside of that disciplinary enterprise have not also affected the tendencies we described. Beyond disciplinerelated professional concerns, a much more broad-based ideological stream has also limited the effort to devise a coherent theory of race and crime. Despite the historical persistence of the nation’s racial divide, the irony one confronts when studying race and racial disparities, including those in crime and punishment, is the fact that these are sometimes taboo or sensitive subjects. Do race invariance theories within criminology and other social sciences owe some part of their post-1950s ubiquity to the nation’s hesitancy to openly discuss race and racism? We believe so. Long before the beginning of an era that some have now labeled post-racial, Americans displayed a reluctance to countenance fully the severity of the nation’s racial problems. These include differences in behavior and social outcomes along the lines of race. Among more extreme social and political conservatives, such differences are seen as evidence of black pathology, backwardness, and inferiority. Nevertheless, the tendency when speaking of such is to couch it in a kind of “code speech” designed to get across messages regarding perceived racial deficiencies in subtle ways. In the political arena, such discourse is par for the course when discussing crime and violence among African Americans.

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Many liberal and middle American whites also tend to view race differences in crime with discursive unease as well. In many instances, racial disparity in social outcomes and behaviors is seen as evidence of an unfinished civil and human rights agenda. Like their counterparts in an earlier era who recoiled at the idea of crime among the foreign-born as evidence of their deficiencies, present-day liberals often refrain from discussing the topic of crime rate differences for fear of giving an opening to those views of group differences grounded in pure racism. It is also true that perceived change for the good in the legal/social status of blacks since the 1960s has caused both liberals and those in the political/ ideological center to voice, at times, views of race and criminality not entirely unlike those voiced by those who are right of the nation’s ideological center. Public opinion surveys conducted during the 1990s and since have found that when asked about crime statistics in their cities and neighborhoods, white respondents frequently overestimated the magnitude of black overrepresentation among criminal offenders (e.g., see Pickett et al. 2012). Fear of black crime and the overestimations of the extent of black offending are not limited to racial conservatives (e.g., see Bobo, Kluegel, and Smith 1997; Bonilla-Silva 2001, 2003; and Russell-Brown 2004). Such fears have often become more pronounced with the rise of urban residential gentrification (Hwang and Sampson 2014; PatilloMcCoy 1999). In the jargon du jour, the discussion of race is the unacknowledged ten-ton elephant in the room (or in this case the nation). Consequently, any serious effort at explaining racial disparity must begin with an effort first to admit that such disparities exist. The unease that is evident among whites of all political stripes often derives from the perceived need to admit that racial discrimination lies at the root of such differences. The failure to admit that racial discrimination exists in US society and that it contributes to the racial disparities experienced in each facet of social life in the United States is now commonplace. It has come to reflect the behavioral and attitudinal posturing of white Americans across the political spectrum (Bobo, Kluegel, and Smith 1997; Bonilla-Silva 2001). And, although political conservatives may gleefully cite such differences as evidence of black social pathology, in most “polite” public discourse and the halls of academia, these conflicting emotions often take the form of political correctness that results in ignoring or denying the existence of racial differences in crime and violence.2

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Roots of African American Violence

Connecting Race and Crime We began our discussion of race and violence with a candid acknowledgment of racial disparities in homicide. But, that aspect of the nation’s racial divide has not always been so openly discussed. For example, in making a case for more open discussions of race differences in rates of crime, especially violence, Sampson and Wilson (1995) noted the sensitivity of the topic. They suggested that the avoidance of candid discussion of racial differences observed in crime and violence has extended beyond public discourse to affect the ways that sociologists and criminologists study the phenomenon as well (see also Hawkins 1995; LaFree 1995). Such sensitivity regarding open discussion of group differences in rates of crime is hardly limited to the modern post–Civil Rights era. Nor is it limited to the discussion of race differences alone. There are many similarities between the ideologically and politically motivated reluctance to discuss black crime rates and the often unacknowledged hesitancy among some social analysts during the first decades of the twentieth century to discuss perceived and actual differences in rates of crime among US white ethnic populations (e.g., see Hawkins 1993, 1994). Similarly, there are also many parallels between inattentiveness to black crime and the contemporary debates surrounding the linkages among ethnicity, immigration, and crime among Latinos in the United States. That debate, like that surrounding black crime, too often encounters problems of separating fact from fiction when discussing this politically volatile subject matter (e.g., see Martinez 2000; Sampson 2006).3 In each instance, and whether in response to the foreign-born or African Americans, public discourse and understandings of ethnic and racial differences have been affected greatly by the nation’s long history of intergroup conflict, ethnocentrism, racism, and class struggle. Even in the absence of scholarly work that may serve to highlight them, Americans’ public perceptions of group disparities in crime and other negative social outcomes are deeply entrenched in stereotype about ethnicity, race, nationality, and place of birth. Thus, what is viewed as political correctness or hesitation simply reflects recognition of the ways in which the nation’s history of ethnic and racial discord has shaped the public and scholarly narratives on ethnicity, race, and crime. Modern analysts who seek to study race and crime, like those studying the nature and extent of white ethnic crime during the last century, have always known that their discussions of inequalities and disparities in

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crime and punishment often result in distorted public perceptions and draconian laws and social policies. They are aware, for example, that the “New Jim Crow” (Alexander 2010) in the form of mass incarceration is not simply a linear continuation of century-old customs. They also reflect more recent post-1960s social policies spawned by both real and distorted perceptions of contemporary ethnic and racial differences in rates of crime (see Muhammad 2010). Crime analysts and the public at large are perhaps right to fear that even seemingly benign discussions of such differences can spawn reactionary responses from the public and policymakers. Gunnar Myrdal’s (1944) American race relations dilemma lives on well into the twenty-first century. Reactionary perceptions of black criminality, especially that of males, have taken a deadly and disruptive toll on African Americans and their communities for many decades and continue to do so today. The killings of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis by white civilians during 2012 and police shootings in 2014 of Michael Brown, Vonderrit Meyers Jr., and Kajeime Powell, all residents of the state of Missouri, attest to the lethality of those perceptions. The image of all young black males as “criminalman” with the dire consequences such a label imposes on its wearers has been widely noted by Covington (1999, 2003) and RussellBrown (1998, 2004). Recent lethal interactions between law enforcement officers and unarmed African American men have led to a further heightening of the kind of racial divide many Americans have chosen to ignore. Two young male African American US military veterans engaged in acts of perceived retaliation in response to the 2016 murders of unarmed African American men at the hands of police in Baton Rouge and Minnesota. Those vigilante acts of violence perpetrated in the form of sniper attacks and ambushes of law enforcement officers by Micah Xavier Johnson and Gavin Long suggest that ignoring the ten-ton elephant in the nation has become a nonviable option for both everyday Americans and decisionmakers. We contend and will attempt to show in the chapters that follow that criminologists and other crime analysts are affected by the assorted and far-reaching tentacles of that race relations dilemma; and in the same ways that they affect the worldviews of John Q. and Susie M. public, the stances taken by various segments of the social science community in response to the question of racial differences in crime and violence are shaped and constrained by our nation’s long-standing race relations dilemma. At the same time, we see this book (and much of the recent

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Roots of African American Violence

work that has inspired it) to be evidence of slow progress toward a much bolder confrontation of the dilemmas presented in looking at such racial differences (Hawkins 2003). Connecting Crime and Social Control Our elephant in the room dilemma poses yet another hurdle for efforts to incorporate the effects of race and racism into our theories and models of crime causation. It comes in the form of a decades-long debate centered on the question of whether one can completely discount the effects of race-based law enforcement and justice system processing on the size of observed racial disparities, even for the most serious and violent of criminal offenses. That is, how much of the reported gap in rates of crime can be attributed to actual differences in behavior across the races, and how much stems from racial bias? Despite efforts at disciplinary solidarity during the last century, criminologists who study race and crime are hardly preaching to the choir when it comes to answering these questions. More often it appears that they are preaching to different choirs in opposing congregations. Even though theories bearing such labels as conflict, Marxist, power-threat, and race-threat have found their way into mainstream criminology, their role in explaining crime is perceived as limited to the study of societal response to crime rather than its causes. Conversely, popular theories that embody such conceptualizations as strain, social learning, subculture, and the social, psychological, and biological traits of individuals have become the workhorses of the effort to explain the causes of crime. But, adherents say little about societal responses to it. For many, the failure of criminologists to engage across these lines of research and theory has not been inconsequential for the study of ethnicity, race, and crime. Clearly, the racial gap in rates of crime reflects both group differences in behavior and inherent racial biases in the nation’s system for the administration of justice. Our theories and models must account for the effects of both phenomena on racial disparities in crime and violence. Our present effort at theory-making marks a departure from the either/or line of questioning just described. Using the notion of cultural ethnocentrism as the fulcrum of our discussion, we present a theory that counters the tendency within criminology and other social sciences to draw lines of demarcation between the study of the causes of crime and the study of societal responses to it (Hawkins 2003, 2011). We argue that particularly for African Americans the artificiality of that separation

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is more than obvious given even a cursory glance at either the nation’s historical record or the latest newspaper or visual media story. The story of the etiology of crime has always been one that necessitates an understanding of both the social contexts within which it occurs and societal responses to it. As we note below, our theorizing effort is part of a reinvigorated and ongoing effort among many social scientists to understand better the correlates and causes of ethnic and racial differences in rates of criminal involvement.

In Search of New Theories Given our attempt to devise a theory specifically designed to explain racial disparities in rates of violence, some of the most noticeable signs of forward movement in taking on the question of what accounts for such differences have come from a widening of the tent of researchers and potential theorists. Although the study of crime and violence is inherently multidisciplinary, we have witnessed over the last several decades an even greater expansion of disciplines that actively support research into patterns, causes, and prevention of crimes of violence. Public health has emerged as an active participant in the documentation of the extent and costs of violence, and a leader in the study of violence among the young. Given its inherent focus on intervention and prevention, the growing body of public health research has documented race disparity in violence but to date has not itself generated any significantly new theoretical insights. On the other hand, researchers from the social and behavioral sciences that have increasingly come to operate under the public health umbrella have started to provide some new theory-laden forays into the examination of ethnic and racial group differences in violence. This potential is particularly evident among those psychologists, sociologists, and other social science researchers who use life course and developmental theories and analytic models within their proposed violence prevention initiatives. The glaring ethnic and racial disparities observed in violent crime offending and mortality data sources have forced them to become more attentive to ethnic and racial differences even if the search for explanation remains underdeveloped and elusive. A part of their lack of success is due to their reliance on many of the race invariance forms of theorizing we discussed earlier. It is also true that psychologists and life course researchers are heirs to a corpus of race invariance theorizing from within their disciplines.

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A very promising attempt to bring together the various disciplines now fully involved in the study of youth violence is symbolized by the work and publications of the Study Group on Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders convened in 1995 by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). It brought together researchers from criminology, developmental psychology, juvenile justice, public health, and sociology to address and assess the causes of youth violence and devise promising interventions (see Loeber and Farrington 1998, 2001). Analysts of youth violence have incorporated very elaborate and well-thought-out theory derived from the developmental or psychological literatures, but like those in mainstream criminology most are not attentive to the potential effects of race, per se. Consequently, as an act of nascent theorizing, many seek to modify their theories and models to accommodate considerations of race and racism. Some researchers seeking to explain group disparities in violence have included measures of exposure to racism when sampling predominantly minority populations. This trend represents a hopeful sign for future theorizing about race and crime within the developmental and psychological sciences. Perhaps the most promising of ongoing attempts to come to grips with the causes of ethnic and racial differences is reflected in the (re)discovery by those using largely individual-level research designs of the importance of neighborhood (Moffitt 1993; Wikstrom 2005). This recognition of the importance of the ecology of offending has resulted in a blending of research traditions that have often been seen as separate in their core approaches and concerns. This marriage of research protocols has conceptual roots in the long-standing work in sociology on the importance of neighborhood (e.g., see Bursik 1988; Bursik and Grasmick 1993; Morenoff and Sampson 1997; Morenoff et al. 2001; Rose and McClain 1990; Sampson and Bean 2006; Sampson and Groves 1989; Sampson et al. 2005; Sampson and Morenoff 2006; Sampson, Morenoff, and Gannon-Rowley 2002; and Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997). Robert Sampson and others have shown that many of the theoretical insights and accompanying analytic models that have come to the fore more recently in the newer work on violence were present for decades within mainstream sociology. It is also true that they have been underutilized within sociology and are sorely in need of refinements to be of greater help for predicting and explaining race differences. Efforts at such refinement and amendment of one of those classic sociological

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theories, social disorganization, guide our theory of race, ethnocentrism, and violence. Rethinking the Racial Invariance Thesis In their often-cited essay, Robert Sampson and William Julius Wilson (1995) responded to the call for theory-making to which we now respond, namely, the effort to explain the high rates of crime and violence among African Americans. In response, they used the term racial invariance to describe their chosen thesis regarding the fundamental causes of crime. Unlike the architects of the body of criminological theorizing we have labeled race invariant in the present discussion, they chose the term proactively. It reflected their belief that the communitylevel causes and correlates of crime that they identified did not vary across racial groupings. They were said to be the same for blacks as for whites. The essay, now more than two decades old, was notable because it laid out a theory designed to explain the persistence of high rates of crime in black communities when compared to those inhabited by whites. It was also a theory that moved beyond the purely individuallevel analyses derived from developmental psychology to include attentiveness to ecological contexts. As we have noted, this kind of one-theory-fits-all-races view of the causes of racial disparities in rates of offending and victimization was increasingly being called into question by many criminologists at that time and much earlier. Our work (Hawkins 1983, 1990) was among those writings that called for more race-specific and race-conscious theorizing. Indeed, a decade later, Robert Sampson and Lydia Bean (2006) essentially refuted the cultural invariance thesis and opted for a theoretical frame that explicitly takes into account racially differing community-level correlates of crime and also incorporates the role of race-linked differences in cultural values. Although we believe that some aspects of the explanations offered by Sampson and Bean merely repackage traditional subculture theory, their work along with other unheralded earlier critiques of the invariance thesis by Ousey (1999) and McNulty (2001) show the need for and relevance of our theorymaking venture. Many authors of largely quantitative analyses of race and regional differences in rates of crime and violence have used Sampson and Bean’s 2006 work to critique both the race invariance thesis and other extant explanations. In doing so, they have offered refreshingly new insights by casting their quantitative analyses within broader, more

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Roots of African American Violence

purely theory-focused frames. Their rethinking of race invariance has also led to a rediscovery of earlier work by others who have similarly questioned the use of a race invariance thesis to explain high rates of crime among African Americans (e.g., see Griffiths 2013; Kubrin 2003; Kubrin and Herting 2003; Kubrin and Wadsworth 2003; Kubrin and Weitzer 2003a, 2003b; Lee, Thomas, and Ousey 2009; Messner, Baller, and Zevenbergen 2005; Rose and McClain 1990; Sowell 2005; Wadsworth and Kubrin 2004). Like those writing before them, these researchers have been attentive to the social structural determinants of race differences but have also raised important questions regarding the role of culture. Another guide for the theory-making venture we have undertaken comes from both the most recent and earlier work of Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo. Especially in recent years, their research reflects decidedly non–race invariant conceptualization and theory when describing the ways in which neighborhoods and communities affect the patterning of crime and group differences within the urban context. Their most recent work, Divergent Social Worlds (2012), takes on squarely the question of what accounts for race differences in rates of crime. To a much greater extent than is found in similar work by earlier analysts who have explored the effects of concentrated poverty, segregation, social disorganization, residential instability, and similar crime-producing conditions, their accounting of these factors and their impact on varying rates of crime is race- and ethnicity-centered. Their views of the etiological significance of the nation’s “racial-spatial divide” were echoed by Sampson (2012). While Peterson and Krivo and many others who examine ecological correlates of crime emphasize the cumulative and detrimental effects of concentrated poverty on the racial gap in crime and violence, our work examines the intersection of those known grouplevel disadvantages with unacknowledged cultural diversity within those same neighborhoods. Another major source of inspiration for our theory comes from our reading of the work of Unnever and Gabbidon (2011), who engage in a theory-building effort akin to ours. They, like we, emphasize the need to evaluate extant theories regarding their adequacy for explaining racial differences. They note that empirical testing of theories within criminology has been limited to a very narrow range of the entire corpus of theories. Regarding the current conceptual utility of criminology’s warehouse of theories for providing fully convincing explanations of race differences in crimes of all sorts (Gabbidon 2010), Unnever and Gabbidon (2011) suggest that few fit the bill. In response to these acknowl-

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edged limitations of past theorizing about race and crime, Unnever and Gabbidon (2011) have offered a well-researched “theory of African American offending.” They make a case for the unique position of blacks in US society as compared to other major ethnic and racial groups. They propose that even in comparison to historically oppressed racial and ethnic minorities such as Asian Americans, Latinos, and American Indians, regarding their treatment at the hands of whites, African Americans are “peerless.” None of these groups is said to have experienced the range, intensity, and duration of the race-linked brutalities aimed at blacks. Both past and continuing present-day acts of racial animus aimed at black individuals and persisting institutional racism are said to result in a weakening of the bonds of trust and respect between the black population and America’s conventional social institutions. They suggest that one result of such erosion of trust is the adherence among blacks, particularly young black males, to a pattern of behaviors, including crime, that reflects that distrust. Their book contains a set of explicit, testable hypotheses regarding those interconnections among racism, trust, and crime, which will likely be explored by criminologists during coming years. Already, an early test of some of Unnever and Gabbibon’s theory’s main propositions has found support for the theory’s ability to explain varying levels of criminal offending among young African Americans (see Unnever 2014). Their daring excursion into explicit and race-centered theory-making has served as an inspiration for the work that we have undertaken in this book. There are both similarities and differences in the routes they took and that we now take. Like Unnever and Gabbidon, we also believe that any theory seeking to account for race differences in crime in the United States must take history into account. Like they, we also believe that in explaining the etiology of crime, including racial differences, the detection and “punishment” of crime exert their own etiological forces and impact racial disparities, even for crimes as serious as homicide. We are in accord regarding our assessments of the unique ways in which African Americans have been subjected to measures of systemic social control aimed at both individuals and the entire race. However, unlike Unnever and Gabbidon, we believe that some of the social forces that account for “over-offending” among African Americans have also shaped and configured criminal offending among white Americans. Our theory and theirs, despite some dissimilarities, both help to counter the tendency found within much of modern criminology and social and behavioral sciences to create a rarified analytic world in

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which the causes of crime and racial differences are set apart from the biases inherent in the highly racialized patterns of social control that have characterized life in the United States since its inception. We also heed the calls of those who decry the tendency to see the social causes of racial differences in crime and violence as largely embedded in the social structure and not in culture, or vice versa. We combine elements of each in our theory and show their interconnectedness as well as the intimate causal ties each of these etiological forces shares with the nation’s legacy of systemic racism and efforts at crime surveillance and control. We echo the underappreciated theoretical and conceptual work of those criminologists who have also approached the question of crime causation in ways that incorporate elements of social control, labeling, and group conflict perspectives (e.g., see Becker 1963; Black 1989; Chambliss and Seidman 1971; Gabbidon 2010; Hawkins 2003; Pepinsky and Jesilow 1984).

Measuring Racial Disparities in Homicide Given our belief that the theory we later propose is of relevance for explaining group differences in homicide, we conclude by examining the data that have traditionally been used to document those now widely accepted disparities. As compared to serious but nonlethal assault, it is widely agreed that homicide is a crime whose legal parameters are better defined, and whose measurements and counts are less affected by, law enforcement bias. Our choice of homicide also reflects the fact that social scientists know much more about its social patterning and offender/victim profiles across time, place, age, and gender than we do about other forms of violent offending and victimization. Much of the confidence we have in treating race differences in homicide as worthy of theorizing also has to do with the continuity over time of sources of data that document group differences. For more than eighty years, data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) have been used to provide crime analysts with a more or less continuous record of group differences in rates of criminal offending and victimization in the United States (Eckberg 1995). We believe that in the case of homicide, scrutiny of that record allows us to observe change over time in racial and ethnic disparities for a measure of criminal conduct that is relatively less susceptible than some other crime measures to distortion, error, and bias. Another national data source that is often used to supplement or substitute for official crime reports is derived from cause-of-death certifica-

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tions. Although mortality data from death certificates have long been compiled, the use within public health studies of those now extremely reliable victim-based measures of intentional injury and death makes for a convenient and easily available check on the accuracy of homicide data generated by the police and other law enforcement and public health agencies. There is evidence of a great degree of concordance between public health and UCR counts of homicides in the United States over the last several decades and more (Rokaw, Mercy, and Smith 1990). The UCR is not without its flaws and inaccuracies. Most arise from bureaucratic inertia but also from social and political forces emanating from outside of the policing agencies reporting the data (e.g., see LaFree 1995; Pepinsky and Jesilow 1984; and Snyder and Mulako-Wangato 2014). Because of the centrality of race in American society, external pressures on the UCR can and do affect assessments of group differences. These include politically motivated change in the very categories used to identify offenders by race, ethnicity, and immigration status, as was evident in the 1930s and beyond. Critical criminologists, such as Pepinsky and Jesilow (1984), have also noted the integral ties between police departments as the source of UCR data, and the fact that such dependence occurs within a society characterized by a history of white privilege and nonwhite subordination. To what extent, critics ask, does the supposedly objective UCR simply reflect the racial biases of law enforcement and the public at large? Their observations include descriptions of the ways that legal definitions of criminal behavior are influenced by race and social class, and those biases are in turn reflected in data collection and measurement of crime (Pepinsky and Selke 1982). Criminologists adhering to conflict/critical perspectives have noted, for example, that much of what is defined as criminal conduct reflects a desire on the part of white elites to maintain racial and class privileges. Hence, crime counts, including counts of homicide, for the poor and minorities will often reflect such self-interest at least as much as actual group disparities. Ward (2014) notes that given the historical reality of governmentally sanctioned and citizen violence against African Americans, such bias affects the ways that violent behavior among blacks is legally defined, sanctioned, and studied. Hence, any assessment of racial differences in crime must take account of the fact that the defining and counting of criminal acts along the lines of race are impacted by the consideration of race. Consequently, we write with an awareness that when such concepts as race and ethnicity are linked, as they inevitably are, to numbers and statistics that purport to measure and assess the group differences, dan-

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gers lurk. Zuberi (2001) provides a scathing critique of the many ways in which “racial statistics” have become popular in Western thought and social science, and the many ways in which those very statistics lie about the meanings of race and race differences. Like Zuberi and Ward, we are mindful that the statistics we use to document group differences and the socially constructed labels we use to describe those groups have arisen within the context of the slavery-based system of American racial apartheid. Crime statistics, like those data purporting to measure intelligence, sexuality, primitiveness, and the like, have all been part of a historical narrative aimed at showing the inferiority and barbarity of some human populations as compared to others. Consequently, we see a need for caution when defining and attempting to operationalize our theoretical concepts. We seek to avoid any tendency to treat them as anything more than convenient social constructs that we attempt to use to explain varying rates of interpersonal violence, including racial differences in homicide. Although we have duly noted the need for much caution in using and interpreting crime statistics, we do not adhere to the belief that they are useless as measures of human conduct and behavior, including the assessment of racial and ethnic differences. We also believe that by stressing the importance of racialized social control, our theory is designed to take into account some dimensions of the sociopolitical and historical contexts within which such group differences are said to exist. For example, our theory incorporates an accounting of the ways that racism impacts public and criminal justice responses to homicide and other violence among African Americans and thereby affects the production of criminal violence. This observation was a central theme in the critical work of Pepinsky and Jesilow (1984). With the important caveats just described in mind, we now proceed with our presentation of some exemplary data designed to buttress the arguments we make in defense of our theory. The homicide data and discussion of it that we present below serve two purposes. First, like much of the criminological work upon which we rely, the data provide evidence that the pronounced differences in rates of lethal criminal violence across ethnic and racial lines are real phenomena that show a need for the theory we propose. Second, they provide assurances that UCR data, when conjoined with other supplemental sources of homicide data, can provide the kind of longitudinal data needed to show the plausibility of and test the historically grounded propositions and tenets we propose.

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Homicide in Black and White That said, we find it useful to preface our theoretical inquiry into the causes of racial disproportionality in homicide with UCR arrest data during the eighty-year period from its inception to 2013. As expected, we find that homicide arrest rates for African Americans have been higher than those for whites throughout the period. To gauge the extent of the differences, we use two indicators: the percentage of homicide arrests where the suspect is African American and the ratio of black to white arrest rates (the black percentage of all arrests and the ratio of black to white offending). Comparing Racial Differences in Percentage of Arrests Figure 2.1 shows the percentage of homicide arrests involving African American suspects. As Figure 2.1 shows, the black percentage of arrests increased steadily from 33.6 percent in 1933 to 64.2 percent in 1974. Since 1974, the percentage has fluctuated, but the overall trend is a gradual decline. African Americans are overrepresented as arrest suspects compared to their percentage of the overall US population. Overall, African Americans accounted for 9.8 percent of the residents of the United States in 1940, and their numbers gradually increased to 12.9 percent in 2010. Throughout the last eighty years, the percentage of black homicide suspects has been about four times greater than the percentage of black residents. Comparing Black-White Arrest Ratios LaFree (1995), in his informative study of racial disparities in crime, calculated the ratio of black to white arrest rates in his analysis of the racial gap in offending. Examining the years 1946 to 1990, LaFree finds a steady increase in the racial disproportionality observed for the ratio until 1969 (from 6.89 to 13.62). This incline was followed by a steady decline to 8.53 by 1990. LaFree (1995) cautions that the UCR’s computation of arrest rates is hampered by measurement problems. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has attempted to address these problems in their presentation of arrest data (Cooper and Smith 2013). While we acknowledge the lack of precision, we have shared already our conviction that the data reveal real racial differences that warrant explanation. Building upon estimation procedures developed by the FBI, Cooper and Smith seek to provide unbiased estimates of arrest rates for differ-

30

Roots of African American Violence Figure 2.1 Black Percentage of Arrests for Homicide, 1933–2012

70.0!

60.0!

50.0!

40.0!

30.0!

20.0!

10.0!

0.0! 1933!

1942!

1947!

1952!

1957!

1962!

1967!

1972!

1977!

1982!

1987!

1992!

1997!

2002!

2007!

2012!

Source: Uniform Crime Reports, 1933–2013. Note: Total arrests include white and African American suspects only. Other racial groups are excluded.

ent races, age groups, and sexes. We use data assembled by them to provide estimates of black versus white homicide arrest ratios for 1980 to 2012 (see Figure 2.2). Like LaFree (1995), we find an increase in the arrest ratio from 1980 to 1993. Since 1993, the ratio has declined from 8.1 to a value near 6. Although the racial gap in arrest rates has diminished, it remains substantial. The correlates of homicide victimization offer important clues that theories of causation, including ours, will ultimately have to address. Cooper and Smith (2011) reported that during the period from 1980 to 2009, the correlates of homicide victimization are quite similar for African American and white subjects, but there are also some differences: • For both whites and blacks, regardless of gender, the eighteen to twenty-four age group experiences the highest rates of both homicide

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Figure 2.2 Ratio of Black to White Arrest Rates, 1980–2012 10.0! 9.0! 8.0! 7.0! 6.0! 5.0! 4.0! 3.0! 2.0! 1.0! 0.0! 1980!

1985!

1990!

1995!

2000!

2005!

2010!

Source: Cooper and Smith (2013). The black-white ratio was computed by the authors.

offending and homicide victimization. Black males in this age group experienced the highest rates of offending and victimization, peaking at an offending rate of 363.4 per 100,000 in 1991 before declining to 175.8 per 100,000 by 2008.4 • In each year, the offending rate is several times higher for African Americans in the eighteen to twenty-four age group than for whites. The shape of the trend was similar for whites and blacks: white offending rates also peaked in 1991 at 32.8 per 100,000 before declining to 20.4 in 2008. • For black females, offending rates peaked in 1991 at 21.7 per 100,000 and declined to 10.8 by 2008. Offending rates were lowest for white females. Similar trends are found for each group in homicide victimization rates. The similarity in the trends aside, what is striking about the data is the huge difference in offending rates among black males as compared to the other groupings (Cooper and Smith 2011). • Using Supplementary Homicide Reports data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it is possible to identify other racial patterns in homicides. Data are missing for offenders for 31.3 percent of the homicide victimizations in 2011, which is not an exceptionally high percent-

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Roots of African American Violence

age in comparison with other years (Cooper and Smith 2013). The percentage is highest for black offenders (39.9 percent) and lowest for white offenders (22.6 percent). Data are most often missing for males and for offenders between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. In other words, data are likely to be missing for the demographic groups who are most often involved in homicides, but the disparities observed are consistent. In Table 2.1, we show several patterns that emerge from our analysis of the data found in the Easy Access to the Supplementary Homicide Reports tool (Puzzanchera, Chamberlin, and Kang 2015). They include these findings: • Most homicide is intraracial. Whites are most likely to kill whites, African Americans to kill African Americans, Latinos to kill Latinos, and so on. Some analysts have noted that the percentage of interracial homicides is higher for black offenders than for white offenders, but the percentage is still much smaller than would be expected by chance (O’Brien 1987). Perceptions of high levels of interracial offending, especially black-on-white, often stem from racial bias rather than the facts. • Compared to other offenders, African American offenders are more likely to kill males. • African American offenders are less likely than whites to kill family members. • African American offenders are more likely than other offenders to use firearms as the murder weapon. The data we present in Table 2.1 provide substance to our introductory assertions regarding the size of the racial gap in rates of homicide in the United States. Here, we have focused on more recent trends, but in subsequent chapters, we will examine longer-term and more spatially disaggregated patterns of offending and victimization. The patterns and trends observed clearly show the need to explain the elevated levels of homicides committed by African Americans, especially young males in large cities. Beyond the patterns observed in the national data, a large body of research not included in this review has documented the fact that homicide rates vary widely across cities. They have also shown that within cities, homicide is concentrated in particular neighborhoods. Within those neighborhoods, the risk of homicide victimization is considerably higher for members of identifiable social networks, including

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Table 2.1 Victim and Offense Characteristics for Homicides by Race of Offender, 1980– 2012 (percentage) Race of Offender

White Race of first victim White 91.1 Black 6.9 American Indian/ Alaska Native 0.5 Asian/ Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander 0.8 Unknown 0.6

Black

American Indian/ Alaska Native

Asian/ Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander

Unknown

Total

16.8 81.8

39.8 5.6

26.1 7.6

42.4 32.0

51.4 45.3

0.2

53.1

0.8

0.8

0.8

0.7 0.5

1.0 0.6

64.3 1.2

2.1 22.7

1.6 0.9

Sex of first victim Male Female Unknown

73.6 26.3 0.1

81.5 18.5 0.1

76.5 23.4 0.0

72.6 27.4 0.0

81.0 18.8 0.3

77.7 22.2 0.1

Victim-offender relationship Family Acquaintance Stranger Unknown

21.8 48.6 19.4 10.2

11.1 48.1 21.9 18.9

19.7 57.5 16.7 6.1

20.6 46.5 24.3 8.6

9.1 30.1 21.1 39.8

16.2 48.1 20.7 15.0

Weapon used Firearm Knife Blunt object Personal Other/unknown

57.7 18.5 6.3 8.9 8.6

70.0 15.2 4.2 5.7 4.9

36.7 30.3 9.4 15.8 7.8

61.0 18.3 4.9 7.8 7.9

65.2 15.6 4.0 5.9 9.3

63.9 16.9 5.2 7.3 6.7

Source: Puzzanchera, Chamberlin, and Kang (2015).

but not limited to traditional gangs (Papachristos 2014; Papachristos and Wildeman 2014). Therefore, analyzing the impact of place on levels of interpersonal violence and other types of crime has rightfully become the fulcrum of most contemporary work on race and crime. The importance and relevance of place require that we frame our theory in ways that may help account for not only the disparity between races in levels of homicide offending and victimization but also differences that are observed in the temporal and spatial patterning of those homicides. Ethnocentrism is the etiological concept that we have chosen for exploring those widely observed race-place effects. Of much relevance for the construction and

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Roots of African American Violence

later testing of our theory’s interface with place effects are studies that have examined the diffusion and spread of homicide across geographic spaces (e.g., see Anselin et al. 2000; Baller, Anselin, and Messner 2001; Fagan, Wilkinson, and Davies 2007; Griffiths 2013; Griffiths and Chavez 2004; Messner et al. 1999; Morenoff et al. 2001; and Zeoli et al. 2012). Most of these studies have shown that homicides are clustered within defined spaces and their spread over time is often within proximity to what are perceived to be the lethal event(s) that preceded that diffusion. In summarizing the findings from these assorted studies and her investigation, Griffiths (2013, 495) observed, Determining the factors that affect the spatial clustering of homicide both across neighborhoods and the movement of these clusters over time represents an important next step in understanding whether, and under what conditions, the location[s] of homicide hot spots change, expand, or relocate. Because racial segregation is extensive (particularly in the rustbelt cities of the Northeast; see Massey and Denton 1993), this approach also helps us to understand why homicide clusters among the specific neighborhoods that it does. If African American neighborhoods represent segregated “centers of color” (Peterson and Krivo 2010:5) and experience a heightened vulnerability to inclusion in a cluster of highly violent communities, relative to mixed or predominantly white neighborhoods, then the spatial concentration and spread of homicide over time may be considered an ecologically racially variant process. (emphasis in original)

Toward a Thematic Theory of Racial Disparities in Homicide Our effort at theory-building faces considerable headwinds, and ones not limited to criminology alone. Sociologists have long envisioned the development of a grand theory that might explain all of human grouplevel social behavior. They’re not there yet. Psychologists often envision the same for explanations of personal conduct and interpersonal interactions. They also are not there yet. Although we have made an appeal for more focused and disciplined attentiveness to explaining ethnic and racial differences in criminal conduct, we believe that an allencompassing theory aimed at doing so is implausible. Despite continuing appeals for newer, more holistic theories, we believe that it is highly unlikely that any single theory, no matter how multilayered, can fully account for the racial imbalances seen in overall

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criminal offending in the United States or for observed acts of violence. Setting aside for the moment the subjectivity associated with defining race and ethnicity, those behaviors labeled as crime and criminal violence are much too varied, subjectively defined, and changeable over time to be explained under one etiological framework. That said, we aim for a much more limited and bounded theory, but one that nevertheless addresses the long-standing appeal for the explanation of group differences. Ours is, in essence, a single-issue-focused or thematic theory that displays the characteristics of those efforts sociologists have dubbed the mid-range of explanatory conceptualizations. There is ample reason to believe that at this juncture significant strides can and must be made toward better explaining the causes of the widely noted black versus white gap in rates of interpersonal violence in the United States, and that efforts like ours should and must be undertaken and continued. Toward that end, we contend, as evidenced in our present efforts, that to the extent that such a unitary and holistic theory can be written, it must be built upon a conceptual platform that is clearly multidisciplinary and historically grounded. Further, given the relative infancy of the renewed efforts at theorymaking designed specifically to probe the causes of racial differences in crime and violence, we cannot completely rule out the potential utility of some of the classic general theories of crime. Many have yet to be consulted and (re)interpreted in ways that might make them applicable to the study of the large racial imbalances we continue to observe. Indeed, Unnever and Gabbidon (2011) make an appeal for such innovations and discuss likely paths some of those potential reinterpretations might follow. Much work remains to be done toward explaining racial differences in crime. This book is an attempt to answer the call of many contemporary researchers for greater theoretical clarity and refinement in the attempt to account for those differences. While the theory we offer is solidly criminological in its orientation and purpose, we argue that cross-disciplinary and historically grounded foci are needed to establish the plausibility of our theoretical frame. They are also needed to assess extant theoretical conceptions and explain why and in what ways they require modification and conceptual reorientation. That is the task at hand. Finally, while as a matter of convenience and consistency we will use the label theory to describe the present exercise, we are aware that what we present is more a series of linked conceptualizations than a unitary theoretical frame.

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Roots of African American Violence

Notes 1. The failure to fully confront the conundrum of race and crime has been most evident among post–World War II criminologists. They have produced a body of theory and quantitative research that often ignores the pivotal and often theory-informed work on ethnicity, race, and crime found among such early criminological pioneers as W. E. B. DuBois, Thorsten Sellin, and Edwin Sutherland. The tendency to discount, via race invariance theorizing, the need for explanations of race differences also meant that criminologists tended to ignore the earlier work by these and other criminologists on white ethnic differences in crime during the pre–World War II years. In many respects the lessons that the study of white ethnics can offer to the study of race have been lost, and as a result ethnic differences in crime and the administration of justice throughout the American past has been largely a hidden dimension of the nation’s long history (e.g., see Hawkins 1994, 1995). Further, the work of the Chicago School of sociology, whose criminological analysts offered valuable contributions to the study of both ethnic and racial differences in crime, has not been fully tapped as a source of knowledge. Only within the last three decades have the important insights that emerged from that school become part of the repertoire of modern criminological education and publishing. 2. Such assertions became a trademark of many political conservatives and politically correct liberals during the public debate that followed police killings of unarmed young black males in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Consequently, the existence of high rates of black-on-black homicide in the nation’s cities served as a counterpoint to accusations of racism in policing. 3. The Republican presidential primary of 2015–2016 has highlighted the social and political sensitivity and social psychological volatility of the question of immigrant criminality. 4. See Fingerhut, Ingram, and Feldman (1992) for a sobering assessment of the alarming rates of firearm homicide victimization found during the 1980s among urban black male teenagers.

3 Toward a Theory of African American Violence

As a group, New York’s Puerto Ricans are poorer than its blacks. . . . If violence were a simple function of poverty and social class, therefore, one would expect as much violent crime among Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic residents of New York as among black residents. In fact, the rates are strikingly different. —Silberman, Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice

W

e have shown that since W. E. B. DuBois’s (1899) pathbreaking study of black Philadelphia, the essence of the question posed above has been part of the nation’s public and scholarly discourse. Hence, nearly eighty years later, Charles Silberman (1978), in his informative and detailed study of criminal violence in America, asked why rates of criminal violence among African Americans are higher than those of not only economically disadvantaged whites but also similarly situated peoples of color in the United States. In a policy and research environment where most attention has been paid to black-white differences, his observation reminds us of the need to expand our comparative frame. He reminds us that even in comparison to groups that Blauner (1972) described as victims of America’s internal colonialism, African Americans experience higher rates of crime. Theirs have tended to exceed those of Native Americans, Native Alaskans, Latinos, and Pacific Islanders, and also black immigrants from Africa and the African diaspora. They also exceed those of blacks in Africa (Bohannan 1960). Assuming the accuracy of the data showing such differences, such findings have led many to ask, What are the social and social structural conditions within Black America that account for its outlier status? This 37

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Roots of African American Violence

chapter marks the beginning of our search for a theory designed to provide an answer to that question. We begin to describe here the conceptual framework for our theory of ethnocentrism and violence. Our review of the criminological and related social science literature in the two preceding chapters highlighted many deficiencies in theory and method within the study of ethnic and racial disparities in crime and violence. It also revealed findings and perspectives that may be of considerable value for helping guide and inform future theorizing. We noted that extant accountings of crime causation within the social sciences must not be dismissed entirely as instruments for improving our understanding of the causes of ethnic and racial differences in crime and violence. It is possible that they may simply require targeted amendment and redirection to make them capable of accounting for group disparities. Toward that end, in this chapter, we explore the utility of a body of research that many believe comes closest to offering the starting point for the kind of full-fledged explanation of the interconnectedness of ethnicity, race, and crime that we now advocate. It is a corpus of theorizing and quantitative analysis associated with the concept of social disorganization, a now well-known and widely referenced construct within the social sciences. As we will show, many of its principal tenets are not at all inconsistent with our views regarding the ways in which ethnocentrism configures intergroup relations in the United States. Those congruences allow us to use it as a conceptual anchor for our discussion in this chapter and those that follow.

The Concept of Social Disorganization In 1942, Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay published their now classic ecological study of juvenile delinquency in Chicago, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. It initiated what is now a more than seventy-year-old research paradigm aimed at explaining the causes and spatial patterning of crime and delinquency in urban America.1 It built upon the wide-ranging social studies being done within the Chicago School of sociology. Shaw and McKay’s focus on crime and delinquency extended that school’s efforts to assess the impact of urbanization on human social organization. Their work, which began with an equally important contribution on the same topic in 1929, was neglected by sociologists and criminologists for several decades, only to be rediscovered during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then it has become one of

Toward a Theory of African American Violence

39

the principal conceptual frames used to study spatial and group differences in the distribution of juvenile and criminal offending. Figure 3.1 is a rendering by Sampson and Groves (1989) of the model of social disorganization described by Shaw and McKay. Sampson and Groves used verbal accountings to depict the original authors’ conception of the hypothesized linkages among social structural conditions (Box 1), social disorganization (Box 2), and varying rates of crime and delinquency (Box 3). An integral component of the model not depicted in Figure 3.1 is Shaw and McKay’s nesting of the social dynamics it describes within what they and others in the Chicago School labeled an urban zone of transition. This classic, two-pronged ecologically grounded conceptual frame forms the template for our theory, but not without some amendment. Our criticisms of the original social disorganization concept and the literature it has spawned center on two concerns. First, while most of the explanatory variables identified in the model have been examined by researchers aiming to operationalize and test it, the role of ethnic heterogeneity has been downplayed or often ignored, especially during the last two decades. We think that omission has diminished the ability of the model to account for the kinds of group effects we deem important for explaining high rates of crime in Black America. Second, we believe that the model, like many others used within the study of race and crime, could benefit from the inclusion of variables that allow for an assessment of the role of racism in the etiology of crime and violence—and societal responses to it. As originally conceived, it lacks an accounting of the effects of conflictive race relations, race-linked social inequality, and institutional racism on the genesis of crime and violence within the urban environment.

Figure 3.1 The Shaw and McKay Model of Social Disorganization

Low economic status Ethnic heterogeneity Residential mobility Family disruption Urbanization

Sparse local friendship networks Unsupervised teenager peer groups Low organizational participation

Source: Sampson and Groves (1989, 783).

Crime and delinquency

40

Roots of African American Violence

Unlike W. E. B. DuBois’s (1899) much earlier ecologically grounded study of crime and other social conditions in Philadelphia, much of the work of the Chicago School pays scant attention to documenting the effects of the nation’s legacy of racism on that city’s growth and development. And, while the study of intergroup relations was an integral part of the Chicago School’s work, national identity—as opposed to race—was given the greatest analytic and conceptual scrutiny. Even given such consideration, we think that the role of ethnic diversity in the production of varying levels of crime, though included in the causal model, has been only partially explored by later analysts. We will show, however, that Shaw and McKay’s conceptualization of those cultural/social identities as they relate to crime may offer insight into the ways that cultural divides within Black America may help account for its higher than average rates of homicide and other violence. Social Disorganization, the Zone of Transition, and Ethnic and Racial Disparities Having noted areas of concern, we now offer reasons why the concept of social disorganization nonetheless informs and guides our work. To start, much of the extant literature on ethnicity, race, and crime has relied on the model as an explanatory construct. Either knowingly or unwittingly, post-1942 researchers have tended to employ many of the explanatory variables first outlined within the classic model of social disorganization. They range from those conducting the quantitatively grounded developmental studies we described earlier to more qualitative and theory-driven studies of subcultures, gangs, peer groups, and so on. And, as we have noted, studies of neighborhoods and crime almost invariably incorporate aspects of the model. Its widespread use makes it an ideal candidate for our exercise in theory modification and extension. The attractiveness of the model also stems from its ecological moorings. Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess (1967 [1925]), the founders of the Chicago School, depicted the city’s urban landscape as spatially arranged in a pattern of concentric circles. In their attempt to link population flows to crime and delinquency, Shaw and McKay used the work of their colleagues to describe the crime-related significance of a spatially distinct community setting within Chicago near the city’s core. This area was dubbed the zone of transition in recognition of its ties to urban residential mobility and demographic flows associated with immigration and internal migration. As a low-rent district within the urban core, the zone initially attracted the incoming waves of immi-

Toward a Theory of African American Violence

41

grants from Europe. Later it would be home to black migrants from the South and Mexicans from the Southwest. As their economic condition improved and familiarity with the city increased, these new arrivals took up residency in the rings inhabited by earlier arriving working poor and middle classes. Shaw et al. (1929) and Shaw and McKay (1942) noted that when living within this transitional zone, the children of immigrants and migrants displayed elevated levels of involvement in acts of delinquency. They also observed that once these same populations found their way out of the zone to the outer ring communities, their rates of delinquent conduct declined. Their task became one of explaining the high rates among populations inhabiting the transitional zone and providing reasons for the observed decline in such rates following a change in their spatial location. They observed that the tendency toward declining rates once out of the zone did not vary by the nation of birth or the resident’s race, so they also discounted these group-level attributes as factors that produced the much higher rates observed within the transitional zones. Shaw and McKay concluded that, in comparison to areas farther out within the urban pattern of concentric circles, the zone of transition was characterized by higher rates of social disorganization. Sampson and Wilson (1995) relied on this observation by Shaw and McKay as the basis for their “race-invariance” thesis.

Deconstructing and Refining the Concept of Social Disorganization The theory for which we prepare the reader in this chapter builds upon and amends the classic social disorganization model/theory just described. Given the emphasis we place on the role of cultural diversity and ethnocentrism among black Americans, our theory incorporates Shaw and McKay’s notion of ethnic heterogeneity, but in ways that diverge somewhat from that original conceptualization. Before attempting to show why that causal factor may be of critical importance for our modified version of the model, we will briefly explore the presumed meanings and causal significance of the variables within the model, and the results of efforts aimed at testing its validity. Sampson and Groves (1989, 775) observed that since its inception, the intellectual debate surrounding the social disorganization model and its embedded theorizing had involved the question of how to “verify and refine social-disorganization” and to do so in ways that “go beyond

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Roots of African American Violence

the steps already taken by Shaw and McKay.” Although the original model clearly has both ecological and individual-level components, Sampson and Groves note that most of the earlier attempts to explore the social dynamics that may explain community-level differences in crime used aggregates, usually cities or metropolitan areas, as units of analysis. They further observed that most relied on indicators of socioeconomic status as the primary explanatory variables. They said that little attention had been paid to the “variables that intervene between community structure and delinquency” (Sampson and Groves 1989, 775).2 Their 1989 work began the needed effort to clarify and specify its embedded theory, and is one of the very first attempts to operationalize and test it. They found support for the theory using data from Great Britain, and subsequent studies within the United States by Sampson and many others have reported similar findings (Kposowa, Breault, and Harrison 1995; Land, McCall, and Cohen 1990; Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997). Despite this promising start, there remains a lack of consensus regarding what elements of community structure are most pivotal. For example, as noted, little has been done to specify the role of ethnic heterogeneity. Past empirical research has lent support to Shaw and McKay’s belief that ethnic heterogeneity is among the factors that contributed to elevated rates of crime and violence within the zone of transition. But, there has been only limited follow-up aimed at exploring those linkages. That is, a canvass of the post–Shaw and McKay literature also reveals a surprising inattentiveness to that concept and its role in the etiology of spatial and group differences in rates of crime. The concept of ethnic heterogeneity remains firmly within the lexicon of crime and violence studies. However, during the decades since the publication of Sampson and Groves’s pathbreaking work, researchers have paid considerably less attention to identifying its impact on crime and violence than they have the many other variables contained in the Shaw and McKay model. The Concept of Heterogeneity and Race Did that pattern of inattentiveness to the role of cultural heterogeneity begin with Shaw and McKay? We believe so. There is evidence that although they include it among the causal factors within their model, they may have understated the significance of ethnic and cultural diversity in the production of crime. We contend that this tendency toward underemphasis may reflect their response to the race relations–linked

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43

changes over time in the urban environment that they studied. They and others within the Chicago School observed during their working careers an urban area that underwent substantial change not only in terms of the mix of ethnic diversity within it but also its racial composition. Even in the relatively brief period between the end of World War I and the conclusion of World War II, urban America experienced profound demographic change. We believe that those changes greatly affected their level of attentiveness to what is a critical structural variable within their model. For example, Park and Burgess’s (1967 [1925]) work also depicted patterns of urban social organization and demographic diversity that were clearly time-stamped, with the first work appearing shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Over time, they witnessed an urban landscape that came to reflect a wide range of diversity along the lines of nationality and country of origin. White immigrants from Ireland, and northwest Europe, but also increasingly from countries in southern and eastern Europe, were the primary inhabitants of the zone of transition at the very start of the writings of the Chicago School. By the time that Shaw and McKay collected data for their pre–World War II analysis and modeling, heterogeneity took on a new meaning as substantial numbers of migrants and immigrants of color, namely, African Americans and Mexicans, began to arrive in the city in large numbers. Thus, for Shaw and McKay, the demographic indices and meanings of group heterogeneity varied considerably over the course of their datagathering and model-building effort (i.e., the mid-1920s to mid-1940s). Its meaning was likely adjusted to take into account new arrivals of color whose urban living experiences the researchers sought to incorporate into a model of social disorganization that when conceived may have been more attentive to the urban experiences of white ethnics. Their writings suggest that they were keenly aware of the changing cityscape and the ways in which the entry of people of color affected the urban spatial arrangements the School was known for describing. Given the fact that they wrote after Chicago’s racial rioting of 1919, they were likely quite cognizant of the urban ecological and demographic changes described by Gotham (2002). Gotham and many others have described a modified invasion-and-succession model whereby increases in internal migration brought with it growing racial segregation. They note that this drift toward segregation led to few urban neighborhoods that were truly heterogeneous along the lines of race and ethnicity (i.e., nationality). Did those changes affect Shaw and McKay’s views of the effect of ethnic heterogeneity on crime?

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Roots of African American Violence

We believe that with those demographic and residential shifts may have come a rethinking of some aspects of their explanatory model. This rethinking appears to have included a de-emphasis on the role played by intergroup cultural differences and ethnic heterogeneity as the zone of transition underwent a major change in the color and place of origin of its inhabitants. There were also ideological pressures at work. Living during a time when American cultural diversity was both praised and also seen as an impediment to a unified American identity, Shaw and McKay’s position regarding the criminogenic effects of ethnic heterogeneity may have come to be problematic in their eyes. Their work and that of subsequent users of the social disorganization model appear to have fallen victim to the kind of ethnicity-focused political correctness we describe in the chapter that follows. Their thoughts about ethnic heterogeneity may have come to reflect an ideological current that encourages a discounting of the various ways white Americans differ from each other regarding their cultural leanings and social values. Instead, markers of cultural difference would increasingly come to be associated with race rather than ethnicity. That analytic shift has had profound implications for the ways that racial disparities in crime and violence are perceived by those who attempt to explain them. It is also possible that as time passed, Shaw and McKay foresaw some of the criticisms of the work of the Chicago School, including its failure to account for the effects of racism. For example, despite the utility of the concept of zones of transition for describing the structure of urban areas (Downey and Smith 2011), over the years, it has attracted many critics. They have questioned its applicability to urban areas beyond Chicago. Despite his long-standing admiration of the work of Shaw and McKay, Sampson (2012) decried the School’s depiction of cities as “organic” entities. He noted that city growth and development are not strictly “natural” phenomena comparable to habitat zones in an ecosystem but instead are products of politics and national and global economic trends (see Bursik 1988; Massey and Denton 1993; Wilson 2012). These observations are, of course, pivotal for appreciating the effects of racism on urban social organization both during the past and today. Heterogeneity Rediscovered Despite a potentially growing inattentiveness to ethnic heterogeneity on the part of Shaw and McKay and later adherents to their model, events during the 1970s would seem to suggest a reversal of sorts. During that

Toward a Theory of African American Violence

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period, the role of ethnic diversity in the production of crime gained traction in both public discourse and some criminological circles. Propelled by the law and order sentiments that arose after the urban unrest and riots of the mid- to late-1960s, the rise in rates of criminal involvement among blacks in urban areas caused alarm and led to much media coverage and public discussion of intergroup conflict and criminal victimization. Crime analysts began to revisit the question of the role played by ethnic heterogeneity as a cause of crime, but given the highly contentious racial politics of the era, they often did so in ways that sometimes contributed to US fixation on crime among African Americans. The study of crime and violence in the United States and public perceptions of it became a story told in black and white as the concept of ethnic heterogeneity also began to be defined and measured largely as a white versus nonwhite dichotomy. And typically the nonwhite population of interest was African Americans. This contentious discourse was usually not theory driven, but the notion of group heterogeneity was a subtext in both public and scholarly discourse. In criminology and its periphery, what emerged was a line of quantitative research that purported to examine not only the high rates of black offending but specifically black-on-white offending. The types of offenses for which it was argued that whites were disproportionately targeted for victimization by blacks ran the gamut from minor and major property crimes to interpersonal violence such as rape, armed robbery, and homicide (LaFree 1982; Sampson 1984). By the late 1980s, in arguing that the US criminal justice system of that period was not racist, Wilbanks (1987) used his book to provide data designed to show that whites were disproportionately the targets of black crime. As a result, we use the following schema to summarize views of heterogeneity, race, and crime in the post-1970 era’s public and political discourse, media accounts, and some scholarly research: Racial Heterogeneity + Poverty + Subculture = Elevated Rates of Black Offending = High Rates of White Victimization It may be argued that Sampson, an avid student of Shaw and McKay, sought to diffuse these increasingly racialized and racist takes on the notion of neighborhood diversity, crime, and black-on-white crime through the use of both theory and data. He did so by assembling data designed to test Blau’s (1977) innovative theory of inequality and heterogeneity. Blau had attempted to counter the political and public

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Roots of African American Violence

discourse of the period when he noted that given the large size of the nation’s white population compared to blacks, demographic disproportionality explains much of the overrepresentation of whites among victims of black offending. Blau discounted explanations that seem to rely on racial animus, revenge, or cultural disorder to account for the patterns of interracial crime observed in national crime data. But Sampson, like Blau before him, did find that neighborhood heterogeneity is a good predictor of interracial victimization. In describing Blau’s theorem, Sampson (1984, 619; emphasis ours) observes, In Inequality and Heterogeneity Blau presents a macrosociological theory that focuses on the effects of social structure on people’s associations with other people. In Blau’s framework the integration of various groups in society rests on the intergroup bonds established in direct association between persons belonging to different groups. Social associations are important, then, because according to Blau the integration of social structure depends on face-to-face contact and interaction, not on functional interdependence or value consensus. In contrast to cultural and psychological interpretations, Blau’s theory is grounded in a quantitative conception of social structure.

Having noted the importance of social structural considerations for our understanding of social heterogeneity, Sampson (1984, 620, citing Blau; emphasis in original) moves on to describe the meanings Blau and his associates attributed to the concept: Heterogeneity is operationally defined as the probability that two randomly chosen persons do not belong to the same group. In terms of a dichotomy, heterogeneity is maximized when each group represents 50 percent of the population. Since social associations depend on opportunities for contact, the greater the heterogeneity the greater the chances that fortuitous social contacts involve members of different groups. Thus, a central theorem is that increasing heterogeneity increases the probability of intergroup relations. As Blau et al. note, the heterogeneity theorem is of most interest when ingroup relations predominate and heterogeneity acts as a counterforce that mitigates prevailing ingroup tendencies. Although Blau is concerned with the macrosocial integration of various groups into society he also explores conflict. Indeed, conflict is simply one form of social interaction, and it is often kindled by the association of people in distant social positions. The same structural conditions that make cordial intergroup relations more likely also make interpersonal conflict between members of different groups more likely. Blau explains this seemingly paradoxical situation: “For conditions that increase the probability of social contact increase the likelihood of

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overt interpersonal contact as well as that of harmonious social associations, since both depend on opportunities for social contact. Strangely, therefore, the very conditions that foster the social integration of various groups and strata into a coherent social structure simultaneously precipitate frequent interpersonal conflicts among members.”

Sampson (1984) and O’Brien (1987) point out that blacks have a much higher probability of interaction with whites than vice versa, which would explain the relatively higher proportion of black-on-white offenses as compared to the number of white-on-black offenses. Nearly two decades later Wadsworth and Kubrin (2004) explored these same questions regarding the nature of interracial criminal offending and reached similar conclusions. As such, their findings served to counter many of the conclusions reached by many of their contemporaries. Now past its heyday, the narrative we have described regarding racial diversity and white criminal victimization has nonetheless remained popular and is a mainstay of US public perceptions and politics. Indeed, Donald Trump’s use in 2016 of discredited crime statistics purporting to show that most white homicide victimization is at the hands of black offenders reveals the continuing impact of this decades-long rhetoric on the psyche of the American public. Though distorted by politics, fear, and racism, the post-1960s group heterogeneity narrative we described raised important questions regarding the potential linkages among ethnicity, race, intergroup conflict, and crimes of violence. Within academia, this popular discourse has been disavowed but has had a subtle influence on much of the speculation and attempts at theorizing regarding the causes of enduring rates of violence found among African Americans. When group heterogeneity has been brought into discussions of homicide levels, that diversity has been defined along the lines of race as opposed to ethnicity. Crime among Latinos in the United States is said to provide an example of ethnic variation in the nation’s crime statistics. More often than not, however, their crime has come to be seen as racially separate and apart from non-Hispanic whites. That is, most contemporary social science research embodies an unquestioning and decidedly racialized stance in response to Blau’s notion of persons belonging to different groups. Further, as we observed in preceding chapters, race is most often used as much more than a phenotype marker. It is used as a proxy for perceived, even if unverified, cultural differences across social groups.

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Our proposed refinements to the original Shaw and McKay model mark an attempt to bring both ethnicity and culture back into discussions of the causes and correlates of crime and violence. We do so via a theory that highlights the etiological significance for the study of homicide of largely ignored and discounted cultural diversity among both “blacks” and “whites.” And, in doing so, we seek to lend support to the etiological significance for the study of crime and violence that has been attributed to the concept of ethnic heterogeneity in the work of Blau and the original model of social disorganization. Like them, we stress the importance of ecological contexts and social structures, but with an eye toward an examination of the effects of the nation’s legacy of systemic racism.

Heterogeneity and Violent Urban Crime in Historical Perspective By way of conclusion, we now examine historical data gathered by researchers studying homicide in two major US cities. Their findings assist our effort to deracialize perceptions that result in overly simplistic notions regarding demographic heterogeneity and homicide. Both studies offer insight into patterns of lethal violence in a much earlier time frame than that covered by the work of Shaw and McKay. As such they provide a much needed long-term perspective regarding the potential role of ethnic heterogeneity in the production of varying rates of crime and violence. We begin with Eric Monkkonen’s (1989, 1995) comparative account of the ethnic and racial patterning of homicide offending and victimization in New York City during the nineteenth century. We then present data from Leigh Bienen et al.’s (2012) analysis of Chicago homicide trends between 1870 and 1930. We believe that both studies offer some support for our assertions outlined in the next chapter regarding the role of what we have labeled affinitive ethnocentrism and conflictive ethnocentrism in the production of patterns of homicide offending and victimization. They also comport with Blau’s views regarding the nature of intergroup relations arising under conditions of ethnic heterogeneity. Monkkonen’s (1995) study of racial and national identity differences in rates of homicide in New York City between 1800 and 1874 illustrates the interracial, intraracial, and interethnic dimensions of acts of homicide within the city before the Civil War and shortly after that. Lacking official sources of data, he relied on newspapers, which during

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the period under study reported rather reliably those homicides that occurred. Table 3.1 summarizes his findings on race and homicide deduced from those sources for the period and is limited to a blackwhite comparison. The data clearly show that during the seven decades under study, African Americans were as likely to kill whites as they were fellow blacks, a finding that at face value appears to support the claims made by proponents of the racial animus and homicide thesis we earlier described. On the other hand, nearly half the black victims of homicide (46 percent) were killed by whites. It is also noteworthy that only 4 percent of the homicides (54 of 1,482) recorded from 1800 to 1874 were committed by African Americans. Seeking to provide an explanation for this pattern of cross-race offending, Monkkonen noted the ongoing and well-documented intergroup conflicts between African Americans and white immigrants to the city. He suggested that as a function of their skin color, black urban residents often became the target of racially motivated attacks at the hands of white natives and immigrants. The elevated levels of what are often one-on-one and black-on-white acts of homicide were a response to such largely “collective” and group-centered conflicts. Thus, in addition to the population size imbalances that Blau noted, Monkkonen suggests that these more broad-based intergroup conflicts also helped configure levels of black-on-white offending. He also speculates that more broadly based conflicts also helped drive rates of interethnic homicide among whites. Consistent with the existence of a zone or zones3 of transition within the city and the findings of Shaw and McKay, higher levels of both interracial and interethnic homicides within the city would be an expected outcome. These homicide patterns reflected the group heterogeneity, which, by definition, the zones encompassed. Such findings challenge both the 1970s hysteria regarding black-on-white criminal offending and widely noted findings regarding the largely intraracial

Table 3.1 Race and Number of Homicide Victims and Offenders, New York City, 1800–1874 Killers’ Race Victims’ Race White Black Total

White

Black

Total

1,405 (98%) 23 (2%) 1,428 (100%)

27 (50%) 27 (50%) 54 (100%)

1,432 (97%) 50 (3%) 1,482 (100%)

Source: Monkkonen (1995, 106, table 5.1). Percentages computed by the authors.

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character of homicide in the United States. New York City’s zones of transition during that period and beyond attracted not only diverse groups of European immigrants but also increasing numbers of black internal migrants from the South. Further, interracial homicides involving blacks also likely reflect lesser racial residential segregation in a New York City that was not yet in the firm grip of American Apartheid. Monkkonen’s (1995) research also highlights the fact that although disproportionately high rates of murder offending and victimization involving African Americans were found during the past, the size of the racial gap has widened over the years. The racial differences in homicide that seem eternal truths to some modern observers are simply not found in earlier times. We also consulted data acquired from the Chicago Police Department compiled by Northwestern University law professor Leigh Bienen et al. (2012). That study covers six decades of homicides in the city of Chicago. These data represent homicide that occurred during a much later time frame than that studied by Monkkonen. They reveal race-ofoffender and race-of-victim patterns that differ somewhat from those reported by Monkkonen. Table 3.2 shows that in the city of Chicago between 1870 and 1930 killings were largely intraracial, with 95 percent of white victims having been killed by white offenders and more than half (53 percent) of the African American victims killed by persons of the same race. Thus, one notable departure from the homicide patterns found by Monkkonen is the pattern of interracial violence. Monkkonen observed that blacks killed just as many whites in New York during the period portrayed in the table as they did blacks. At the same time, half of the black victims of homicide in New York were killed by whites. This pattern is even more evident in Chicago, where there were many more African Americans victimized by whites than

Table 3.2 Race and Number of Homicide Victims and Offenders, Chicago, 1870–1930 Killers’ Race Victims’ Race White Black Asian Other Total

White

Black

Asian

Other

Total

6,295 (95%) 833 (46%) 12 24 7,164

275 (4%) 963 (53%) 4 6 1,248

9 6 24 (56%) 0 39

59 10 3 85 (74%) 157

6,638 1812 43 115 8,608

Source: Bienen et al. (2012). Emphasis added.

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whites victimized by blacks. Only 4 percent of white victims were killed by blacks compared to nearly half (46 percent) of all black homicide victims who were killed at the hands of whites. To illustrate further the ethnic dimensions of the city’s homicides, Monkkonen was able to extract from the larger database a smaller subset of cases for which newspapers described not only the race but also the ethnicity of actors involved in homicides or provided identifiers such as surnames that could be used to surmise their identities. Table 3.3 summarizes those findings taken from his study. In the table and text, the author highlighted the intra-ethnic nature of most offendervictim pairings and the fact that, as in most homicides, victims and offenders had opportunities for interpersonal contact. As Monkkonen notes, “In this context, African-Americans were no different from other sociocultural groups” (1995, 107). While ethnic/racial propinquity clearly accounts for much of the within-group offending Monkkonen documents, we believe that some portion of the observed intrarace violence may also stem from within-group ethnic divides and conflicts. We will argue that nationality labels, especially within the United States, often conceal a wide range of unexamined cultural diversity. Hence, much of what was labeled by the author as within-nationality offending may nevertheless be interethnic. Breakdowns by national identity were also available in the Chicago homicide data compiled by Bienen et al. (2012). They showed that lethal hostility was overwhelmingly directed at persons within the same national grouping, but the levels of homicide varied across groups. The category of “other Europeans” displayed the highest rates of offending (39 percent of all offenders), the highest percentage of victimizations (37 percent of all victims), and the highest

Table 3.3 Ethnicity and Number of Homicide Victims and Offenders, New York City, 1800–1874 Victims’ National Identity

Black

US White

Irish

German

Italian

Other

Total

Black US white Irish German Italian Other Total

27 6 7 1 0 3 44

2 8 6 3 0 4 23

1 7 95 3 1 7 114

1 3 18 39 0 9 70

1 3 7 0 9 1 21

0 1 3 0 0 6 10

32 28 136 46 10 30 282

Killers’ National Identity

Source: Monkkonen (1995, 106, table 5.2). Emphasis in the original.

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percentage of intraracial violence: 73 percent of “other” European victims were killed by those who shared their heritage. As Table 3.4 demonstrates, for nearly each ethnic group, there were more victims killed at the hands of those who shared their nationality than were killed by those of a different nationality. The exception to this intraethnic homicide pattern was observed for German and Irish victims. Although one-quarter of all German victims were killed by other Germans, they were slightly more likely to be killed by other Europeans (28 percent). The same is observed for Irish victims. Slightly more Irish were killed at the hands of other unnamed Europeans (37 percent) than were killed by other Irish people (32 percent).

Conclusion We believe that the historically grounded and astute insights of Monkkonen and Bienen et al. are of critical importance. They add empirical substance to the assertions that form the essence of our theory. They lend support to Peter Blau’s theorem, which proposes that some intergroup interactions that occur within the context of heterogeneous and economically unequal social contexts often take the form of “overt interpersonal conflict that entails contact (e.g., robbery, assault)” (Blau, as cited in Sampson 1984, 620). Although Blau later leaned toward discounting the effects of heterogeneity for explaining homicide (Blau and Blau 1982), we are not inclined to do so. We agree with Blau and Blau’s efforts to highlight the effects of economic inequality on the patterning and distribution of homicide in the United States. Indeed, the hypothesized effects of that inequality, especially when impacted by the effects of racism, form the etiological core of our theory. In that respect, we are in full agreement with the conclusions reached by Blau (1977) and Blau and Blau (1982). On the other hand, we believe that the historical perspectives derived from data for New York and Chicago suggest the need for the continuation of efforts to further operationalize and reinterpret Shaw and McKay’s theory of social disorganization, including better specification and measurement of ethnic heterogeneity. Our attempt at theory-making reflects our belief that to be more useful for the study of race and crime, both Shaw and McKay’s model of social disorganization and later modifications of it require further change. A vital part of such refinement must involve first the insertion of race into what has largely been a race invariant theory of the etiol-

Table 3.4 National Identity and Number of Homicide Victims and Offenders, Chicago, 1870–1930 Killers’ National Identity Victims’ National Identity

Black

German

Greek

Irish

Black 963 (56%) 13 2 55 German 11 59 (25%) 6 12 Greek 4 2 36 (32%) 6 Irish 16 4 3 98 (32%) Italian 11 4 6 11 Latino 3 0 0 7 Polish 5 14 1 8 Other Eastern Europe 18 18 15 18 Other Europe 137 43 19 120 English Anglo 66 39 13 53 Other 12 7 1 7 Total 1,246 (16%) 203 102 395 Source: Bienen et al. (2012). Emphasis added.

Italian

Latino

Polish

24 10 6 11 3 8 9 1 6 14 0 1 329 (68%) 9 7 4 65 (62%) 0 11 5 115 (44%) 18 100 46 4 570

1 20 11 1 126

17 41 36 4 241

Other Eastern Europe

Other Europe

English Anglo

Other

Total

23 17 11 11 11 4 26

332 (19%) 65 (28%) 21 (18%) 113 (37%) 61 16 39 (15%)

292 (17%) 35 (15%) 14 39 31 5 29

10 7 3 2 3 0 9

1,730 (22%) 234 113 301 483 104 262

164 (38%) 97 (23%) 46 14 105 2,125 (73%) 147 36 49 142 (13%) 599 (56%) 22 5 19 26 54 (39%) 426 3,030 (39%) 1,263 (16%) 160

426 2,893 (37%) 1,076 (14%) 140 7,762

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ogy of crime and violence. Our reading of that pioneering work reveals text that suggests while Shaw and McKay may have leaned toward views of race invariance, they were fully cognizant of the effects that race and the nation’s racial-spatial divide have on a person’s life chances and on creating the conditions that promote criminal involvement. They observed, The important fact about rates of delinquency for Negro boys is that they, too, vary by type of area. They are higher than the rates for white boys, but it cannot be said that they are higher than rates for white boys in comparable areas, since it is impossible to reproduce in white communities the circumstances under which Negro children live. Even if it were possible to parallel the low economic status and inadequacy of institutions in the white community, it would not be possible to reproduce the effect of segregation and the barriers to upward mobility. (1942, 614)

This astute observation on the part of Shaw and McKay has been ignored by many. For others, it has become the conceptual lynchpin for their study of racial differences in rates of crime across urban neighborhoods. However, unlike the theory we advance, extant work in this arena does not entertain the possibility that crime-prone black communities differ from their white counterparts not only in the depth and concentration of economic disadvantage but also regarding their concentrated ethnic heterogeneity and the within-race conflicts to which it gives rise. Our theorizing is an effort to deconstruct further the social disorganization model in ways that might make it more capable of explaining the high rates of criminal violence found among African Americans both today and in the past. We use the concept of social disorganization as a template to describe a heretofore largely ignored aspect of intergroup heterogeneity and conflict. We aim to show the significance of the largely unacknowledged cultural diversity and associated interpersonal and intergroup conflict among persons of African ancestry in the United States.4

Notes 1. This research paradigm, social disorganization, will be variously referred to as a model, construct, concept, notion, or theory. Regardless of descriptor, we consider it to have the qualities of the kind of theory-making effort we also undertake.

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2. The model may also require refinements that extend the intervening variables in the model to include factors that may affect young adults who are exposed to the ecological forces the model describes. Shaw and McKay’s focus on delinquency as opposed to criminality is evident in the factors identified in Box 2 of Figure 3.1. The model presumes, therefore, a developmental or life course perspective of the kind that many social scientists seek to use in explaining the resort to crime. But, as we have noted, those longitudinal views of the social disorganization process do not necessarily lead to coherent explanations of enduring ethnic and racial differences. 3. Unlike the concentric zone model of urban structure described by Park and Burgess (1967 [1925]), many other models of city structure do not require that there be a single zone of transition that appears as a concentric ring around the central business district. 4. See Lane (1986) for a similar exploration of violence in Philadelphia during this period. He advances a theory of criminal subcultures as the “roots” of violence among African Americans in that city.

4 Science, Ideology, and the Study of Ethnocentrism

America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the races are melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won’t be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you’ve come to—these are the fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians—into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American. —Israel Zangwell, The Melting Pot America has been settled by “the people of all nations,” Herman Melville observed over a century ago, “all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a drop of American blood, without spilling the blood of the whole world.” Americans are not “a narrow tribe”; they are not a nation, “so much as a world.” In this new society, Melville optimistically declared, the “prejudices of national dislikes” could be forever extinguish[ed]. —Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America

O

ur discussion of Shaw and McKay’s model of social disorganization in the preceding chapter revealed that ethnic heterogeneity is a pivotal, but sometimes ignored, conceptualization within it. We also suggested that Blau’s (1977) important contribution to the defining of that concept, and Sampson’s (1984) interpretive follow-up to it, offer tantalizing clues regarding the ways that ethnic heterogeneity affects the patterning and distribution of homicide. Given the seeming promise that 57

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the theory/model of social disorganization offers for the study of the racial disparities we have documented so far, we now ask why that promise appears to be far from realized for the study of crime and violence in Black America. Why has ethnic heterogeneity not become a conceptual pillar in the much-needed theorizing designed to explain perennially high rates of homicide and other violence in African American neighborhoods? In those instances when criminologists have chosen to explore explanations for that violence that are not necessarily race invariant, why do traditional notions of a subculture of violence invariably come to the fore as the preferred theoretical construct of choice? Why have public and scholarly discussions of the nation’s enormous demographic diversity and its ties to crime and violence reflected a drift toward the documentation of black-on-white offending? Probing those questions requires that we return in this chapter to our chosen sociology of knowledge analytic frame.

Epistemological Contexts: Peering Beyond the Color Line, and Back Again The amended social disorganization model that we later develop runs counter to dominant tendencies within the study of both race and crime in the United States. Typically, within-race cultural differences of the kind we describe have been largely discounted by those who examine the social lives of African Americans.1 The inattentiveness to, or denial of, within-race ethnic and cultural divides among both African Americans and whites is tied to several dominant ideological paradigmatic narratives found within US society. Those ideologies have greatly influenced the kinds of questions asked, and the answers offered regarding the potential causes of race differences in crime and violence. The first of these ideological currents derives from perceptions of the role of race as a master status within the context of past and contemporary US society. This perception is justified by social facts, yet overstating its relevance may at times lead to ignoring the multiple layers of social identities that intersect and interact with race. The second ideological current is comprised of four enduring and popular narratives found within US public/political/academic discourse regarding modernity, urbanization, nationhood, and African American cultural heritage. Although the discussion that follows represents a detour of sorts, it is one that is critical for the making of the theory we advance.

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In 1903, the pioneering American sociologist W. E. B. DuBois said, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line” (19). The color-coded de jure policies and rules that defined group statuses and privileges and governed intergroup interactions in the United States during the first half of the last century meant that his observations were in keeping with the facts on the ground during that era and far beyond. Race as defined largely by skin tone, was at the time that he wrote a truly master social status within US society. More than four decades after DuBois’s work, Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944) also highlighted the centrality of race. And more than a century past the end of slavery and following the civil unrest of the mid-1960s, the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968) would serve as a reminder once again of the nation’s racial divide. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, racial identity remains a salient marker of social status and a determiner of one’s life chances. These assessments of the effects of racial identity and racism on American life and social institutions have over time led to much public and scholarly discourse. Some of that discourse lends support to the key propositions that constitute our theory, but other parts of it clearly do not. On the one hand, views regarding the centrality of race clearly lend support to the emphasis we later place on the role that systemic racism has played in the social organization and disorganization of Black America. These include the effect on black Americans of residential separatism and restrictions on geographic mobility. On the other hand, the tendency to focus on race as the primary marker of group identities has led to an underemphasis on the kinds of within-race cultural distinctions that our theory highlights. The stubborn persistence of institutional racism and personal prejudice has meant that ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, cultural affinities, religion, and so forth have come to be perceived as far less important determinants of one’s life chances and group identity than race. In some instances, these nonrace markers of group identity are considered to be of no social or scholarly research significance at all. At the same time, neither DuBois, Myrdal, nor others who have probed and highlighted our society’s fixation on skin color and race differences have been unmindful of the social significance of ethnicity, nationality, culture, and social class. While stressing the importance of race, DuBois was aware that both within the American context and globally such within-race group differences had been the sources of considerable conflict and political violence. He pointed to important social divides found in urban Black America, some of which lend cre-

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dence to our theory. In The Philadelphia Negro, he noted the importance of place-of-origin differences among that city’s black residents, and he specifically linked those differences to varying levels of criminal involvement (1899, 253). Following his lead, we contend that to improve our understanding of group differences in rates of crime and violence, crime analysts must more fully assess the ways the master status of race continues to define American society. But, we must also examine the importance of cultural divides within Black America—and also White America. To stress their importance is not to deny the existence of the nation’s abiding color line or the significance of economic inequalities. Rather, we must direct our analytic lenses beyond race to examine other potential group-level social attributes that also guide human intergroup interactions and potentially impact cycles and patterns of criminal violence. As we will later show, what have largely been labeled as ethnic divides are part and parcel of the set of causal forces that interact with race to create demographic and spatial differences in levels of violence. Beyond the work of DuBois and the analysts of social disorganization, several other important sociological and criminological works help frame the conceptualizations found within our theory. These include the prescient early twentieth-century observations regarding ethnicity, culture, crime, and society that have long been associated with the work of Thorsten Sellin (1928, 1938). We also rely upon often overlooked theoretical works by Hubert Blalock (1967) and Ruth Kornhauser (1978). Because of our focus on migratory patterns within urban Black America, which we believe are linked to intrarace cultural differences and crime, we also consulted the informative work of St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton. Their classic study of urban Chicago (1945) helped toward our efforts to infuse race into Shaw and McKay’s Chicagoderived model of social disorganization. Our efforts to describe the conceptual roots of ethnocentrism also mean that we aim at developing a conceptual framework that is attentive to the diverse disciplines that have contributed to the literature on the subject. We acknowledge here a preference for insights from anthropology in defining the notions of culture and ethnicity that lie at the heart of our work. We believe that a significant and lasting contribution made by anthropology has been an increasing awareness of the immense cultural variability seen in societies across the globe. Anthropologists have shown how important a given locale or area’s topography, geography, hydrology, and climate are in shaping the contours of the cultural traditions that people develop and maintain. They have also

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documented the varied ways in which people’s culture shapes their worldview (Benedict 1934, 1959; Mead 2001 [1928], [1930]). Among the other important insights gleaned from anthropology is an appreciation of the extent to which intact cultures and worldviews are robust but are also subject to substantial change over time as the conditions that produced them change.2 Anthropology’s more globally focused, nonstatic, and nonjudgmental conceptions of culture and culture difference are often largely absent in the contemporary study of group differences in behavior. Especially within the study of crime and other social problems, that worldview has been replaced by a much narrower and much more judgmental view of the nature of culture and cultural difference. When used in crime studies, this narrower view of culture, although often described as sociological in its origins, is much more restricted in its scope than earlier conceptions found within that discipline. In various ways, our theory-making exercise challenges and refutes that narrower view and instead embraces a view that is much more anthropological in tone. 3 Before describing the ways in which these assorted literatures have come together to help frame our theory, we must continue our foray into the realms of the sociology of knowledge by examining the role of ideology in creating the data-rich but theory-poor paradox seen in the study of race and crime.

Ethnicity, Race, and Culture: Critiquing Popular Social Narratives Beyond the analytic constraints and conceptual blinders imposed by the primacy of race as a definer of group identity, we believe that four popular narratives have impacted the study of race and crime. A brief review of these narratives provides a glimpse into an assortment of ideological streams, both regressive and progressive, that have shaped not only US social science but also the nation’s politics, law, and culture. These narratives constitute a body of metatheory that set the stage for any discussion of ethnic or racial differences in rates of crime. Each has profoundly influenced the ways that both social scientists and the US public think about ethnicity, race, and crime. We contend that the widespread acceptance of these four narratives may help to explain (1) the paucity of fully developed theories within criminology, sociology, and related sciences designed to explain race and ethnic differences; (2) the content and etiological stances evident

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within extant explanations, whether implied or fully developed; and (3) the steps that must be taken to convince readers of the logic and plausibility of the theoretical frame we propose. Our discussion of their weaknesses as descriptors of US society does not mean that they are without merit, persuasiveness, and some basis in social fact. Indeed, their seeming grounding in what are perceived to be indisputable facts has led to their wide acceptance. Our goal is not to debunk such views. Rather, we seek to show the ways in which a too rigid adherence to such views as indisputable “truths” may blind us to equally compelling counterarguments, theories, and narratives. Narrative 1: Modernity and the Declining Significance of Ethnic, Racial, Religious, and Tribal Identities Sociologists have long contended that among the casualties of global modernity are those personal and group identities centered largely on traditional affinities such as kin group, ethnic group, religion, clan, and tribe. As Armer and Katsillis note in their review of modernization theory, Emile Durkheim (1893) leads the list of those long associated with this thesis and it is a major conception within Parsons’s structural functionalist depiction of social systems (Parsons 1951, 1964, as cited in Armer and Katsillis 2001). Adherents to the modernization thesis argue that localized premodern identity anchors have been replaced by attachments to broader-based social institutions such as the state or substate social groupings and entities. Our theory builds upon countervailing evidence in support of the idea that many premodern anchors of identity remain salient in both developing and developed societies around the world today. Modernization theory has been described as biased toward Western capitalist societies and has been supplanted in the social sciences by later theories (Armer and Katsillis 2001). However, the major themes and conceptualizations within it, like those found in the other narratives we outline, are to some extent hard-wired into public opinion and much sociological and criminological theory. As such, it poses a challenge to some of the arguments we make via our theory. Despite its persuasiveness and popularity, we believe that the modernity thesis is often undermined by the ethnocentric, nationalistic, and racialized linguistics displayed by adherents. Language use often reveals patterns of group identity and intergroup relations that modernity is said to diminish. This propensity is evident in the contradictory ways that groups and societies are labeled and characterized in response to perceptions of varying levels of modernity.

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For example, there is evidence that the world’s legacy of colonialism and chattel slavery greatly influences the ways that people tend to perceive the accuracy and applicability of the labels the narrative contains. When applied to the world’s nations, such labels as developed, developing, and emerging Third World, and so on carry the weight of those historical legacies (Billet 1993, cited in Armer and Katsillis 2001). Further, Western commentators and media pundits are quick to label as tribal or sectarian those affinities and group-level instances of strife and conflict observed in the many developing nations. Those labels are seldom used to describe Americans or Europeans. This difference in labeling is evident even when the patterns of conflict and strife observed in Western nations are almost identical to those observed in non-Western nations. Examples of such are the historical racial animosities and acts of violence in the American South from the ending of de jure slavery to the Civil Rights era; sectarian strife in Northern Ireland; Basque separatists in Spain; and religion- and racelinked urban riots in Paris. And, of course, here in the United States, separatist sentiments among whites that led to the lethal bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995 are never described in ways that reflect their highly divisive nature. Events such as the standoff between federal officials and Cliven Bundy supporters at his Nevada ranch in 2014 or their spillover site in Oregon during 2015 are never labeled as a reflection of white tribalism or white “ethnic” conflict. The existence of group-centered ideological divides in the United States has been evident during recent decades. When descriptive labels are attached to them, they are seldom those used to describe similar events in so-called developing areas of the world. Even in retrospect, many accounts of US history tend to downplay the existence of internecine conflicts and the social identities that give rise to them (Woodard 2011). Beyond its potential role in ignoring cultural and ethnic diversity in White America, this narrative has been used to argue for the diminution of the effects of race and race labels. For example, while acknowledging that race remains a major source of intergroup cleavage and conflict in the United States and elsewhere in the West, for many modernity proponents its significance is seen as an aberration of sorts. That is, it is often described as an instance in which the workings of modernization have not yet taken a firm hold on public perceptions. They suggest that “race” descriptors are archaic and less consequential than they were in the past and that over time racial designations too will succumb to the seductions of modernity and wither away. In the United States the quick embrace of the title and message of William Julius Wilson’s book, The

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Declining Significance of Race (1978), may attest to the eagerness of American academics and the wider public to accept the view that race has loosened its hold on US society (Hirschman 1983). So too does the recent embrace by Americans of the notion of a color-blind, post-racial society after the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008. Our work takes exception to these modernity-oriented views of US and world events by asserting the primacy of both intrarace and interrace cleavages as part and parcel of the modern social landscape. But, as we will show, the modernity narrative, although challenged by much historical and contemporary research, still configures both public opinion and scholarly discourse. Along with the narratives described below, it has led to the paucity of theories aimed at explaining racial differences in criminal involvement, as well as the etiological stances taken by those who have engaged in broader criminological theory-making. Narrative 2: The Incompatibility of Urbanization with the Maintenance of Premodern Social Identities Views regarding the destabilizing effects of urbanization on human cultural traditions have been part and parcel of the modern sociological tradition since its inception in both Europe and the United States. It is also a lynchpin of the modernity thesis described as Narrative 1. It requires special note because of the independent role it has played in the study of both crime and justice and of intergroup relations in US criminology and sociology. In the United States, the study of city life became the raison d’etre for most of the early work done by researchers who were part of sociology’s Chicago School. Robert Park and his associates described a process of assimilation within the context of urban America that they generalized to all ethnic and racial groups (Park and Burgess 1969). Although the emphasis on assimilation as a primary component of the urbanization process has diminished, those who see themselves as heirs of that research tradition continue its tradition through studies of the newest immigration flows. They continue to focus on the in-migration of diverse peoples into the city, their movements within its boundaries, and the challenges such movements pose for individual and group identities, loyalties, and social behaviors (Ellen 2000; Fasenfast, Booza, and Metzger 2004; Wen, Lauderdale, and Kandula 2009). The principal thesis within Narrative 2 is the idea that cities have been the cultural incubators that have given rise to modernity. City life is said to destroy or greatly attenuate those social bonds, identities, and

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cultural leanings that people bring with them from their nonurban locales. It was said that those dispossessed of their older cultural framework are ultimately assimilated into the dominant social and cultural structures. This narrative has extended far beyond academia. The perceived evils and perils of city life became a staple of US popular culture during the first half of the last century and still have much currency today. Within academia, the Chicago School–inspired book The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Znaniecki and Thomas 1918) has become the classic statement of the major premises contained within this narrative. It described in intricate detail the assimilation-related woes faced by often illiterate Polish peasants in adjusting to life in the more literate and technologically advanced cities they encountered in the United States. In later years, that same analytic frame would be used to describe the challenges faced by African Americans who migrated from the rural South of the United States to northern cities. Much of this work was also done by associates of the Chicago School via its African American affiliates (e.g., Johnson 1934; Drake and Cayton 1945). The prototype for the overlay of the urban assimilation narrative as applied to blacks had come two to three decades earlier from outside of the Chicago School. It was evidenced in W. E. B. DuBois’s groundbreaking 1899 study of black migrant populations living in Philadelphia.4 Regardless of whether the population of interest was Polish, Irish, or Italian immigrants or black internal migrants from the rural South, these studies have much in common. They tend to focus on the disruptions in the social lives of the transplanted populations and the perceived connections between those disruptions and the propensity to commit a crime and to experience other social ills. Similar analytic approaches were taken regarding the immigration of Mexican Americans. They were also perceived as a rural population that had resorted to crime due to failures of assimilation, even though much of that population was not located in cities (e.g., see O’Flannery 1961; Taylor 1931). We contend that this narrative may have served to place perceptual and conceptual blinders on later observers of urban life. There was a tendency to lump together immigrants of all races and nationalities into a group of culturally indistinguishable “unwashed masses” in need of significant resocialization into the ways of urban living. Although it is said that the Chicago School was hostile to the assumption that assimilation could be forced on newly arriving immigrants (Wacker 1979), much of the work that flowed from researchers within it represented

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sociological thought that dovetailed nicely with the Americanization movement of the period (Hirschman 1983). The perceptual and conceptual blinders we describe led to a tendency to downplay the retention of the distinctive cultural traits that diverse populations of European immigrants brought with them as they populated the nation’s cities (Wacker 1979). Much later research, both within the Chicago School and outside of it, would indeed document disruptions in the lives of new arrivals and many social ills among them. However, they also documented remarkable continuities in group identities within those populations (Hirschman 1983). Herbert Gans (2004) notes that while processes of economic and cultural assimilation begin very soon in the lives of immigrants, social and institutional assimilation takes much longer. In part, those forms of assimilation require the acceptance of immigrants (or their children) as Americans. Even among Europeans, this acceptance was affected by skin tone, with darker-skinned immigrants regarded to be of questionable “whiteness” (Painter 2010, 210–211). In the case of Europeans, evidence suggests that their cultural heritages were recast in various ways, but they were not destroyed completely by city life. Some have noted that the rediscovery and documentation of “ethnicity” among urban white Americans has become something of a cottage industry in academia over the last three decades (King 2005; Levi 2004; Merton 2012; Novak 1996; Steinberg 1989; Waters 1990). Other research, some of which we explore in Chapter 7, also reveals the retention of cultural distinctiveness among those legions of whites who arrived before 1776 and who lived in both cities and the US hinterland. We contend that those cultural retentions among both whites and blacks are of relevance for understanding the often much higher rates of crime and violence among whites during the past than today. We contend that they are also of relevance for explaining the disproportionately high rates of crime among urban African Americans. For African Americans, as for whites, we emphasize within-race cultural diversity and ethnic conflict as a possible cause of such violence. Narrative 3: The Making of a National Identity in a Culturally Diverse White America America’s bloody Civil War exposed the racial, interethnic, and class divisions that were part of the American experiment in democracy from the very beginnings of the nation’s colonial era (Woodard 2011). It also gave rise to the narrative we now describe. Like the other two narra-

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tives, it is now part of the nation’s collective psyche despite the contradictions that have always surrounded it. It has also influenced US social science theory and research, including work in criminology. The post–Civil War and the post-Reconstruction rise of a Jim Crow South revealed a region still engaged in a not so clandestine struggle to regain its prewar political and economic glory. That war was a bloody white-on-white regional conflict with undeniable ethnic undertones. It also was a struggle that resulted in a partial loosening of the reins of social and economic control for legions of black slaves. In response, the United States embarked on a now widely noted effort to construct a national narrative that depicted a unified nation. As a nation, the United States was challenged by both the need for political appeasement of defeated southerners and the cultural transformations brought by the waves of new immigrants from Europe. The construction of a narrative depicting the goal of refurbished and more unitary national identity provided a guidepost for the assimilation into urban life of rural European peasants, regardless of their places of origin. Although precursors of attempts at carving out an American identity existed before the Civil War, it clearly gained much more traction in its aftermath. Some historians have documented the decidedly “whites only” features of the Americanization/one nation movement both before and after the war (Glazer 1993; King 2005). To some extent, it was tied to the shoring up of white supremacy in the United States following the release from chattel bondage of more than 4 million slaves. In that sense, it gave southern whites a haven regarding their racial identity (Painter 2006, 2010). The “one nation, one people” initiative was part and parcel of a national identity construction aimed at bringing new immigrants into the fold. It was also a means of continuing and reinforcing the nation’s long-standing color line, thereby appeasing the South (King 2005, 4). Once begun, efforts at nationalistic solidarity were aided by several military excursions abroad during the waning years of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, of course, two world wars. Through it all, the narrative was often interpreted in ways that suggested this new and consolidated American culture was distinctly different from the cultural heritages of the nation’s people of color (i.e., Native Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, and particularly African Americans).5 Among those people of color, African Americans were most likely to be depicted as people bereft of cultural heritage. Indeed, much of the struggle for minority and civil rights in this country has been an attempt by various nonwhite groups to be seen as “100 percent

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American.” Of relevance for our theory is the narrative’s presumption of an American white population with a shared common cultural identity, even if one based principally on nationalism. One of the casualties of this national identity rebranding effort was the failure to acknowledge the long history of struggle and conflict among the country’s white population before the Civil War (Woodard 2011). It also resulted in ignoring the failure of the national identity movement to erase over time the cultural distinctions that the newest immigrants brought to these shores (Takaki 1993). The pattern of denying or ignoring internal cleavages among whites, while at the same time fully acknowledging and accepting a racial divide, has greatly affected the ways that criminologists have tended to view the causes of racial and ethnic disparities in crime and violence both during the past and today. Of relevance for the current theory-making effort is our contention that over time the narrative’s goal of an American identity based on cultural nationalism was perceptually consequential. It led to a widespread belief among Americans in the existence of a truly national, panethnic, cultural identity. Despite evidence to the contrary suggesting much cultural variation among Americans, the perception of a national identity is shared by legions of Americans. For many, it is seen as not a quest but a reality. That idealistic stance leads to a denial of group cleavages (King 2005) and a belief in the existence of a truly overarching and broad-based national culture, including a recognizable American popular culture.6 As evidence of such leanings within criminology, one need only consult many of the classic theories of the etiology of crime during that era. Most took as a given the notion that a dominant mainstream culture existed in the United States. Theories of “cultural conflict” (Sellin 1938) and “differential social organization” (Sutherland 1924, 1934) also posited that criminal conduct resulted from the witting or unwitting lack of adherence to the normative and moral standards embodied within that mainstream. While it is also true that some later theories have tended to move away from a focus on deficit cultures, Kornhauser (1978) showed the hold that such conceptions had on the mainstream criminological thought of the 1950s through the 1970s. It is also true that when attention is paid by contemporary criminologists and other social scientists to the effort to explain disproportionately high rates of crime among African Americans and Hispanic Americans, these historically grounded notions regarding the existence of a dominant (i.e., American) culture move quickly to the fore. Kornhauser insists that it is not the existence of subcultures, but an attenuation or disorganization of

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the dominant culture that is responsible for varying rates of crime in the urban context.7 While some of the earliest theorists of crime confronted directly the question of whether such a mainstream American culture existed, many later theorists take its existence for granted. Even if not explicitly stated in the form of theory, such a posture becomes, in essence, a part of the backdrop of metatheory that undergirds their analytic frameworks and explanations for crime. For black Americans, like Mexicans and Puerto Ricans (Lewis 1959, 1968), much of the rush to consider the effects of culture stems from the utilization of “culture of poverty” notions, but also from that set of concerns and issues discussed under the fourth narrative, below. Narrative 4: The Denial of Diverse Cultural Identities in Black America The final challenge to our theorizing effort comes from a narrative not unlike the one just outlined. During the half century following the start of America’s quest for a national identity and a unitary cultural umbrella for whites, the culture of black Americans also became an issue. Excluded from the umbrella of an embracing “one nation, one people” identity, blacks and other people of color were seen largely as cultural outsiders. After the turn of the twentieth century, and with it the quickening pace of the migration of blacks from the South to northern cities, the question of the cultural competencies and traits of African Americans became an issue inside and outside of academia. The same scrutiny given to immigrating white ethnics apropos their abilities to cope with urban living was also directed at black migrants. In a sense, this was a case of “the Polish peasant meets the Mississippi Delta sharecropper.” What ensued as part of that increased scrutiny was a lively and unexpected debate regarding the nature of the culture of African Americans. It centered on the question of whether blacks retained any of their African cultural heritage in the aftermath of slavery. Despite anthropologist Melville Herskovits’s persuasive and well-documented study in 1941 of the numerous African cultural features retained by black Americans, a narrative that depicted blacks as largely cultureless or as adherents to a subculture was beginning to take hold. In many respects, the debate begun by Herskovits was ironic given public and scholarly perceptions of Black America. Because of the rampant racism directed at black Americans and Africa during that era and later, any vestiges of African culture, if found to exist, would be problematic. Those vestiges

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of their African past were seen as inferior to those cultural heritages found among European Americans. They would also indicate that blacks were rightfully excluded from the expectations of cultural amalgamation in which the Americanization movement was grounded. In this sense, black Americans were “damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t” retain their African cultural heritages.8 However, as we later show, a rich scholarship documents the role of “Africanisms,” not only within the African American community but in the wider culture as well (Holloway 2006). In many respects, the lively debate regarding the retention of African culture mirrored the debates surrounding the retention of preurban and premodern cultural predispositions among European immigrants. The presence of larger numbers of blacks in US cities between World War I and World War II meant that this debate would have much political and social relevance. The conclusions regarding perceived cultural deficiencies among newly urbanized blacks and the remedies for such deficiencies were not unlike those reached regarding white immigrants. That is, their earlier cultural heritages had already given way to the culture-altering effects of Americanization and urbanization. To the extent this had not happened, it represented the desired social policy goal. In the case of black Americans, African roots were only part of the story. Black transplanted urbanites were also viewed as the inheritors of a southern culture derived from the days of their enslavement and Jim Crow–era sharecropper status. Some suggested that it was a cultural heritage shared by both black and white southerners (Blassingame 1979; Holloway 2006).9 As with European peasants, preexisting cultures brought to urban America were suspect and were depicted as largely a rural, lower-class culture of poverty (Johnson 1930, 1934). American sociologists of the early twentieth century viewed blacks as a “pre-modern people, culturally backward by modern standards, and still isolated from the socializing currents of modern life” (McKee 2006, 2111). Given the normative underpinnings of America’s push for a post–Civil War national identity, these views of a black cultural heritage became part of the ideological landscape that American criminology inherited during its emergence as a discipline near the turn of the twentieth century. They remain deeply embedded in modern criminological thought and the psyche of the larger American public as well at the turn of the twenty-first century. The denial of cultural divides and what are perceived as ethnic identities in Black America is also part of the analytic myopia that

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extends across the whole of social science, as Harrison (2006, 100) observes: Anthropologists, as well as laypeople commonly, apply the concept of race in describing African descendants, whereas ethnicity is more often used for Native Americans and Asians. This double standard is particularly relevant to the Caribbean and Latin America because it implies a structure of differentiation in which black culture, apart from elements (e.g., Carnival and emblematic musical and dance genres) appropriated by national culture, are negatively evaluated regarding deficits that must be filled through acculturation. The extensive color lexicon developed to describe peoples of African descent represents a yardstick for measuring improvement through admixture and lightening. A graded color vocabulary has not been applied to East Indians or Chinese, whose relationship to colonially dominant whites was expressed as a ranking among civilizations. Africans, on the other hand, were historically represented as primitive and savage.

Those past developments duly noted, our theory suggests the need for a healthy skepticism regarding what we think we know and do not know about the culture of African Americans. It is for that reason that we examine further the debates and arguments surrounding this narrative. On African American Cultural Diversity and the African Legacy Herskovits (1941) used his daring discussion of the African American cultural heritage to respond to a broad swath of both black and white intellectuals and activists whose ideas and work were prominent during the decades between the two world wars. As noted, this period was marked by efforts to secure a unified American national identity among white Americans. For black American scholars and activists, their legal standing as citizens continued to be hotly contested. Therefore, for many, that continuing citizenship-acquisition debate was of much greater interest than was their African cultural heritage. But, of course, the two debates were linked in various ways, since much of the national identity debate was focused on proving an individual’s or group’s allegiance and attachment to America. Consequently, rejection of the notion of African cultural survivals in the New World by black intellectuals of the period is not surprising. For example, while fully acknowledging the brutality faced by blacks during slavery and its after-effects among blacks a generation and more removed, DuBois’s (1899) study of black Philadelphians pays

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scant attention to the possibility of the retention of African traditions among that urban population. The quest for citizenship also influenced the work of other black sociologists who studied black communities during the decades after DuBois’s pioneering work (Frazier 1932, 1966 [1939], 1949; Johnson 1930, 1934). Regarding the cultural heritage of black Americans, many appeared to adhere to the views of E. Franklin Frazier, who observed, .

As a racial or cultural minority the Negro occupies a unique position. He has been in the United States longer than any other racial or cultural minority with the exception, of course, of the American Indian. Although the Negro is distinguished from other minorities by his physical characteristics, unlike other racial or cultural minorities the Negro is not distinguished by culture from the dominant group. Having completely lost his ancestral culture, he speaks the same language, practices the same religion, and accepts the same values and political ideals as the dominant group. . . . Since the institutions, the social stratification, and the culture of the Negro minority are essentially the same as those of the larger community, it is not strange that the Negro belongs among the assimilationist rather than the pluralist, secessionist or militant minorities. It is seldom that one finds Negroes who think of themselves as possessing a different culture from whites and that their peculiar culture should be preserved. (1957, 680–681, as cited in Blauner 1972, 125–126; emphasis added)

In many respects, those African American leaders and defenders of the rights of blacks may have been eager to shed an image of themselves and their communities as anything but American. Doing so helped make a case for the granting of the citizenship rights they sought. White ethnic immigrants and their defenders were equally eager to shed the image of those newcomers as ignorant, lawbreaking, and foreign-born peasants from the Old Country (Hawkins 1995; Sellin 1938). This narrative, like the preceding narrative’s depiction of white Americans, has resulted in perceptions of the black community as a homogeneous, American-made cultural entity. As such, it is seen as devoid of major divisions along the lines of tribe, ethnicity, kin group, or any other of the traditional divides. These are thought to have been erased by modernity or the imposition of an all-encompassing American cultural and national identity. Hence, citing such sources from the past, and writing more than two decades after Herskovits’s book was published, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1965) in his influential government-

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sponsored study of the black family felt free to proclaim that black American culture was 100 percent American-made, and by implication a culturally homogeneous population. Silberman (1978, 183–184) states his opposition to the view that blacks do not possess a distinctive culture. He believes that such exists and that it is based partly on African roots. Like Blauner, he notes the ways in which the treatment by whites of African Americans has differed from that of Mexican Americans and other oppressed groups. At the same time his depiction of black culture, though well meaning, often borders on stereotype and caricature. Slavery and post-Emancipation bigotry are seen to produce in urban Black communities a set of subcultural norms and values that are conducive to the production and maintenance of the high rates of crime found there (1978, 159–224). While he does note the conflictive interaction found particularly among black males, the question that we ask is never addressed. Could some of those conflicts be traced to the much broader divergent cultural identities and social groupings of which those urban males are a part? Such stances by intellectuals and policymakers of the period led Blauner to observe, The view that black people lack any characteristics of a distinctive nationality, that they are only Americans and nothing else, has become almost a dogma of liberal social science. Gunnar Myrdal and his great book An American Dilemma set the tone for the present outlook. In this influential and voluminous work there is no chapter on AfroAmerican culture and only a sketchy treatment of the black community. Furthermore, Myrdal’s statement that the Negro is “an exaggerated American” and that his values are “pathological” elaborations on general American values has been widely quoted for a generation. As recently as 1963 another influential study of ethnic groups in New York took a similar position. “It is not possible for Negroes to view themselves as other ethnic groups viewed themselves,” wrote Glazer and Moynihan, “because—and this is the key to much in the Negro world—the Negro is only an American and nothing else. He has no values and culture to guard and protect.” (1972, 125, citing Glazer and Moynihan 1963, 53)

Blauner (1972, 124–161), like Herskovits, challenges this view of African Americans and their cultural heritage. 10 Despite such pushback, the result of the numerous observations we have detailed is the creation of a narrative, which despite the reality of a sharp racial divide in the United States, tended to put both blacks and whites into the same lineage-eradicating and diversity-destroying boat. For whites,

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long-standing within-race ethnic cleavages are said to have been erased by modernization, their departure from the European soil where the cleavages arose, and a successful campaign aimed at Americanization. Indeed, white Americans are seen as fortunate to have escaped the intrarace divisiveness among their European brethren who engaged in two internecine squabbles of a global magnitude during World Wars I and II. For African Americans, the narrative suggests the creation of a new group identity that has arisen from the loss of the disparate tribal identities brought with them from Africa. Like whites, they are depicted as no longer troubled by the within-race divides and conflicts that beset their kin living in the Old World motherland. Consequently, the narrative contends that blacks, like their Americanized white counterparts, are one people. In Chapters 7 and 8, we question the fit between this narrative’s idyllic, nondivisive, and nonconflictive portraits of White and Black America and the facts on the ground in the United States both during the past and today.

Conclusion Although the narratives we have described and the debates surrounding them may appear of little contemporary significance to modern-day social science research and political discourse, we beg to differ. They still exist as dominant themes that impact the intellectual and social lives of Americans. They are deeply embedded in the mass media assessments of American life and culture. They have greatly influenced the content, implementation, and enforcement of our laws. They are the ideological anchors of public opinion. Rather than suffering from the effects of mortification, they are examples, in many instances, of chameleon-like transmogrification. In other words, they still rule the day to a great extent. The theory we propose in the chapters that follow provides reasons to question the extent to which they fully and accurately describe the social, cultural, and political dynamics that have shaped (and now shape) the social formation of individual and group identities and allegiances and accompanying patterns of within-group interactions and intergroup relations. The task at hand requires in some instances the creation of new terminology. Our attempted terminological innovations serve multiple purposes. Many are needed to begin to define and describe the social and social psychological processes that drive the dynamics of all culture

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group interactions. These are largely unspecified in the classic Shaw and McKay work and many follow-up studies in that tradition. Revised or added terminology is also used in pursuit of our goal of interjecting into the model of social disorganization explicit consideration of race and racism. All of such terminological innovations are designed to help us describe the criminogenic effects of ethnic heterogeneity on the production of homicide among African Americans. This means that we seek terminology that captures the essence of the more nuanced intercultural and intergroup interactions, dynamics, and relationships among African Americans that our theory presupposes. In doing so, however, we do not abandon entirely traditional terms to describe the nation’s cultural diversity and the group and personal identities that it encompasses. Also, since we seek to refine rather than discard the original theory of social disorganization, our use of terminologies describing its key constructs is retained. For example, we use the traditional zone of transition conceptualization to describe and posit ways in which ecological contexts confound the criminogenic effects of the heretofore unacknowledged ethnic heterogeneity found in Black America. In Chapter 5, we use both older and newer terminologies to develop a series of propositions designed to show how ethnocentrismbased constructs define group identities and interactions in all societies and affect varying levels of violence and homicide. In Chapter 6, we show the ways in which these ethnocentric impulses affect the rate of homicide in Black America.

Notes 1. When attention has been paid to within-group cultural differences among African Americans, especially within crime-related work, these variances have been described largely in terms of a contrast between deviant subcultural norms and mainstream norms. The theory we present is grounded in the notion of coexisting and often competing groups that adhere to distinct normative cultural beliefs. Nevertheless, we will also describe ways in which nonnormative behavioral scripts of the kind described by others may arise within the context of diverse normative cultural regimes within urban African American communities. 2. That said, we also remain mindful of the role that anthropology has played in the expansion of European colonialism and militarism into those societies that have been the sites of that discipline’s ethnographic studies. 3. Of course, many take issue with what is often described as the cultural relativism that emerges from some anthropological work and the conclusions drawn on the basis of such a view. Among those writing on the subject of culture

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and crime who challenge the notion of cultural relativism is Kornhauser (1978). Our own theory, while questioning her stance on relativism,, is, at the same time, quite in line with much of what she wrote. 4. Yet, only within the last few decades have DuBois’s important sociological insights regarding race, crime, and community been (re)discovered by modern analysts (Gabbidon 2007). Some have noted that this delayed acknowledgment and acceptance of the work of DuBois, an African American, attests to the hold that racism still has on American society and the academic discourses found within it (e.g., see Morris 2007; Wright 2014). 5. Colin Woodard (2011), whose work we cite extensively in Chapter 7, while acknowledging the presence of nonwhites within the North American cultural landscape, nevertheless takes on a “whites only” perspective when describing the nation’s enduring cultural diversity. The enshrinement of white privilege has indeed meant that peoples of color have been subordinated not only in terms of their legal and socioeconomic status but also in terms of their contributions to the nation’s storehouse of culture. But to the extent that the politics of whiteness can be disentangled from assessments of the true nature of the nation’s enormous cultural diversity, the Apartheid-like boundaries of “race” may not coincide with boundaries of “culture.” 6. Race plays a role also in perceptions of a common popular culture. For example, despite the cultural accommodations and borrowings within pop culture that have led to an infusion of African American culture, many white citizens and academics continue to see black pop culture as different from white pop culture. Interestingly, even though many of the black cultural infusions within pop culture come from the lower class, most Americans and many in the public tend to see lower-class culture among African Americans as different from the mainstream culture (i.e., white culture). 7. Our theory suggests that, to the contrary, it is the attenuation of the unique cultures found within the nation’s sociodemographic groupings, which are presumed to be distinguishable along lines of “race” that gives rise to crime and violence within those “races.” 8. As a resident of Chicago, but not affiliated with the Chicago School, the work of Herskovits (1941) may have been influenced by and conducted in response to that school’s “city as destroyer of culture” lines of research. He likely sought to offer a plausible alternative to a then-dominant narrative regarding the black cultural heritage in its increasingly urban context. 9. As we note in Chapters 7 and 8, the history of the movement of white southerners from the rural South to the nation’s large cities remains a story untold. Though seldom studied, they likely faced the same assimilation issues confronted by black southerners and those of European peasant stock. Indeed, upon canvassing contemporary sociological research on poverty, socioeconomic inequality, and crime, apart from a few studies of Appalachia, one is left to ask “where, oh where, is the white underclass?” 10. On the other hand, Blauner (1972, 279–280) offers a view of ethnocentrism among African Americans that we reject in part: “The ethnocentric impulse remains strong among other ethnic groups in America. Liberals do not deny Jews, Italians or even Chinese the right to such attitudes, but when developed by Afro-Americans it is offensive, another example of the truly racist dou-

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ble standard. The experience of slavery and the system of racial subordination that followed Emancipation weakened or virtually eliminated the healthy ethnocentrism of Africans and Afro-Americans” (emphasis ours). In this instance Blauner appears to use the term as a proxy for nationalism, an equivalence our theory rejects. Thus, while it is true that expressions of nationalism among African Americans have been seen as a threat to white supremacy, we do not believe that racial subordination has eliminated expressions of within-race cultural or conflictive ethnocentrism. Indeed, much folklore and historical facts within Black America suggest that historically whites have used a divide-andconquer approach that has in fact encouraged within-race divides along lines of skin color and degrees of racial intermixture. And, as we will show, these have been accompaniments of cultural variance among African Americans.

5 On the Conceptual Roots of Ethnocentrism

Everyone is ethnocentric, and there is no way not to be ethnocentric . . . it cannot be avoided, nor can it be willed away by a positive or well-meaning attitude. —Ken Barger, “Ethnocentrism”

G

iven the title of our book and the groundwork laid in earlier chapters, it is clear that we view the notion of ethnocentrism as a descriptor for the causal mechanisms that link ethnic heterogeneity and social disorganization to varying levels of criminal violence. However, we believe that as social constructs, the meanings of such notions as race, ethnicity, and nationality are far from settled in either public discourse or the social sciences. The term ethnocentrism has roots in all three of these pivotal social constructs, and it has a rather checkered conceptual history. It has been widely used in conjunction with ethnicity, nationality, and race to describe humans’ emotional and psychological attachments to each of these. But, when used in the mass media and much popular discourse, it becomes a pejorative. It is said to denote an unbending attachment to a limited worldview and the pursuit of narrowly defined group interests. For many, it carries the same connotations as racism. Our choice of ethnocentrism as the conceptual anchor of our theory means that we must confront head-on the highly unsettled and unresolved meanings of the term—and of the group labels and identities thought to be embedded within it. Pushing back against its use as a pejorative, the major theme running throughout our work is the proposition that ethnocentrism is an abiding feature of human social 79

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organization, and it has shaped intergroup relations throughout the world over the whole of history. We view it as a universally normative feature of all human interactions and group alignments. Even in the modern and postmodern eras, we contend that it describes and embodies the attachment of humans to their perceived cultural grouping of origin and the centeredness and relative insularity that often accompanies such attachments.1 To the extent that ethnocentrism denotes attachment to identifiable human social groupings, to assess empirically its effects and consequences, we must identify and precisely describe those groupings. We contend that despite the widespread use of such descriptors, their meanings remain imprecise and highly contested. Thus, we begin our discussion in this chapter with a critique of the linguistic handles currently used to label social and cultural groupings in the United States. We believe that although useful descriptors in some instances, they may be inadequate for describing the intrarace cultural divides that we think exist in Black America. The imprecision of those popular group labels leads us to stress the need for more nuanced ways to describe African Americans’ hidden cultural diversity. By exploring the seeming inadequacy of those group descriptors, we seek to lay out in this chapter the conceptual groundwork for our theory of ethnocentrism and violence presented in Chapter 6. Our discussion here entails an examination of (1) the meanings of the concepts of ethnicity, ethnocentrism, and culture; (2) the ways they have been used to describe human social organization; and (3) the refinements to traditional usages that our theory of ethnocentrism requires. Devising our own terminology while also using existing ones makes for a bumpy epistemological ride as we navigate through the varied bodies of literature that span the disciplines of anthropology, criminology, historiography, and sociology. The wide-ranging, multidisciplinary approach to the study of race and crime that we employ admittedly runs the risk of oversimplification of very complex ideas. That is a risk we are more than willing to take.

Human Social Groupings: The Name Game Because ethnocentrism is thought to be anchored largely in those group identities defined as ethnic, that label represents an obvious starting point for our brief review of the ways that human social groupings have been defined and labeled. Banks (1995) has observed that the term eth-

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nicity is of recent vintage in both public and scholarly discourse, having been introduced into the anthropological literature in 1941. The use of race obviously predates it, as does the use of such labels as clan, tribe, and so forth. At the time of its introduction, it was seen as offering a somewhat more politically correct, and a more culture-focused, alternative to earlier terminology. To some extent, it has replaced those earlier terms used to categorize different groupings of people in both scientific and popular discourse. In recent years, it has also become a more userfriendly linguistic alternative to conceptions of race. In the United States, it has come to be associated with nationality or with regional or religious identities. Today’s widespread media use of the term sectarian to describe conflicts in the Middle East and the long-standing depiction of Jews as both a religious and ethnic group attests to the latter usage. But, that is where the seeming consensus ends. As a social construction, the notion of ethnicity embodies all of the imprecision that popular sociological label implies. For example, a common origin and lines of descent are said to be implied in ethnic distinctions, even when such is not proven or evident. Indeed, Bates (2006) asserts that the term commonly refers to collectivities that share the myth of a common origin, as opposed to well-documented evidence of such. In his study of the notion of tribe, Fried (1975) examined several alternative conceptualizations of the term. His examination revealed the empirical imprecision of that concept. Having done so, he noted that humans tend to create distinct groups of great personal importance on the basis of seemingly trivial and minute distinctions. Fried’s survey suggests that group-level divisions may arise from identities such as breeding populations, a common language, economic groups, political groups, and unity that arises due to once diverse groups’ coming to have a common enemy. He suggested that these indices of cohesion may give rise to self-identification over the long haul as a distinct ethnic entity. Fenton (2013) observed that when the ethnic group label is used to refer to cultural communities, they are often said to be demarcated by their possession of a common language. Despite that common perception, research suggests that often neither linguistic differences nor similarities mark the true boundaries of those groups who in the eyes of others and themselves are culturally distinctive in comparison to those around them. For instance, anthropologist Sorensen (1967) observed that the Amazonian peoples he studied shared a common culture but spoke a variety of distinctive languages. The idea of ethnic groups as holistic and singular entities has also been challenged. Fenton argues that “there is not a single unitary phe-

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nomenon ‘ethnicity’ but rather an array of private and public identities which coalesce around ideas of descent and culture” (2013, 188). Bonacich (1972, 548) asserts that ethnicity involves “groups defined socially as sharing a common ancestry in which membership is therefore inherited or ascribed, whether or not members are currently physically or culturally distinctive.” Brubaker (2004) warns against the perils of “groupism,” the taken for granted assumption that coherent groups are the basic constituents of social life. Instead, group coherency is variable and can range from well-defined and long-standing social entities to what Yablonsky (1959) labeled a “near-group.” Also, a given individual may adhere to identities that span multiple descent and culture-related in-groups. Barth (1969) argues that apart from self-imposed and highly subjective labels that serve as markers of identity, what often matters most is the contrasting of those self-imposed group values, which members perceive as important and distinctive within their own group, with the values of outsiders. That contrast allows its members to identify themselves as an ethnic group. In that same vein, it has been observed that ethnic identity is not created solely by the ethnic group who wears it, but may be imposed upon them by some dominant group that regards those so labeled as “them” or the “other.” Much sociological and psychological research on race and ethnic relations has explored this concept of otherness as it relates to group interactions. We/they and us/them distinctions are greatly influenced by variances in degrees of economic, political, and military power. Fried (1975, 10) emphasized the role of power differentials in the ethnic group labeling process when he observed that “tribal” identities, in particular, may arise less from shared culture, political unity, or kinship than “as a consequence of the impinging on simple cultures of much more complex organized societies.” Such is, of course, one of the defining features of both global colonialism and military conquest. Attempts at control may reinforce the other-imposed and self-imposed identification of persons as members of a given group. Such control may entail classifying a given group as part of the “target population” for prevention, control, suppression, or reform, as Klein (1995) observed regarding responses to urban gang identities. In each case, group cohesiveness of both the definer and the defined is often enhanced when distinctions are made between them and us and such distinctions are used as a basis for determining who represents a problem or threat.2 Brubaker (2004, 10, emphasis in original) observed that “ethnopolitical entrepreneurs” may invoke ethnicity as a means of creating a

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cohesive political identity for people they lead or seek to control: “by invoking groups, they seek to evoke them, summon them, call them into being.” In Chapters 7 and 8 we show how the panethnic concepts of whiteness and blackness as group labeling phenomena display all of the features of self-interest, subjectivity, and social control just described. We learn from these informative observations that ethnicity, like culture itself, is clearly not an objectively conceived or a static labeling phenomenon. Thus, in the present work we remain mindful of the fact that labels such as race, ethnicity, caste, clan, class, American, African, European, Asian, and Latino are problematic. They and a long list of other descriptors of humans are all social constructs whose meanings are largely context-, situation-, place-, and time-dependent and hence changeable and subjectively defined (Boas 1940). But, despite the variability and subjectivity of all group-level identities and labels, they remain an integral part of all human interactions. And in the United States, beyond ethnicity, race clearly matters. On the Notion of “Race” Among the varied labels used to describe human social groupings, race represents the crudest and perhaps most ideologically ensconced depicter of social and cultural diversity. Especially when conceptualized as a broad-based color line, it has been described as “man’s most dangerous myth” (Montagu 1997). Even when used as a heuristic device aimed at linking the obvious human phenotypes arising from climatic and environmental conditions to “culture,” widely used racial labeling fails the task. The range of cultural diversity within any given race is expansive. Thus, any serious inquiry into the question of what accounts for race differences in behaviors linked to culture must first confront the question of what is “race”? (Hochschild et al. 2008). The imprecision of the social construct race as a marker of either group affinities or group differences in social behavior, including crime and violence, does not mean that it has been ineffective as an instrument of differentiation and social control in the real world. Most often it is used for precisely those purposes. However, the definitional imprecision observed for not only race but also ethnicity, nationality, and other broad-based descriptors of human groupings, suggests the need for cautious skepticism. We earlier noted its problematic use for assessing the meaning and implications of findings of group differences in rates of interpersonal violence. To the extent that it is used for such purposes, our theory raises an important question regarding whether race serves as

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a marker of those cultural differences of significance for explaining not only crime and violence but also many other social behaviors. Both the imprecision of group labels and the vital role that they nonetheless play in shaping identities and interactions among the individuals that comprise them are central tenets of our theory of ethnocentrism and homicide. Our effort to explain high rates of homicide among black Americans is, in reality, a tale of two sets of group identities. When viewed through the prism of race, other-imposed labeling has been an undeniable feature of the group identity of persons of African ancestry in the United States. But, when viewed through the lense of ethnicity, black Americans likely display propensities toward selfimposed labeling as well. The effects of the ethnocentrism arising from those mostly self-imposed, more ethnicity-centered cultural distinctions have been largely ignored but may contribute significantly to the high rates of violence observed in Black America both during the past and today.

Linking Cultural Heterogeneity and Crime: The Role of Ethnocentrism The etiological thrust of the theory we now present via a series of propositions is rather straightforward. We describe here and in Chapter 6 the many ways in which the creation of group identities centered on cultural similarity, as well as the intergroup relations surrounding those identities, contribute to ethnic and racial differences in crime and violence. Specifically, we contend that those group-linked social dynamics we label ethnocentric contribute to the levels of ethnic and racial disparity seen in rates of interpersonal violence observed in the United States. Ours is not a theory that suggests culture-centered identities and contacts among distinctive cultural groupings inevitably lead to blood feuds. Rather, we aim to specify the circumstances and social structural conditions whereby cultural diversity and resulting ethnocentrism sometimes lead to violence, including elevated rates of homicide in Black America. In the discussion that follows, we use the term affinitive ethnocentrism to describe the other-imposed or self-imposed attachments to one’s group or homophily that we described in the literature review above. We use the term conflictive ethnocentrism to describe the patterns of intergroup conflict that frequently arise when culturally diverse groups come into contact, especially over long periods of time. Much of

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the theory we outline is an attempt to refine these concepts and define the social contexts and conditions under which both forms of ethnocentrism come to be expressed in the form of criminal violence. To the extent that the concept of ethnocentrism has been used to explain violence, it has most often been applied to the study of warfare, acrossgroup civil strife, and sectarian struggles and conflict. That is, it has been associated with what sociologists call collective violence, as opposed to criminal interpersonal violence, most of which is not grouplevel violence. There are exceptions to this pattern of usage within the study of crime, and we think that those exceptions give credence to the plausibility of our theory.3 Going against the central tendencies found in the study of Black America, we use the notion of ethnocentrism to explain the impacts on homicide and other interpersonal violence of unacknowledged cultural diversity within black neighborhoods and communities. In that sense, we are proposing the existence of what amounts to concealed “ethnic” groups within them. As we have noted, it is clear that the cultural identities to which we allude do not fit squarely within the conceptual bounds of that rubric as commonly used. Thus, despite obvious similarities, we have chosen to use different terminology to describe the stealth cultural identities we suggest can be found in black American communities. We contend that ethnocentrism configures intergroup relations among them, just as they are presumed to do among those cultural groups whose boundaries appear to be more intact and better documented. In the chapters that follow we aim to show that for both African Americans and European Americans, ethnic heterogeneity and intrarace ethnocentrism are drivers of varying levels of group disparities in rates of criminal violence observed in the United States. For purposes of our theory-making effort, we have borrowed from the marketing sciences and repurposed the term affinity group. We use it to describe those social, social psychological, and institutional ties among people that are grounded in their perceptions of cultural homogeneity, homogamy-centered group identities and allegiances, and emotional and social psychological ties. So defined, our borrowed terminology clearly embodies the meanings of such earlier conceptions as tribe, clan, and ethnic group. We choose to use it in order to avoid some of the ideological biases and provincialism associated with the first two group labels, and the often close association between the latter label and the concept of nationality. Many of the sources we cite use the term subethnic to describe identities that are likely similar to those we now describe. We believe, however, that this label presumes some level of

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agreement regarding the meaning of ethnic group. As our discussion in this chapter and subsequent ones suggests, the meaning of the term is quite variable. In much of social science, it is a proxy primarily for national identities, with all the complexities that label entails. Although we observe later the need to define and operationalize our chosen concept, we think it best captures the essence of the hidden cultural identities we think exist in both Black and White America. Using the affinity group conceptualization as a guide, we aim to show the ways in which it is a concept that improves and expands our understanding of the traditional concept of ethnic heterogeneity and the ways that it affects group differences in rates of violence.4

Ethnocentrism and Intergroup Relations: A Listing of Propositions The propositions listed below are heuristics, some whimsical in tone. In many instances, they are summaries or restatements of well-established social science findings. Others reflect surmise and theory-driven speculation on our part. Along with another listing of propositions and supporting research findings in Chapter 6, they constitute the conceptual outlines of our theory of ethnocentrism and violence among African Americans. In Chapters 7, 8, and 9, we add content to these propositions through an examination of the history of race and interethnic relations in the United States, with special attention being paid to the effects of internal migrations on cultural diversity in Black America. Together with the chapters that follow we outline a theory that is designed to (1) improve our understanding of how group cultural identities and patterns of intergroup relations associated with those identities give rise to varying levels of interpersonal violence in the United States; and (2) describe a set of heretofore largely unexamined etiological factors that have likely contributed to the historical overrepresentation of African Americans among homicide offenders and victims. The enumerated propositions below highlight our agreement with the work of anthropologists, historians, and sociologists and describe the pivotal role of culture in defining patterns of human social organization. We seek to contextualize the study of African American violence within the global and universal social dynamics of which it is a part while also revising extant theory to account for the particulars of the African American experience. The listing below also reflects our view that the criminological study of the causes of racial differences in crime

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cannot be separated from the study of race relations, racial inequality, and the ways that these configure social control and crime control in the United States. Thus, ours is also an examination via theory-making of the social structures and historical contexts within which both criminal conduct and these intergroup relations take place. From the Cradle to the Group: The Social Construction of Ethnocentrism Proposition 5.1: The roots of homogamy and homophily. Possessing a

culture is an inherent attribute of being human. All humans exist within distinctive cultural groupings whose values and norms are vigorously defended and passed along to offspring. Individual and group identities based on cultural affinities stemming from long-term extended family and larger kin group ties form the core of all human social organization. Beyond the family, with its assorted extensions and appendages, the modal unit of global human social organization and one of the principal sources of suprafamilial individual and group identity formation is the cultural affinity group.5 Proposition 5.2: The ties that bind: affinitive ethnocentrism. Affinitive ethnocentrism is a defining and inextricable feature of cultural group identities centered on homogamy and homophily. It involves boundarysetting efforts aimed at defining, maintaining, and defending a given group’s cultural heritage. Affinitive ethnocentrism is manifested largely through the use of cultural rituals, stylized within-group interactional patterns, and the creation of social institutions that embody the group’s perceived values and norms. When viewed by outsiders, those symbols of attachment to an affinity group may at times be indiscernible or trivial in their meanings and consequences. Proposition 5.3: Social isolation and cultural diversification. During the

distant past and today, affinity group formation and resulting cultural diversification among human groupings have stemmed from and been enhanced by their geographic and spatial isolation. Once established, both affinity-linked choice and the effects of intergroup conflict may encourage affinity groups to seek either social or physical isolation or both. Over time, isolation stemming from the natural environment and social isolation tend to heighten those preexisting cultural differences that serve as the initial pillars of affinity-based identities and social organization.6

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Proposition 5.4: Matters of class. Hierarchies of power and privilege exist in all societies and configure interpersonal interactions within and across affinity groups. Among people who share a common culture, shared identity, and other manifestations of group solidarity, conflictive interactions may also occur along the lines of social class. Typically, however, those conflicts are separate and apart from those more ethnocentric behaviors that are designed to construct and protect group identities and allegiances vis-à-vis the cultural other. Thus, we propose that affinity group identities display social class invariance to the extent that members of all social strata adhere to the same norms and social institutions. To the extent that social class conflicts occur, they do so within the culturally defined boundaries of a shared affinity group identity.

Ethnocentrism and Social Change Proposition 5.5: The cultural churn. Once established, affinity groupings and the cultures they embody are always in flux and subject to inevitable processes of social change. Social change may be prompted by environmental change, social forces emanating from within a given culture group, or by contact with other affinity groups. The tendency to historicize the world’s distinctive cultures, the affinity groupings within them, and to emphasize continuities and ties to the distant past ignores the fact that they are constantly reinventing themselves. Absent genocide or environmental disaster, sustained contact by a given affinity group with outsiders results in varying degrees of conflict, accommodation, cultural change/coalescence, or withdrawal from contact. Proposition 5.6: Beyond modernity. Neither the rise of the premodern

or modern nation-state nor the ascendancy of race as a social and ideological construct has reduced the salience of the affinity group as a source of identity formation, cultural sharing, and often intergroup conflict. Indeed, much evidence suggests that what are perceived as premodern affinity group associations and identities are the social glue that cements the bonds and sense of group identity that give rise to both multigroup national identities and perceptions of panethnic racial classifications and distinctions.7 Proposition 5.7: People movements. The ever-changing nature of affin-

ity group identities means that they are profoundly affected by major demographic shifts and the mass displacements of people. Typically

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these will result in the potential for increased cultural heterogeneity, and, with such change, varying degrees of neo-affinitive ethnocentrism as perceptions of group identities and boundaries are altered. War, urbanization, and demographic flows associated with voluntary and involuntary migration and immigration are all conducive to such group identity transformations. Even when the perceived boundaries of those larger cultural/political/social entities within which affinity groups are embedded remain largely unchanged, such people movements may greatly affect both intra– and inter–affinity group relations. Power, Inequality, and Ethnocentrism Proposition 5.8: Turf wars. All inter–affinity group interactions are in

essence struggles over turf, whether physical or cultural. Maintenance of the cohesion implied by and required for internal affinity group solidarity is often affected by a variety of ecological, demographic, and geographic restraints and limitations. Varying amounts of political, economic, and social capital determine the capacity of a given group to control its “turf,” set cultural boundaries, and maintain its cultural distinctiveness. Since the powers of dominant affinity groups are not absolute and subordinate groups are not entirely powerless, conflict inevitably accompanies such efforts. Given the universality of power imbalances, intergroup relations that are typically characterized by affinitive ethnocentrism are frequently transformed into group interactions reflecting conflictive ethnocentrism and become a prominent feature of inter-affinity group relations.8 Proposition 5.9: Collective violence and boundary setting. Since con-

flicts across cultural group lines are frequent accompaniments of efforts to maintain group identities and challenge power imbalance, collective violence frequently ensues. This form of boundary-setting violence is normative within the context of the globally historical processes of cultural differentiation. However, given a shared turf and pronounced levels of social and economic inequality, acts of collective violence engaged in by members of subordinate groups, unlike those of the dominant group, will be sanctioned as “crime.”9 Proposition 5.10: Enclaves, retreats, and conflict. Whether in response

to subordination or cultural conflict with an equally powerless subordinate group, a given affinity group will often seek to maintain its group

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cultural identity via a physical/spatial retreat. Within both urban and nonurban contexts, such retreats aimed at limiting cultural erosion and maintaining social distance may involve both voluntary and involuntary movement into enclaves or distant “hinterlands” to facilitate some degree of physical and social separation from other groups. Voluntary social isolation and other assertive distancing actions most often occur among affinity groupings of relatively equal power and influence. Absent the ability to withdraw effectively from contact, cycles of conflictive ethnocentrism will characterize inter–affinity group interactions and relationships. Proposition 5.11: Internecine violence. Crime and violence at varying levels of intensity and frequency, including acts of lethal violence, are found within all affinity groups. However, high rates of within-group deviance and internecine violence serve to destroy the very cohesion that is derived from members’ perceptions of shared affinity group identities, of clearly defined social and spatial boundaries, and of shared cultural distinctiveness. Extreme and persistent deviations from these expectations of within-group solidarity require explanation. They may signal the erosion of those identities, affinities, and allegiances that gave rise to earlier perceptions of cultural solidarity. Or, alternatively, they may signal a lack of precision on the part of analysts in defining the boundaries of the group under study.10 Proposition 5.12: No exit. Groups that encounter the greatest obstacles in maintaining their unique cultural identities through the setting of physical and cultural boundaries will display the highest rates of internecine violence. Further, rates will fluctuate over time largely as a function of the ebb and flow of those ecological pressures and social forces that determine the success or failure of a group’s control of its turf and destiny.

Race, Colonialism, and the Globalization of Ethnocentrism: Things Fall Apart Proposition 5.13: Altered social structures and splintered group identities. Apart from the perpetual human wanderlust that has shaped cul-

tural affinity group interactions over the centuries, intergroup contacts and conflicts have been profoundly shaped by the militarism, colonialism, nationalism, and racism of the premodern and modern eras. The

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altered social structures that emerged from those global dynamics have resulted in patterns of intergroup interactions that often reflect far greater inequalities and imbalances of military, economic, and political power than the social systems they replaced. Also, those imbalances increasingly manifest themselves largely along the lines of the perceived race of the individuals who comprise the interacting affinity groups. Proposition 5:14: Race matters. Both colonialism and the modern

nation-state are characterized by intergroup dynamics and imbalances of power that limit the ability of conquered and subordinate affinity groups embedded within to control the turfs they inhabit. In the United States, a pattern of internal colonialism has been an enduring feature of the cultural, political, social, and physical landscape inhabited by people of color (see Blauner 1972). The perceived race of a given affinity grouping plays a pivotal role in shaping intergroup relations and the dynamics of conflictive ethnocentrism. It determines the extent to which groups can control a given turf, the terms of a retreat from contact, and the nature and extent of measures that can be taken to defend, maintain, and define their cultural identities. Interactions across socially constructed lines of race, however, do not account for all patterns of conflictive ethnocentrism that are evident in multicultural, multiracial societies. Proposition 5.15: On American apartheid. Historical and contempo-

rary limitations on the ability of black Americans to defend and maintain their “turfs” and their racial/cultural identities have been welldocumented. These are defining elements of the nation’s system of internal colonialism. The hypersegregation integral to its maintenance contributes to racial separatism and isolated, spatially confined, and socially controlled black communities. Particularly in densely populated urban areas, the restricted residential choices afforded blacks also greatly expand the range of cultural diversity found within racially isolated enclaves. The ethnic spatial compression inherent in urban living among all racial and ethnic groups becomes exacerbated within black communities. Systemic constraints have resulted in greater spatial concentration of cultural/affinity groups, and also social class diversity, in urban African American communities as compared to their white urban counterparts, whose communities are more likely to reflect ethnic spatial dispersion. Within these boxed-in and spatially confined geographic/ecological niches, affinity group

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interactions, ties, identities, and the social institutions that support them are confronted with severe challenges regarding their formation and perpetuation. Proposition 5.16: Confounding and compounding intersectionalities.

The effects of ethnocentric impulses on rates of violence are largely race invariant. However, the uniqueness (see Unnever and Gabbidon 2011) and historical continuity of the subordinated social status of black Americans are of vital importance for understanding the ways those impulses are behaviorally manifested in black communities. The intersectionality of that racialized status with other known correlates of involvement in crime and violence creates a set of violence-producing conditions unlike those found among other racial groupings. Conflicts arising from ethnocentrism and externally imposed patterns of ethnic spatial compression have been an endemic feature of life among black Americans for more than a century. Ethnocentric interactions among culturally diverse affinity groupings, when confounded by other significant correlates of violence, have resulted in an enduring legacy of an excess of homicides in Black America. Heightened socioeconomic inequality increases the likelihood that the conflictive ethnocentrism arising from the hidden ethnic heterogeneity found in Black America will result in elevated levels of homicide among competing affinity groups (see Blau 1977; Hawkins 1983).

On Ethnic Spatial Compression and Ethnic Spatial Dispersion In conclusion, a description of two fundamental conceptions key to our theory is judicious at this point. The concept of ethnic spatial compression represents a core element of our ethnocentrism-centered theory aimed at accounting for the excess of deaths due to interpersonal violence in Black America. Making a case for that etiological significance begins in this chapter and continues throughout the book. However, its meaning within the context of our theory requires a comparison to a companion analytic construct, the concept of ethnic spatial dispersion. We use both constructs to describe ecological manifestations of ethnic heterogeneity and ethnocentrism. Although the significance of these concepts for explaining racial differences in rates of interpersonal violence will become more apparent later, the two definitions below summarize the essence of the two ecological/demographic phenomena.

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Ethnic spatial compression denotes interactions and relations among diverse affinity groups within delimited and densely populated geographic spaces that are characterized by blurred cultural boundaries and turfs. Ethnic spatial dispersion denotes interactions and relations among diverse affinity groups within less geographically restricted and less densely populated ecological environments, and often with welldefined cultural boundaries and turfs.

Notes 1. Our theory suggests that despite notions of antiquity and permanence often attached to these group labels, their actual “social construction” occurs during the life courses of the individuals who claim such identities. As such, in a given social context, seemingly ancient sociocultural roots and attachments must be constantly regrown and reinvented. 2. See Cohen and Scull (1983) and Black (1983) for informative historically grounded assessments of the role of the nation-state in monopolizing social control, punishment, and the defining of acts of crime. 3. In the initial drafting of the book we used the term tribalism to describe the set of intergroup relations we now label as ethnocentric. We abandoned the use of that label not because it is an inaccurate descriptor of the phenomena we write about. Rather we did so largely because even at the start of the twentyfirst century, the term embodies sentiments associated with global racism and the biases inherent in a worldview that has at its core notions of the peoples of the earth as civilized versus primitive and inferior versus superior. 4. Although our theory is not aimed specifically at explaining acts of collective violence, it is clear that the individual propositions may be useful for understanding the etiological roots of both collective violence, which is more politically motivated, and the more individual-level acts of violence counted in crime statistics. Of course, there is a thin line between these two forms of violence. Much depends on how one defines group boundaries. In the American South, for example, some portion of white-on-black violence may have origins in what we are labeling affinity group ethnocentrism rather than broader dimensions of black-white racial animus. In essence, they may have reflected conflicts that at the local level were largely interethnic in the same ways that conflicts among whites were. Suggesting such, as we later show, does not mean that effects of racism should be discounted when seeking to understand lynching and other forms of anti-black violence that are well-documented facts within American history. Rather, we suggest that more nuanced accounts of those events will reveal elements of both classic white-on-black racism as well as the affinity group conflicts that happen to occur as a result of interactions that take place among individuals who happen to reside on different sides of the socially constructed lines of race. 5. We consider the affinity group to be the building block and/or functional equivalent of all those culture-laden groupings we described in this chapter’s introduction. Like those groupings, the salience and relevance of the social

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group to which we have attached this label and the intrarace identities it implies are subject to empirical operationalization and verification. 6. Obviously, such isolation has also resulted in phenotype differences that, in addition to culture difference, serve as markers of group identities. Cultural differences, however minor in some instances, are the true markers of our notion of affinity group identity. In this regard “ethnic group” and “affinity group” are clearly kindred concepts. 7. Support for our contention that ethnicity persists as an anchor of human group identities comes from the work of sociologist Edward Shils. While attempting to explain the persistence of skin color in human identity, Shils offers observations on that persistence. Blauner (1972, 19–20, footnote), citing a paper written by Shils, says “self-identification by color has its origins in the sense of primordial connection with which human beings find it difficult to dispense.” Shils sees race and ethnicity replacing kinship and locality as the crucial primordial identifications, and he links such attachments to “man’s need to be in contact with the point and moment of his origin.” Shils is unusual among modern scholars: he sees race and color as symbols that have a positive function for human group life. But in linking color with such values as kinship, nationality, and religion, the “primordial” approach continues to view racial identification in a nonrational, if not irrational, framework. Blauner’s concluding observations point to an ongoing debate with the social sciences surrounding the question of how race and racism fit into the human diversity and intergroup relations schema we have outlined in this chapter. Some observers, Shils among them, see distinctions based on race as a rational extension of the ethnocentrism phenomenon. It is seen as a more broad-based form of what might be thought of as cultural nationalism. But, given the wide range of cultural variation found within those groups deemed to be racially similar, other analysts see race as a largely irrational extension of a culture-based human classification schema. It is our contention that both ethnic and racial affinities are learned behaviors derived from sociostructural cultural continuities. Whether attachments to ethnic identities are primordial impulses or not, it is clear that they remain a central feature of humans’ self-identification and group-identification frames even at the start of the twenty-first century, and they remain so in defiance of some of the predictions embodied by the modernity narrative. 8. See Blalock (1967), who has argued that even in societies with extreme intergroup power imbalances, subordinate groups are not without some elements of influence and power. See also our earlier discussion of Blau’s theory of heterogeneity. 9. See Black (1983); Chambliss and Seidman (1971); Quinney (1970). 10. Whether and when it is appropriate to label violence as “internecine” depends largely on how one defines the group of interest, especially in the United States where we/they and us/them distinctions have been sharply drawn along racial lines. High rates of within-race violence among African Americans would at first appear to be somewhat anomalous and in contradiction of this proposition. Our discussion throughout the book shows the ways in which they are not anomalies.

6 Boxed In: Ethnocentrism and Urban Violence

The Meaning of All This. Two sorts of answers are usually returned to the bewildered American who asks seriously: What is the Negro problem? The one is straightforward and clear: it is simply this, or simply that, and one simple remedy long enough applied will in time cause it to disappear. The other answer is apt to be hopelessly involved and complex—to indicate no simple panacea, and to end in a somewhat hopeless—There it is; what can we do? Both of these sorts of answers have something of truth in them: the Negro problem looked at in one way is but the old world question of ignorance, poverty, crime, and the dislike of the stranger. On the other hand, it is a mistake to think that attacking each of these questions single-handed without reference to the others will settle the matter: a combination of social problems is far more than a matter of addition—the combination itself is the problem. Nevertheless the Negro problems are not more hopelessly complex than many others have been. Their elements despite their bewildering complication can be kept clearly in view: they are after all the same difficulties over which the world has grown gray: the question of how far human intelligence can be trusted and trained; as to whether we must always have the poor with us; as to whether it is possible for the mass of men to attain righteousness on earth, and then to this is added the question of questions: After all who are Men? Is every featherless biped to be counted a man and brother? Are all races and types to be joint heirs of the new earth that men have striven to raise in thirty centuries and more? Shall we not swamp civilization in barbarism and drown genius in indulgence if we seek a mythical Humanity which shall shadow all men? —W. E. B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro (emphasis added) A propensity to violence was not part of the cultural baggage black Americans carried with them from Africa; the homicide rate in black Africa is about the same as in western Europe, and well below the rate

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in either white or black America. Indeed, the black American homicide rate is three to five times the black African rate. Violence is something black Americans learned in this country. —Charles Silberman, Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice, citing Paul Bohannan, African Homicide and Suicide

T

he quotes above from the writings of DuBois and Silberman expose the challenges one confronts when attempting to devise a theory aimed at explaining persistently high rates of interpersonal violence among African Americans. DuBois’s comments are both eloquent and prescient regarding the analytic and conceptual dilemmas faced by those who would address the causal quandary that contemporary sociologists call intersectionality. The causes of most social phenomena are seldom unitary nor linear. The social problems confronted by African Americans represent an instance in which the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow abut multipronged contemporary barriers to economic and social progress. At the same time, Silberman reminds us that the use of the socially constructed notion of race may lead to erroneous conclusions regarding the causes of the racial disparities seen in rates of homicide in the United States. He noted that high rates of homicide among black Americans likely could not be traced back to any presumed African cultural roots. We believe that these observations support our efforts to consider the likely effects of cultural heterogeneity on rates of violence in African American communities, and they help frame the theory of ethnocentrism and homicide we outline in this chapter. Although we have chosen to cast our study within the mold of past work on social disorganization, our stated goal has been to inject new ideas and perspectives into that theory frame. What we lay out in the form of propositions below represents an attempt to condense and summarize the conceptual frame to which we only alluded in preceding chapters. These propositions are designed to link our discussion in earlier chapters of the nature of social disorganization and US intergroup relations to the explanation of ethnic and racial differences in rates of interpersonal violence. To the extent that black Americans are seen as possessing a singular culture and a common group identity, the well-documented and persistently high rates of within-race interpersonal violence found in black communities would seem to make for a rather curious anomaly. This observation is in line with the observations we made in Proposition 5.11 of the preceding chapter. Given our assertion that affinity groups as we

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define them share common cultural and social ties, extreme and persistent deviations from expectations in the form of interpersonal violence are unexpected and require explanation. Given the need for in-group solidarity and cohesiveness, such violence would appear to be decidedly anti-group and anti-ethnocentric.1 These are, of course, the observations made by all students of crime in society, hence the promulgation of terms such as deviance, antisocial behavior, social pathology, and social disorganization to describe various challenges to the perceived social order. Given those presumptions regarding culture, identity, and order, the historically high rates of homicide in Black America would seem to reflect prolonged and heightened departures from expectations of intragroup homophily. Since black Americans are often depicted within some popular and scholarly discourse as displaying heightened levels of social cohesiveness and solidarity in response to white racism, the high rates of interpersonal violence seen among them would appear anomalous for that reason as well. Given the solidarity that is said to have arisen in response to a legacy of external threats to their lives and personal safety, how do we explain the elevated rates of internecine violence observed in Black America over the last century and more? To posit, as we do, that much of what is labeled as within-group violence among African Americans is, in essence, interethnic or intercultural clearly requires greater elaboration and proof. That is our task in this chapter and those that follow. Recasting African American violence as a phenomenon configured largely along lines of ethnicity, even hidden forms of it, means that we must inevitably turn our attention to (1) describing the social processes that gave rise to the kinds of within-race diversity that we propose exists; (2) describing the social and social psychological dynamics that underpin it; and (3) showing the ways in which that diversity affects the etiology of acts of interpersonal violence. The third is of critical importance since, as we observed in the preceding chapter, there is nothing intrinsic in the concept of affinitive ethnocentrism that inevitably leads to intergroup violence, whether lines of demarcation are traditional lines of ethnicity or the seemingly more nuanced affinity groupings we have proposed. We lay out a series of propositions below that are intended to probe those questions by extending the logic and explanatory implications of those we listed in Chapter 5. They are designed to constitute the framework of a theory that combines considerations of both the social structural and social cultural dynamics that we deem causal contributors to ethnic and racial differences in levels of crime.

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The Explanatory Scope of the Present Theory Although the conceptual frame that underpins our theory of ethnocentrism and intergroup relations is broad-based and multidisciplinary, its etiological focus is rather narrow. Earlier, we signaled that the breadth of our theory is more limited than that of Unnever and Gabbidon (2011). It is also only an etiological slice of the social disorganization model. That is, we do not take on the task of explaining racial differences in rates of offending for all of those social behaviors and actions defined as crime. Further, in attempting to explain racial differences in interpersonal violence, we do not propose to examine via our theory the causal effects of those other important correlates of crime and violence identified by Shaw and McKay. Our focus is on the role of cultural heterogeneity. Finally, in the making of our theory, we treat as metatheory the fact that social class matters. We have devised a theory built on the presumption that the effects of ethnocentrism on rates and patterns of homicide are conjoined with the effects of poverty and comparative economic disadvantage (Bonger 1916). We do seek, however, to specify some of the ways in which that intersectionality impacts the violent behaviors of young black males.2 Violence in all societies is gendered, but while male-on-male violence among the young is a characteristic feature of all interpersonal violence, we propose that it is a signature element of ethnocentrism-related violence. Sociocultural interactions among young males are most likely to be conflictive in the ways that lead to acts of interpersonal violence. We also propose that the ethnocentrism-related social forces we describe affect encounters among young males both within and outside of classic youth gang structures.3 As we noted in preceding chapters, we see our theory as one that attempts to explain via a culture-focused approach what we consider an excess4 of lethal violence among African Americans. Given our acknowledgment of Shaw and McKay’s work as a template for our theorizing effort, we describe below the contours of a theory, which is quite consistent with their notion of social disorganization. To account fully for racial differences, we have attempted, as earlier noted, a historicized and race-centered analysis of the roots of violence within Black America. We believe that this approach represents a significant innovation vis-à-vis the original concept of social disorganization and also other efforts to explain racial disparities in rates of homicide in the United States. Because of the black-white comparative analysis we utilize, we will be able to pay only limited attention to other peoples of color.

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However, we think that the relevance of our reconceptualized model of social disorganization for the study of crime particularly among Latinos and Native Americans will be quite evident. Finally, although we cite literature designed to substantiate the propositions listed below, the reader must consult the evidence provided in Chapters 7, 8, and 9 to assess further the logic and plausibility of those propositions. Those chapters will lend credence and content to what we outline below. We begin our listing of propositions by revisiting the concept of the zone of transition.

Social Structure Meets Culture: The Making of Ethnocentric White America Average rates of homicide among white Americans far exceed those found among persons living in Europe, the European diaspora, and many other regions of the world. Within the United States itself, some regions display rates that far exceed that national norm. Largely unexamined in the criminological literature is the possibility that many of the regional deviations from national averages for rates of violence among white Americans may reflect the effects of cultural heterogeneity and ethnocentrism, as we have conceptualized them. In the urban areas, small towns, and rural areas of White America there is evidence of significant cultural divides and potentially competing affinity groups. Despite nationalistic narratives to the contrary, they may greatly affect intergroup relations and help account for the widely observed regional differences in rates of homicide among whites. The patterning and distribution of homicide may show evidence of ecologically configured conflictive ethnocentrism leading to elevated rates of interpersonal violence in those settings during the past and today. ■ Proposition 6.1: Before the Mayflower

Urban zones of transition like those commonly associated with immigration and urbanization in the United States had their counterparts in rapidly growing European cities during a much earlier period. Although poverty has been documented as a major correlate of the spatial distribution of crime and violence in those contexts, ethnocentric impulses amid the economic deprivation found in those cities on that continent before its colonialist diaspora may have accounted for some of the ebbs and flows of violent crime rates within them. For Europeans, out-migration of urban and rural residents to distant lands

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may have served to ease the intergroup tensions that led to conflictive ethnocentrism among them. Such massive people movements may, therefore, also help explain the now well-documented declines in rates of deadly interpersonal violence in European cities following that exodus (Gurr 1977, 1981). Ethnic spatial compression is a defining characteristic of the global urbanization process and was likely evident in the European context among increasingly diverse arrays of affinity groups arriving in cities from the continent’s hinterlands.5 ■ Proposition 6.2: The Close Quarters of

the Zone of Transition In the United States, ethnic spatial compression also characterized the urban zone of transition that was inhabited by repeated waves of white ethnic immigrants arriving in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Socioeconomic disadvantage within the spatially limited quarters of those transitional zones characterized the first phase of urban living for the nation’s culturally diverse white immigrant populations and contributed to crime and other indices of social disorganization within them. The zone’s ethnic heterogeneity also gave rise to both affinitive and conflictive ethnocentrism among the competing nationality groupings within them. This intersectionality of causal forces resulted in comparatively high rates of crime and violence. While inside the urban zone of transition, the enormous cultural diversity among urban white Americans was often concealed by the nationality labels assigned them. Thus, much of the conflictive ethnocentrism they displayed and that contributed to violent encounters may have been attributable to identities other than country of origin (i.e., subnationality cultural groupings). ■ Proposition 6.3: Out of the Zone and Free to Roam

Once outside of the culturally cramped quarters of the zone of transition, urban immigrants in White America experienced a decline in rates of homicide and other forms of interpersonal violence. Much of that decline has been attributed to upward socioeconomic mobility. However, unbound by the restraints of systemic racism and aided by the privileges of whiteness, once out of the urban zone of transition, generations of white American immigrant populations were able to exercise much greater freedom of movement across the nation’s exurban landscape. This resulted in a broad range of residential choices and largely

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unfettered control of the geographic turfs they inhabited. It also led to a much greater ethnic spatial dispersion of that populace thereby reducing the likelihood at the neighborhood level of prolonged bouts of conflictive ethnocentrism. This was a freedom of movement that had long been enjoyed by the settled old guard within White America who had arrived much earlier. ■ Proposition 6.4: To Roam Free or Die

in the Hinterlands Both the unfettered freedom to roam the American landscape and the effects of ethnocentrism figured prominently in shaping regional differences observed in rates of criminal violence in the United States. Variations in rates of violence among the ethnic old guards who preceded the immigrant waves of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries account for many of those regional differences. While subculture-ofviolence theorizing has predominated in attempts to explain the “exceptionalism” in rates of violence found in the American South and West, much of said violence likely stems from intercultural affinity group interactions and conflicts associated with ethnic heterogeneity and associated ethnocentric tendencies. Statistics documenting regional departures from national rates of violence suggest that culture-linked conflicts among White America’s immigrant old guard cannot be discounted as an explanation for the higher than average rates of violence in rural, small town, and large city contexts in those regions.

Social Structure Meets Culture: The Making of Ethnocentric Black America ■ Proposition 6.5: Africa Comes to America

Beginning as an assemblage of diverse African peoples with distinct and varied cultural heritages and arriving from a broad swath of that continent, Black America has also been a repository of non-African demographic and cultural roots. As a result of the legacy of slavery and subsequent laws, customs, and social policies that embody the primacy of race as a marker of social identity, the diverse peoples now residing in Black America are biologically and culturally much more diverse than the populace labeled as White America. However, in response to racial stereotype, the nation’s dominant political and ideological bents, and

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willful distortions of history, the enormous cultural diversity among black Americans has been ignored or downplayed. Although they remain largely overlooked features of life in both urban and nonurban Black America, that unacknowledged ethnic heterogeneity and affinity group diversity may be quite consequential. As in White America, those cultural divides may help drive the kind of conflictive ethnocentrism that sometimes leads to acts of lethal violence and may partly account for the size of the racial disparities long observed for homicide in the United States. ■ Proposition 6.6: The Cultural Churn

and African American Group Identities The cultural diversity now found in Black America has undergone tremendous change over the last four centuries. Beginning with its African moorings, its diverse cultural traditions have undergone repeated cycles of transformation and affinity group realignments. These have led to place-based social group identities that can be traced to both the west African past but derive primarily from repeated waves of internal migration within the continental United States. Because they have not been the subject of social scientific labeling and scrutiny or popular discourse, many of the cultural distinctions that have emerged in black communities are often subtly manifested and not easily discernible to the casual observer. Many affinity group–based cultural identities and attachments operant in black communities likely exist at the level of both the conscious and subconscious. That does not mean that they lack meaning and relevance for the shaping of social interactions.6 They impact social behaviors, including those that may give rise to violent interpersonal interactions. ■ Proposition 6.7: Boxed in by American Apartheid

American law, custom, and social policies have limited the options available for the culturally diverse population of African Americans to control the turf they inhabit. These externally imposed constraints have also limited the ability of African Americans to disperse spatially along the lines of either social class or ethnic/cultural differences. Consequently, the average black community is not only much more demographically diverse than its white counterparts but also more socioeconomically diverse. Apartheid-like restrictions on the movement and residential choices of urban black Americans are rooted in traditions that began in the colonial era and that grew to greater heights of social

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control in the Jim Crow American South. From the Jim Crow era to today, they have become a feature of the entire American landscape. Restrictions on the geographic dispersal of the black population accompanied the movement of black Americans from the South to the American West and North. In the aftermath of the Great Migration, this legacy of southern-born racial apartheid took the form of restrictions on the choice of place of residency within the urban core of the nation’s cities; later, the city-to-suburb moves by African Americans continued the southern-born apartheid legacy. ■ Proposition 6.8: Life in a Perpetual Zone of Transition

Although spatially confining urban living quarters are a defining feature of urban life and the white immigrant experience in the United States, race-centered social control and restrictions on movement and place of residence have defined much more profoundly the black experience in America. In urban Black America and beyond it has resulted in a perpetual zone of transition as the modal form of community organization. This perpetual zone is characterized by levels of ethnic spatial compression that are far more pronounced than that found in the less spatially constrained and often more ethnically homophilous urban areas inhabited by whites. In recent decades, nonwhite immigrants coming into US cities have also had fewer restrictions than black Americans have had on their residential choices.

Taking It to the Streets: Being Young, Ethnocentric, and Poor in Black America Having outlined the broad cultural/ecological parameters of a theory that we expand and clarify in subsequent chapters,, we now attempt to integrate within that frame additional propositions that outline other significant and interlocking causal forces at play in the production of ethnocentrism-centered interpersonal violence in Black America. Here we recall the words of W. E. B. DuBois cited above, who astutely observed more than a century ago that “a combination of social problems is far more than a matter of addition—the combination itself is the problem.” In the case of black American youth, the social harms that accompany this combination of social problems have been well-documented. However, as noted, our theory adds affinitive ethnocentrism and conflictive ethnocentrism to the long list of etiological factors that social scientists have offered. In addition to within-race heterogeneity, the

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causal intersectionalities that black Americans encounter include the effects of long-term socioeconomic inequality amid an enduring system of racial stratification whose effects include, but extend far beyond the effects of, ethnic spatial compression. The propositions below aim to address the ways that the unacknowledged, hidden, and wide-ranging ethnic and cultural diversity found in Black America interacts with age, gender, chronic poverty, joblessness, and ongoing interpersonal racial discrimination. This set of interactions makes for a toxic and lethal combination of social forces that we believe helps to account for the disproportionately high rates of violent crime that have been observed over time among African Americans in comparison to other Americans. Propositions 6.9 through 6.12 extend our concept of spatial compression to include attentiveness to the intersectionality of ethnic spatial compression with the other dimensions of that ecological reality. In this instance, we seek to extend that conception to the explanation of individual-level risk immersion occurring within the context of both within-race ethnic heterogeneity and concentrated poverty. The spatial compression–induced risk immersion we describe applies pressure on individuals in ways that heighten their natural reactions to stressful situations and social interactions, including those that may occur across affinity group lines. What ethnic spatial compression does is bring together large numbers of distressed individuals who tend to interact with higher levels of aggression toward each other. So not only is there significant affinity-group anchored collective risk immersion operating in these communities, but there is also risk immersion at the level of the individual (White, forthcoming; White, Ahonen, and Loeber, forthcoming). The inclusion of a risk concentration perspective is obviously not new within the social sciences. Indeed, the social disorganization model encompasses such considerations. But, as noted earlier, we believe that our more race-centered extensions of that model provide a potentially missing piece of the social disorganization theoretical puzzle. Consistent with the work of their colleagues within the Chicago School, Shaw and McKay’s (1942) depiction of “socially disorganized” communities as “natural” areas of crime is problematic in our view. Like other critics of the Chicago School, we contend that there is nothing natural about them if viewed as a product of risk immersion within intentionally constructed racial enclaves. Some have suggested that crime and other problematic behavioral repertoires are instead a quite human and predictable response to

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intense and toxic social stress in such ecological contexts. Under such intense pressure, the cumulative impact on human beings can be a heightened organic response to ever-present threats to survival (Blanch, Shern, and Steverman 2014). As we have shown, Shaw and McKay (1942) were sympathetic to this kind of concern as evidenced in their observations regarding the plight of juvenile delinquents of color. However, the lack of explicit concern shown in their original model for the effects of institutional and systemic racism belies to some extent their professed awareness of the causes of those youths’ plight.

Risk Immersion and Economic Strivings Within Culturally Cramped Quarters ■ Proposition 6.9: Foot Soldiers

The effects of ethnocentrism among diverse affinity groups interacting within the close quarters of spatially compressed environments will have their greatest impact on young males. Although older females and males within all cultures are often seen as the carriers and advocates of a group’s identity and heritage, evidence worldwide suggests that young males are often the boots-on-the-ground defenders of that same culture. As such, the ethnocentrically conflictive behaviors of urban African American males are not detached from behaviors and group interactions of others in the communities where they reside. They are part of a holistic affinity group community, and not separate and apart from it. Intervention and prevention modalities aimed at reducing such violence among youths must be cognizant of those broader etiological moorings.7 Among young males, the effects of affinity group–linked ethnocentrism on the propensity toward conflict and violence extend far beyond the activities of those who are part of youth gangs. Rather than serving as a cause of conflictive ethnocentrism, youth gangs likely arise in response to the potential for and the reality of a much broader display of affinitive ethnocentrism at play within the neighborhoods in which they reside.8 ■ Proposition 6.10: The Risky Business

of Being Young and Black Ethnic spatial compression of the cultural diversity in urban black communities leads to an elevation of already existing levels of risk for criminal involvement found among youths living in economically dis-

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tressed urban African American neighborhoods. The resulting spatially concentrated immersion in risk among black youths stems from the effects of that compression, but the concentrated risk derived from shared economic distress, in turn, serves to increase conflictive intergroup and interpersonal relations. The high rates of crime found in African American communities often serve as a pretext for contemporary boundary patrols and controls on ingress and egress within urban black neighborhoods. The racialized law enforcement that is used to enforce the boundaries of the perpetual zone of transition in urban Black America has become one of the currently most visible and controversial features of apartheid race-threat control (see Epp, MaynardMoody, and Haider-Markel 2014). Race-based and place-based social control aimed primarily at black youths not only imperil their lives and safety, but also assure the geographic concentration of Black America’s hidden cultural diversity. However, such efforts at spatial confinement and racialized surveillance would be untenable without the more broad-based systemic racism that has contributed historically to redlining and other policies that assure the perpetuity of racially isolated urban neighborhoods. ■ Proposition 6.11: Competitive Acquisitiveness

and the Search for the Pot of Gold The economic distress found within ecologically compressed urban communities results in both absolute deprivation and perceptions of relative deprivation. Actual and perceived deprivation will result in an array of social behaviors among residents designed to bolster selfesteem and social standing. Among them will be behavioral repertoires linked to competitive acquisitiveness (i.e., the effort to secure a measure of economic advantage and asset accumulation within a resourcestarved environment). Affinitive ethnocentrism does not define the nature of such strivings but will often serve to define the group boundaries of the conflicts that arise from such competitiveness. Competitive acquisitiveness is normative in the sense that it is rooted in the materialism and pursuit of property and consumer goods that are the essence of the American Dream (see Messner and Rosenfeld 2001). However, when that pursuit is driven by poverty and dire need and takes place in an ecological milieu characterized by hidden ethnic diversity linked to ethnic spatial compression, that striving may prove to be more problematic. Especially when coupled with perceptions of unfairness stemming from institutional racism and racialized law enforcement practices, that

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pursuit leads to injurious and deadly “overt conflict between individuals involving direct interaction” (Blau 1977, 2, as cited in Sampson 1984, 620). The deprivation-linked social and psychological dynamics described in the last two propositions above have been explored extensively by psychologists who have examined life in urban African American communities. We rely on many of the concepts and processes they describe to begin to pinpoint some of the interpersonal/interactional processes that lead from affinitive to conflictive ethnocentrism. Jagers, Mattis, and Walker (2003) summarize the work of African American cultural psychologists who, like us, examine the interface of culture and race. They report that these psychologists have “argued for analyses that reflected an appreciation of the cultural integrity of blacks” (2003, 306). The depictions of some of these cultural processes as they relate to crime and violence will undoubtedly be of much use in elaborating and testing at the level of the individual many of the conceptualizations of culture to which our ecological theory alludes. As a step in that direction, we employ terminology above that reflects a summation of many of the ideas described by Jagers, Mattis, and Walker (2003, 303–310). They use the terms acquisitive-assimilationist and acquisitiveoppressed to describe the culture-linked identities found within African American communities. In describing the larger conception that underpins these labels, Jagers, Mattis, and Walker (2003, 306, citing Boykin 1983) write, “Acquisitive individualism refers to an orientation in which the effective control and accumulation of people, material objects, knowledge, and influence is seen as a primary indicator of self-worth and social standing.” Beyond our use of terminology borrowed from that body of work, the concept of risk immersion also incorporates aspects of the kinds of identities and cultural dynamics described within cultural psychology. The conceptually rich body of research within that arena provides an invaluable addendum to the largely ecological arena within which we cast our theory.

Cultural Diversity, Ethnocentrism, and Gangs Given the similarities between the impulses that drive ethnocentrism and the development of gangs, a brief digression here is warranted. Many of the terms and conceptualizations that underpin our notion of ethnocentrism, particularly its more conflictive dimensions, have much

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in common with those used in the sociological and criminological literature to describe the origins, motivations, ideologies, and actions of criminal gangs. Those similarities are not a coincidence; as we showed in Chapter 5, many of the social and psychological impulses that make for gang formation and intergang conflict derive from the same social forces that drive more demographically broad-based expressions of conflictive ethnocentrism. Both are interlocking components of the same socioetiological puzzle. Unlike the pioneering efforts of American gang researchers writing at the turn of the twentieth century, modern gang studies most often ignore the importance of ethnicity and interethnic conflict. Except in roundabout ways, the larger and wider group racial and ethnic identities to which gang members lay claim are increasingly seen as irrelevant for our understandings of the reasons gangs are formed and the ways they behave socially. Some contemporary social scientists tend to depict modern gangs as adherents to dysfunctional subcultures far outside of mainstream American culture. They also depict them as set apart from the cultural traditions of the racial and ethnic groups with whom they share common identities and neighborhood turfs. At the same time, a common feature of both historical and more contemporary accounts of gangs among African Americans is the unquestioning acceptance of the premise that their communities are devoid of major ethnic or cultural cleavages and divisions such as those hypothesized in our theory. To the extent that those cleavages exist, they may help draw those lines of demarcation between groups that are now attributed to gang associations and identities. We contend that a close reading of both the US historical record and past and contemporary patterns of intergroup relations and conflict both within and across race and ethnic lines suggests that this view of modern American gangs must be reexamined and reconsidered. Our notion of ethnocentrism offers a framework for such a rethinking. It leads us to conclude that identities linked to ethnicity, tribe, or gang are overlapping concepts. The culture-focused arguments we make in this book suggest that a better understanding of contemporary African American gangs should involve attentiveness to the ways in which gang structures may stem from and mirror wider ethnic and cultural divisions found among African Americans. Our theory suggests that ethnocentrism’s role as a contributor to the high rate of interpersonal violence found in African American communities extends far beyond its impact on gangs. That fact may offer greater guidance for efforts aimed at devising more global preventive interventions, and it leads us to our final proposition below.

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■ Proposition 6.12: Gangs as Social Organization

Longitudinal studies of neighborhoods experiencing ethnic spatial compression will show that they display at the start of such compression a marked increase in violence among non–gang associated males. Gang formation will follow this uptick in such violence. In this sense gang formations, rather than serving as an indicator of social disorganization, are an effort at social organization amid the challenges to self- and group identity. In essence, many gangs are efforts at carving out neoethnic identities and new affinity groups amid much heterogeneity.9

Toward Testable Hypotheses We believe that the propositions above point the way to some potentially testable hypotheses. Accomplishing such a task within the confines of this volume is made difficult because much of our theory presumes both spatial and temporal change. That is, we describe change over time in rates of homicide and argue that such change is related to the movement of people across regions of the United States. Thus, much of our theory can be tested only using longitudinal and spatially disaggregated data of the kind often unavailable to criminologists. Nevertheless, below we advocate the use of such studies in the future. A second hurdle arises from the fact that despite its attempted grounding in history and intergroup relations, our essentially ecological frame cannot fully specify the ways in which ethnocentrism translates to actual behaviors and actions of individuals within the niches we have described. Ethnographic studies of the kind we cited in our introductory chapters are clearly needed to begin to address some of the on-theground dynamics we describe. For example, there is a need to (1) determine the characteristics of the distinct affinity groupings, whether nascent or not, that we purport to exist within spatially compressed black communities; (2) define the boundaries of those neighborhoods that are presumed to exhibit the ethnic spatial compression we posit; and (3) describe the precise social interactional processes that lead to intergroup conflict. The concept of risk immersion we describe in this chapter begins to explore some of the social and social psychological dynamics that drive ethnocentric interpersonal interactions. Some past research also offers guidance for describing the ways that affinitive ethnocentrism may play itself out at ground level. That research describes within-neighborhood

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culture-linked interactions that are not unlike those we presume to configure relations among affinity groupings within Black America. In summarizing some of the observations made by those who have described the possible ways in which these interactions may affect crime, Warner, Swartz, and Hawk (2015, 210) say, For example, like Suttles (1968), Guest, Kubrin, and Cover (2008:506) pointed to diversity potentially leading to “differences in language, use of the home and nearby streets, social etiquette, dress style, musical tastes and culinary patterns.” Which could lead residents to distrust out-group members and create uncertainty about appropriate behavior. Trust in neighbors and a sense of social norms are important precursors for informal social control (Gibson et al., 2002; Sampson, 2006a, 2006b). As Sampson (2006b) has noted, it is unrealistic to expect residents to engage in informal social control if they do not trust one another. Although all groups within the neighborhood might want to live in a crime-free area, residents’ willingness to engage in informal social control is likely to be affected by the extent to which different groups are viewed as sharing the same norms and values. Widespread interaction among groups might make the perception of shared norms and values more likely.

Warner (2014) explored these same dynamics in an earlier article. It is beyond the scope of the present work to probe the group interactional phenomena so eloquently summarized and described above. However, we think that the quote above accurately describes the core presumptions underlying our own theory’s depiction of intergroup interactions within Black America. The tendency of crime analysts to operationalize the concept of cultural heterogeneity largely along the lines of race is understandable, but it leads to an inattentiveness to the nuanced withinrace view of heterogeneity that we advocate. That said, we will move on to the task at hand, namely, that of attempting to derive from our theory reasonable hypotheses that might be subject to testing. Hypothesis 1: Determining the Reach and Breadth of Affinity Group Identities The largely hidden group identities and cultural boundaries we posit to exist in Black America encompass the whole of neighborhoods and communities. They are not limited to those youths and young adults who are disproportionately involved in acts of interpersonal violence. And although the ethnocentrically conflictive violence that they give rise to within spatially compressed communities is found primarily

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among the poor, the affinity group identities are not confined to those economically distressed communities alone. We contend that the distinctive values and norms that define those cultural boundaries are shared by all members of the communities in which they exist. If adequately conceptualized and measured, the often hidden and nuanced core cultural differences we hypothesize to exist within African American communities will be evident across lines of gender, social class, and age. Social science methodologies associated with network analysis may provide a mechanism for beginning to describe and measure within-race affinity group diversity within African American neighborhoods. In their informative analysis and discussion of ethnic heterogeneity and social disorganization as they relate to “racially homophilous social ties and informal social control,” Warner, Swartz, and Hawk (2015) use methods that could easily be adapted to the study of presumed affinity groups in Black America. Their survey of 2,300 respondents and analysis of friendship networks revealed differing effects of network ties on trust by respondents and presumed collective efficacy within the areas they inhabited. When such network analyses have been used within black communities, they have been used to examine gang turf battles or, more recently, the spatial concentration of the cycles of retaliatory homicide and other interpersonal violence found in urban neighborhoods. We are suggesting the use of such network analysis to define and measure those more broad-based but largely hidden identities we propose to exist in these same communities. That said, although studied as interracial phenomena, the homophily-centered social psychological dynamics that Warner, Swartz, and Hawk hypothesized and found support for in their data are analogous to the kinds of dynamics we propose to exist among affinity groupings within black communities. See also Marsden (1988); McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook (2001); Quillian and Campbell (2003); Shrum, Cheek, and Hunter (1988); Warner and Rountree (1997). Hypothesis 2: Heterogeneity on the Road Looking back, ethnocentrism-enhancing social forces resulting from ethnic spatial compression and increasing cultural diversity will be evident all along the migration paths that African Americans followed from their southern locales to non-southern urban areas. Obviously, this is a hypothesis whose testing requires the use of longitudinal data of the kind that many criminologists who study race and crime have not often utilized. In Chapter 8 we present and assess

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historical evidence in support of this contention. Based on that historiography, we propose that (1) despite the imagery of a historically violent South, African American homicide rates should be lowest in the rural south; (2) those rates will begin to show evidence of significant increase as culturally distinct groups of former slaves migrated to southern cities via an internal migration prior to the mass movement to the North and West; (3) rates should climb even higher in the stopover points along the “sundown town” migratory paths northward or westward; and (4) rates of homicide should peak during the first years of residency in their urban destinations. Hypothesis 3: The Significance of Place In Black America, a person’s “place of origin” before the Great Migration began may be a predictor of the basic contours of the cultural distinctiveness that social groupings display within the urban environment.10 Ethnographic work done within urban black communities will reveal neighborhoods with distinctive patterns of heterogeneity among native-born residents based on their ancestral place of origin within the United States. Affinity group identities and boundaries within those neighborhoods will reflect regional differences in place of origin.11 Hypothesis 4: The Family Network Connection Because affinity group identities are anchored in family and kin networks, for the youths within them the place of origin of parents and grandparents (or earlier) will be the best marker of youthful cultural identities and concomitant patterns of intergroup conflict. The importance of extended families and kinship networks as sources of social and economic support within Black America has been well documented (e.g., see Stack 1974). That these networks may also become markers of personal and group cultural identities is not only quite plausible but likely. Hypothesis 5: The Effects of Abrupt Social Change Because the process of cultural group formation is an ongoing process, an excess of interpersonal violence will be evident in those African American communities experiencing sudden or accelerating increases in levels of group heterogeneity. Rapid internal migration provided an impetus for such sudden shifts in intrarace diversity at the neighborhood level during the early to mid-twentieth century. The demolition of pub-

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lic housing in recent years has had similar effects. Far from reflecting conflictive ethnocentrism derived from gang interactions alone, increasing rates of interpersonal violence are driven by much broader affinity group conflict modalities that are ecologically determined. Hypothesis 6: On Collective Efficacy and Hidden Diversity Collective efficacy. (Sampson, Morenoff, and Earls 1999) has been shown to be a predictor of varying levels of crime and interpersonal violence within similarly situated economically distressed neighborhoods. We propose that within Black America, levels of affinity group heterogeneity will be a predictor of the extent to which those grouplevel crime-fighting values and communal practices are evidenced. Hypothesis 7: The Intersectionality Effect Comparative levels of risk immersion and conflictive ethnocentrism, when defined by heightened neighborhood-level affinity group diversity and the density of clusters of economically disadvantaged high-risk youth, will be directly related to higher levels of interpersonal street violence and homicide. The intersectionality of within-race heterogeneity with traditional indices of risk will exacerbate their violence-linked effects. Hypothesis 8: The Homicide Connection Once adequately measured, those communities and neighborhoods within Black America with the highest levels of affinity group diversity along dimensions of residents’ place of origin and related heterogeneity constructs will display the highest rates of homicide. Controlling for socioeconomic status, residential mobility, and other relevant predictors, those communities within Black America with the highest levels of cultural diversity will display levels of interpersonal violence that are equally disparate and in excess of the “norm.”12

Conclusion In this chapter, we sought to achieve two objectives. We situated our theory within not only Shaw and McKay’s (1942) pivotal social disorganization concept but also other allied criminological and social sci-

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ence research deemed to be of importance for explaining ethnic and racial disparities. We provided in a summary format key propositions designed to show how ethnocentrism, culture, racialized social control, and the nation’s racial-spatial divide intersect in ways that affect the etiology of interpersonal violence in the United States, including levels of ethnic and racial disparity. The chapters that follow add substance and content to these largely unsubstantiated observations. Figure 6.1 is a conceptual schema that casts our theory within the framework of Shaw and McKay’s (1942) theory of social disorganization, as depicted by Sampson and Groves (1989). Although we have retained all of the original factors deemed to be of causal significance in the original model, we do not address the ways in which these interface with our added paths and concepts. That must await future theory-making efforts or testings of our theory of ethnocentrism. However, we sought to incorporate conceptions that have been found to be of utility in post–Shaw and McKay theorizing and research designed to better depict the ways in which the effects of the Box 1 variables are mediated and moderated. The model also contains other refinements and additions designed to bring racism into the etiological picture. These include the effects of racial segregation and racialized social control responses to the high rates of interpersonal violence known to exist within poor, socially isolated urban communities of color. In the chapters that follow we examine the bodies of historical and social scientific research that lend credence to this revised model of social disorganization and our theory of ethnocentrism.

Notes 1. And, indeed, this is the way that violence within Black America is often viewed by both blacks and whites and by both the general public and those who study crime. What is routinely labeled black-on-black crime and violence is seen as a frequent occurrence but rather curious phenomenon. Black activists during the 1960s argued that it is an indicator of black brainwashing and selfhatred and a tendency to inwardly direct the anger that arises from white oppression. These views related to self-hatred can also be found in a wide range of studies of black life found in the psychological/psychoanalytic literature (e.g., see Grier and Cobbs 1968; Kardiner and Ovesey 1951; Poussaint 1972, 1983). Similarly, the intraracial nature of most violent crime among African Americans and its high rate of occurrence has also propelled the subculture of violence theories and conceptualizations found within the social sciences. 2. For example, it is our view that ethnocentrism, as we define it, is far less likely to impact domestic violence, most (but clearly not all) incidents involv-

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Figure 6.1 Social Context of Ethnocentrism

Low economic status Ethnic heterogeneity Residential mobility Family disruption Urbanization

Systemic institutional and structural racism

Racial hypersegregation Concentrated poverty Ethnic spacial compression Cultural and conflictive ethnocentrism

Sparse local friendship networks Unsupervised teen groups Gang formation Low organizational participation Competitive acquisitiveness

Race- and place-based surveillance

Interpersonal criminal violence

Legal and public response

ing female-on-female violence, violence among older males and females, infanticide, and so on. We think that ethnic tensions leading to conflictive violence are more likely to occur in public spaces and are more likely to be labeled as street crime. 3. We do not rule out the likelihood that although young males are most likely to display the kinds of conflictive ethnocentric behaviors that lead to personal violence, others within spatially compressed neighborhoods are also affected by the across-group tensions we describe. Young females and older adults will also likely display some of the boundary-setting and group identity protection behavioral repertoires we have identified. 4. While the term clearly lacks precision, we use it to refer to the seeming inability of past theories and analytic models to use “conventional” variables such as measures of socioeconomic status, psychological and developmental “traits,” family functioning, and other such variables to account for race differences. 5. This suggests that colonialism-linked migration from Europe to the Americas and elsewhere (1) served as an escape mechanism for ethnic groups who were at a power or numerical disadvantage in terms of maintaining their group identities in Europe; and (2) eased the pressures created by cultural conflicts arising from increasing population densities in urban Europe. 6. We believe that many of these nascent identities may operate in ways not unlike the cross-race subconscious biases now being examined within social psychology to study race prejudice. That is, many of the perceptions of affinity

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group differences operant with black communities may be in response to subliminal primes as well as more visible and recognizable cues on the part of interacting parties. Conversely, we believe that black Americans are fully cognizant of the many region-based identities that we describe in Chapter 8. 7. As an ecological theory, our discussion here clearly avoids the thorny issue of what individual-level and group-level interactions drive the conflictive confrontations among actors involved in interpersonal violence. For example, decades-long research findings on homicide in the United States have highlighted the fact that victims and offenders are hardly complete strangers. However, most male-on-male homicides do not involve intimates to the extent that male-on-female or female-on-male violent offenses most often do. At the same time, it is also true that DuBois’s use of the phrase “dislike of the stranger” in the quote we cited earlier was not meant to describe the dislike of total strangers in the broadest sense but rather the dislike of the cultural/ethnic/racial “other.” That said, given the likely existence of hidden, nascent, and partially formed identities and subconsciously detectable identities we posit to exist in black neighborhoods, the traditional distinction between strangers versus acquaintances must be reexamined. Within a spatially confined environment many of those we are labeling as potentially culturally distinct groupings need not be strangers to each other either in the traditional sense of the term or in the DuBoisian sense. Nevertheless, if our theory is correct, they would also not be “brothers” who share a common cultural focus. Newer and finer distinctions along these lines will be needed in order to test the theory. 8. Our reference is to youth gangs alone. Criminal gangs involving adults respond to quite different social, political, and economic realities that are often less place-centered. 9. We believe that some support for this position comes from the work of Thrasher (1927). While propinquity effects dictated most of the youth gangs’ intra-ethnic origins, he noted several instances of youth gangs that involved youths from more than one ethnic group. 10. Given our discussion throughout the book, it is clear that we do not consider these cultural distinctions and levels of ethnic diversity to be entirely a result of the entry into the United States and into Black America of the more recent waves of people of African descent, such as those described by Berlin (2010) and many other observers. Rather, in this instance, place of origin distinctions are just as likely to derive from regional and place differences among native-born African Americans. 11. Berlin (2010, 17–21, 25–31, 80–84, 136–139) found that both black slaves and free black persons showed a decided attachment to their places of origin in the United States. Such attachments were quite evident as slaves were transported to different places on the East Coast or westward. We contend that evidence of an attachment to specific places of origin in the South has been quite prevalent among blacks who left that region during the Great Migration. The growing reverse migration paths of returning blacks are often to those same points of origin. 12. We recognize the difficulties involved in attempting to define what is meant by excessive in this instance. However, we believe that once fully con-

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ceptualized and measured, methods can be devised to attempt to “control” levels of affinity group diversity across similarly disadvantaged black neighborhoods as a means of determining the floor for rates of interpersonal violence. Of course, this has been the agenda of the Chicago neighborhoods study of youths and crime that we have referenced.

7 Old Guards and Newcomers: Ethnocentric White America

The history of ethnic groups in America is a history of institutional resistance to assimilating forces, and the ethnic revival is only the latest chapter. —Stephen Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? Why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind. —Benjamin Franklin, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind”

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lthough our theory-making is directed toward explaining violence and homicide in Black America, the discussion of White America in this chapter is vitally important and logical for several reasons. The interlocking histories of blacks and whites in the United States mean that the stories we tell of cultural diversity, intergroup relations, and violence among them are inextricably linked. Earlier we noted that our theory describes social interactions that are in some ways race invariant and universal. To the extent that those interactions configure rates and patterns of crime and violence, causal effects associated with these rates and patterns are also not entirely race- or group-specific. Hence, many of the etiological processes that we describe within Black America can be found among whites. That said, our examination of ethnic heterogeneity and criminal violence among both American whites and blacks faces analytic obstacles, some of which we have already described. One obstacle comes in the form of a methodological constraint. Widely used official data make it difficult for contemporary social scientists to probe the extent and significance of ethnocultural differences and examine their effects on patterns of homicide and other crime. The study of the kinds of intrarace cultural diversity we seek to explore via our theory is virtually impossible as a result of census population counts and crime statistics that are now aggregated along the lines of “whites” versus “people of color” (Short 1997, 7). In criminology, as in all science, the nature of the data made available to analysts often determines the kinds of questions asked and the substance of theories that are devised. All is not lost. We have shown how the disaggregation by researchers of urban homicide data from an earlier era reveals their usefulness for examining the effects of nationality on homicide victimization and offending among whites. Often overlooked studies of cultures of violence among whites in the United States have produced data and theory that assist our efforts to explore ethnic heterogeneity among whites and its potential ties to levels of homicide. We also consult writings that are more epistemological and conceptual in their approach to bolster our contentions regarding the etiological significance of white cultural diversity. They include scholars who have challenged popular perceptions of a culturally homogeneous America. Below and in the two chapters that follow, we use these assorted historiographical, criminological, and social scientific research streams to describe and compare both White and Black America. Each is described in terms of its ethnic and cultural diversity, patterns of immigration and migration, and rates of homicide and interpersonal violence.

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White America: How Culturally Diverse Is It? Our theory challenges in numerous ways prevailing conceptions of both race and race effects, as these are often conceptualized and applied to the study of group differences in rates of interpersonal violence. We have called for more nuanced and skeptical examinations of the causes and correlates of those differences that are presumed to be linked to race, as opposed to other group-level attributes. With ethnic heterogeneity as our conceptual anchor, we have proposed that Black America contains significant cultural divides that have been overlooked and unanalyzed. We also propose an association between that diversity and patterns and rates of homicide observed in African American communities. If homicide in White America is affected by these same causal mechanisms, we must first understand the range of cultural diversity that exists within its boundaries. During the last half century, important work has been done that challenges much of what is presumed to be known about the extent of cultural differentiation in White America, including the kinds of affinity group identities that we describe in Chapters 5 and 6. Much of this research rebuts the views of US and global societies that we present as popular narratives in Chapter 4. It poses a robust challenge to these popular narratives and counters the idea that we are a nation whose culture and politics reflect one nation and one people. The rejection by Glazer and Moynihan (1963) of the cultural melting pot thesis is seen by many as the firing shot in the war of words this counternarrative has produced. They proclaimed that White America had retained much more of the ethnic and cultural diversity than is often acknowledged. Writing decades after the latest waves of European immigrants were presumed to have become fully assimilated into American society, their pronouncement came as something of a shock to many in both academia and the public at large and engendered a lively debate that continues today. More than fifty years later, a similar but even more provocative, melting pot–debunking commentary appeared. It is found in the widely acclaimed 2011 book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. Colin Woodard documents the extent to which sharp regional divisions along the lines of culture and politics have always existed in North America. He says they existed before our nation’s formation as an autonomous political entity and they persist today. He also suggests that the fault lines among the regional interests in the United States and Canada have grown ever wider over

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time. This widening has fueled culture wars, constitutional struggles, and, in recognition of the divides, frequent pleas for unity. Largely peaceful political struggles among these groups characterize modernday competition, but the past is said to have seen conflicts that were marked by much more interethnic violence and hostility. Woodard describes as meaningless those extant labels used to analyze US politics and to assess America’s cultural and regional divides. He eschews terms such as the Northeast, the West, the Midwest, or the South. He describes them as boundaries that simply denote those of their constituent states in complete disregard for the continent’s actual settlement history and sectional rivalries (2011, 4–5). They ignore or do not align with what he considers the true boundaries of the nation’s cultural divides. For Woodard, the eleven cultural regions he describes best depict the spatial distribution of America’s white European cultural heritages.1 One feature of Woodard’s analysis of particular relevance for our theory is his discussion of the ways in which the eleven regional cultures evolved into the entities they are today. From the start, he notes that there were clearly dominant cultural groupings within each region, but they were far from being culturally homogeneous or nonconflictive along ethnic lines. To the extent that an American melting pot has existed, he says it has come in the form of a coalescing of competing cultural clusters into the distinctive cultural flavoring that exists within the eleven regions today. He believes that each regional culture has tended to absorb over time incoming cultural diversities. For example, fully acknowledging the cultural impacts of later waves of European immigration, he emphasizes the cultural primacy of the variants of culture found among the nation’s earliest arrivals when he says, “Did not the arrival of millions of Irish, Germans, Italians, Slavs, Jews, Greeks, and Chinese in the course of a single lifetime herald the birth of a genuinely ‘American’ (or for that matter, ‘Canadian’) identity that cemented the country together to fight two world wars? The short answer is no” (2011, 254). He notes that the geographic boundaries of those regional cultures were affected by the spatial mobility patterns of those earliest white immigrants after their arrival in North America. Regional boundaries did not remain static as their original inhabitants moved about the continent. Those spatial mobility patterns are said to have also affected the ways that later-arriving immigrants blended into preexisting cultural/political streams. He goes on to describe the ways in which his eleven regional entities continued to flourish and maintain their distinc-

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tiveness despite such inflows of potentially competing cultural influences. In this sense, Woodard portrays white America as a series of regional melting pots, as opposed to a national cultural blender. Newcomers to each region take on the cultural ethos of the preexisting regional cultures they inhabit. These preexisting regional cultures are said to have changed the indigenous cultures that immigrants brought with them from their homelands, even if many aspects of those cultures remained intact. Woodard provides some evidence to support his contentions regarding the coalescing of the regional cultures and their absorption of incoming cultural variants. Linguistically, new arrivals would take on the speech styles and regional dialects of English that existed in the areas to which they migrated.2 Woodard asserts that they also gradually took on the values, norms, and mores of these preexisting regional cultures. If Woodard is correct, the nationality labels conveniently used as proxies for the presumed norms of various ethnic groups in the United States are decidedly inaccurate measures of culture. For example, even amid the nation’s assimilationist narratives, nationality labels are still used to describe groupings of white Americans (e.g., the Boston or Chicago Irish, New York City Italians, etc.). If Woodard is correct, over time, an Italian-American ethnic grouping found in Chicago would be quite different, culturally speaking, from a similar community of their kindreds found in New Orleans or New York City. In Chapter 8, we suggest that the same may be true of regionally separated groupings of African Americans. Once arriving in Yankeedom, New Netherland, or New France, Woodard’s analysis and our theoretical propositions suggest, the ethnic identities of newcomers would gradually undergo stages of neo-ethnicity in response to the dominant cultural streams within those regions. Of importance in the present discussion is the extent to which the regional, cultural, and ethnic patterns found within White America inform what we know about white homicide rates and distributions across the American landscape. We offer speculation and some facts in that regard later. A part of that calculus is the question of the extent to which these rounds of neo-ethnicity and nascent ethnicity have led to varying degrees of conflictive ethnocentrism. The American South may provide some clues in this regard. Among the regions of North America described by Woodard, perhaps none has more consistently developed and maintained a more distinctive identity than has the white South. But, rather than treating the South as a vast and culturally uniform region below the Mason-Dixon line, Woodard

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divides it into four distinctive regions. It is well known that the South as a whole is an area distinguished by its high rates of white homicide as compared to other regions. Woodard (2013) observes that in the southern regions that he described as New France, Deep South, Tidewater, and Greater Appalachia, homicide rates are two to three times higher than in the three Yankeedom states of New Hampshire, Maine, and Minnesota. Of the states with the ten highest rates of homicide, seven are in these regions (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-andstate#MRreg). We review more extensively the research on this regional disparity in our discussion below. Beyond Glazer and Moynihan and Woodard, numerous others have challenged the notion of cultural uniformity in White America. Steinberg (1989, 2004), while noting the perennial importance of race and class as determinants of social status in the United States, describes what he calls “ethnic pluralism.” His is a revisionist view of the American white ethnic past that supports, but is at times at odds with, Woodard’s version of the story. Both clearly seek to debunk the notion of an overarching American national identity that is devoid of cultural schisms. However, unlike Woodard, Steinberg suggests that the waves of newer immigrants added new fault lines to the American cultural landscape. While noting that the gradual assimilation of white newcomers into old guard cultural streams was not seamless, Steinberg does seem to accept aspects of Woodard’s gradual assimilation thesis. For instance, citing the revival of attachments to ethnic roots during the era in which he wrote, Steinberg (1989, 72) paints a picture of a pot half melted when he observes, “A considerable body of evidence now points to the conclusion that at least in the case of ethnic groups with European origin amalgamation can no longer be dismissed as apocalyptic nonsense. History seems to bear out the contention of the melting pot theorists that amalgamation is an inevitable last step in the assimilation process.” Other researchers have highlighted the role of intergroup conflict and violence as a part of the cultural assimilation process. Like Woodard, they have noted that cultural group interactions become contentious as groups compete for physical and cultural turfs and economic advantage. For example, Shanahan and Olzak (1999, 40) note that the process of amalgamation has been characterized by a great deal of resistance and intergroup conflict, and suggest that While national mythology hails the United States as a country of wellintegrated and assimilated immigrants, historical reality offers a very

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different account. Indeed, American national history has been marked by persistent episodes of ethnic collective conflict, exclusionary movements, and racial violence. The mid-nineteenth century KnowNothing movement, the anti-Chinese mobilization of the 1880s, turnof-the-century nativism, the 1920s revitalization of the KKK, and the more recent “English Only” movement are but a few examples of social movements that sought to exclude immigrants. The existence of these movements offers a vivid counterpoint to national folklore, suggesting instead that contentious race relations characterized the American experience.

Although one may question the accuracy of Woodard’s portrait of an ethnically diverse and ethnocentric White America, it does offer much support for the potential accuracy of our theoretical conceptualizations and propositions. Therefore, we conclude our discussion of the melting pot counternarratives with our condensed summary of the key points he outlined in his book’s introduction (2011, 1–19; emphasis added): • The cultural divides and senses of personal and group identity that were evident among the continent’s eleven regional “nations” existed before and during the establishment of Canada and the United States as politically unified entities. Those cultural divides persist today, and the fault lines among them may be growing. • Far from being simply carriers or repositories of cultural traditions, these regional areas were and are also fierce competitors for economic resources, land, settlers, and political power. Cultural scripts are weapons in those battles. • Because these regional groupings were relatively small, demographically speaking, at the outset, the sheer size of the North American terrain meant that some of the potential for conflict in regard to cultural values, norms, and beliefs, and the competition for resources could be minimized through intentional geographic isolation within commonly shared areas, and, when needed, a retreat into new, largely uninhabited (by whites) areas of the continent. As distances have “shrunk” with new transportation technologies, so has the ability of diverse groups to isolate themselves from each other.3 • Repeated waves of new immigrants, including many from parts of Europe not represented by the cultural heritages found among those “founding” North American white racial groupings, have affected the nation’s cultural diversity. However, they have not led

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to a cessation of those earlier conflicts or the cementing of a supra-ethnic national identity.4 • The racially subordinate status of African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and other people of color has meant that they have had a minimal role in configuring the largely white-on-white competitive conflicts among America’s cultural nations.5 Nevertheless, their presence has added much to the cultures of the regions they inhabit. Often their cultural influences have reshaped the dominant white cultures. Cross-cultural and cross-racial melting pots exist within the United States, but they exist within the confines of each of the nation’s cultural regions and are distinctive in their characteristics. Hidden and Nascent Cultural Diversity Within White America: A Still Bubbling Melting Pot? Woodard’s (2011) analysis and those of Glazer and Moynihan (1963) and Steinberg (1989) are quite in line with our revisionist views of African American cultural identities. However, we contend that each of these informative studies, like prevailing assessments of black culture, may understate the extent of cultural diversity among white Americans. We believe that it is highly likely that both immigration and internal migration within the United States by America’s white ethnics resulted in the kinds of culture-linked affinity group differences we describe in Chapter 5. And, as is the case for black Americans, much of that subethnic group cultural diversity likely affects patterns and rates of violence in White America. As in Black America, this underestimation of the range of cultural diversity is of far greater relevance at the local levels, where the predispositions for acts of violence are ecologically manifested, than at regional or national levels. We think that hidden cultural diversity exists in various ways among both old guards and newcomers in White America. For the old guard immigrants who are heirs to Woodard’s eleven regional nations, the one nation, one people narrative has led to a downplaying of the hidden diversity among them, especially within the rural and small town areas where many continue to reside. While Woodard argues convincingly regarding the extent of cultural differences across regions, we remain skeptical of his claims of cultural solidarity within those regions. Indeed, such skepticism provides the impetus for our theory. For white immigrant newcomers, the underestimation of cultural diversity is linked to America’s melting pot thesis, but it is also aided

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and abetted by the widespread use of nationality labels to mark their presumed cultural boundaries. Such labels conceal the ethnocultural diversity that exists in almost all relatively large nation-states. Thus, they are especially problematic for the study in White America of the kind of affinity group ties we have described. For example, white immigrants of the past, like those immigrants of color arriving today, clustered into groupings upon arrival that reflected cultural identities that often were not nationality based. Instead, they reflected an attachment to regional and more localized places of origin within the countries from which they came (e.g., south versus north or coastal versus hinterland cultural roots, different geographic/geologic terrains, specific cities, etc.). Thus, most immigrants left their nations of origin as assemblages of affinity groups and continued to remain within them after their arrival in the United States. As Jenkins (2014, 617) notes, So-called chain migration transplanted networks of family and friends from European villages to American neighborhoods so that the patterns of living that confronted new immigrants were not as dislocating as one might expect. Immigrant languages and customs survived, and social relations were reconstituted in secure and friendly “safe havens.”

Such observations led Zahniser (2014) to suggest that while treated as culturally unitary nationalities within the United States, the Ellis Island immigrant bands represented culturally defined, fully delineated, and often spatially isolated ethnic and subethnic clusters of the kind that we call affinity groups. This pattern of people movements is perhaps a characteristic of all human migration (Berlin 2010). We are not suggesting that nationality labels do not carry some cultural weight and relevance. For example, it obviously mattered immensely if Jewish newcomers to the United States were from Poland, France, or Italy. Apart from language differences, the diverse affinity groups among them likely manifested other region-linked cultural differences. Similarly, Berlin (2010, 213) has found that more recently, black immigrants to New York City from Africa and the broader black diaspora chose neighborhoods that reflect their current nations of origin on the African continent, Latin America, or elsewhere. Hidden cultural diversity among newcomers also stemmed from the fact that in Europe, as elsewhere in the world, national boundary lines have in many instances resulted in culturally homogeneous groups’ being assigned two or more national identities. For instance, at the

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beginning of the twentieth century, there was no independent state of Poland, and the Polish people were in provinces ruled by Germany. Also, many European national boundaries were repeatedly altered by warfare over several centuries. Hence, for those reasons as well, nationality is hardly the best indicator of the full range of authentic ethnocentric groupings that arrived here. Given the zone of transition as an initial place of residence for those culturally diverse newcomers arriving in the urban United States, much more diversity may have been evident within them than was envisioned even by Shaw and McKay (1942). To the extent that very diverse ethnic subgroups often came from the same nation, their nationality labels alone often were clearly inadequate as descriptors of those affinity groups. Such labels also led to a miscalculation of the true range of cultural diversity found within that residential zone. It is also probable that this same kind of subethnic and affinity group clustering could be observed in the later internal migration patterns of these same groups within the United States. For example, it may be that immigrants from southern Italy were likely to choose to take up residency in some of Woodard’s eleven cultural regions while those from central Italy chose other regions. If intergroup relations for these two groups were marked by conflictive ethnocentrism either in Italy or the US city where they first resided, their choices of separate regions would obviously be beneficial. But, should they have chosen the same regions, opportunities for a continuation of conflict would persist. Indeed, Silberman’s (1978) observation cited at the start of Chapter 3 may reflect affinity group configured migration to the US mainland from Puerto Rico that was culturally selective. The pre-1970s flows of migrants may have resulted in cultural clusters in New York City that came from the same or very similar affinity groups on the island. Woodard’s tracing of the historical expansion of the eleven regional cultures as the nation expanded westward may also offer other clues regarding the concealment of diversity in White America. He describes how both those regional cultures he labels as Appalachia and the Deep South gradually spread west. He describes those places within western regions where carriers of these formerly eastern cultures settled. Given the East Coast port-of-entry of most of the earliest non-Hispanic white immigrants, westward expansion and movement were seen among members of each of Woodard’s groupings. However, the decision to leave the East for points West was more pronounced among some of those peoples.

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Those migratory pathways have long been noted by American historians, but often they are described largely as demographic shifts rather than movements of ideas, values, beliefs, and other dimensions of culture. Obviously, as Woodard notes, they are both. Our theory raises questions regarding whom to believe. Did those westward movements by both old guards and newcomers lead to the coalescence of diverse cultures, as Woodard suggests? Or did it result in new fault lines à la Steinberg, many of which may be unrecognized? In Chapter 8 we note the same kinds of geographic dispersals of cultural groupings among African Americans and ponder the same questions. In sum, both pre- and post-immigration affinity group clustering patterns and misleading place of origin labeling may have increased greatly the range of ethnic variation found within White America. And, even if Woodard is correct in asserting that ethnic and intra-ethnic immigration did not alter the existing regional cultures, they certainly added new cultural variants into those regions, thereby increasing the cycles of affinitive ethnocentrism and conflictive ethnocentrism that accompanied their eventual assimilation. We believe that those patterns of ethnocentrism and conflict may have much to do with those regional differences in rates of homicide often associated with the southern culture of honor described below. Our theory asks whether those regional differences can be attributed to intergroup conflicts rather than adherence to violence-promoting norms. We believe that if studied with the more nuanced cultural analytic frame proposed in our theory, Woodard’s nation of eleven regional cultures, like urban zones of transition, may house an exceedingly more complex and diverse group of competitive white “American nations” than those he describes. Whether more or less diverse than presumed, each of these settings has been said to have experienced the kind of cultural transformation processes we describe below. Cultural Amalgamation in White America: Assessing the Evidence If White America is a cultural pot that has melted and is still melting, why do the nation’s cultural fault lines persist and appear to have grown? Are there social forces at work that might counter the culturally separatist tendencies seen across Woodard’s American “nations” and the hidden diversity we have described? Those are questions to which we now turn. A central tenet of the modernity thesis we described in Chapter 4 is the belief that premodern allegiances and identities would

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either wilt away entirely or be transformed into newer, more cosmopolitan identities and cultural affiliations, particularly within the urban environment. Those societal transformations are reflected in rising rates of intermarriage across ethnic group lines, the blending of once distinct friendship and other informal social networks, and cross-group mergers of formal social institutions such as religious organizations (Blau, Blum, and Schwartz 1982). With such blending of bloodlines and cultural traditions is said to come much greater cultural homogeneity and fewer competing, ethnocentric, and identifiably “ethnic” social groupings. Cultural assimilation and amalgamation, alongside economic prosperity, are thought to account for the declining rates of homicide and other crime found in White America during the last half century and more. These are the reasons given for the crime drop that white immigrants experienced once out of the zone of transition. Although this take on white American crime is treated as something of a truism, we see the need to question its factual basis given our accounting of persisting cultural divides in White America. We contend that the historiography and social science that purport to describe the lives of white immigrants in the United States have often fallen victim to the popular narratives of the Americanization process that we have described. We think it worthwhile to address in a cursory fashion some of the pivotal questions one needs to ask regarding the cultural amalgamation thesis presented by Blau, Blum, and Schwartz. What is the evidence of increased rates of intermarriage across ethnic lines? Given freedom of choice, did white Americans opt to live in culturally heterogeneous communities thereby increasing their exposure to culture-sharing opportunities? Was there a widening of friendship networks and a blending of ethnic group–centered social institutions? What other indices of social change are useful for assessing the factors that may contribute to the seeming persistence of ethnocultural schisms within White America? During the post–World War II era, there does appear to be a movement toward achieving some but not all of the assimilationist objectives we have described. For example, Blau, Blum, and Schwartz (1982) found that while within-group marriages were the norm, the nation’s burgeoning ethnic heterogeneity was positively related to rates of intermarriage in US cities. Ethnic diversity within the urban context appeared to lead to an important form of ethnic amalgamation. The authors noted that marriage is affected by the opportunities of groups to interact, especially within the close quarters of the urban environment. Therefore, conflicts of the kind that lead to criminal behavior are not the

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only form of social interaction that may arise within a multicultural and heterogeneous environment. Other studies have reported similar findings. However, Steinberg (1989, 68–71, 73), after reviewing evidence that rates of ethnic intermarriage were on the rise and that they led to weakened group solidarity, concluded that the white immigrant past was one of “institutionalized resistance to assimilating forces.” Some evidence also suggests that once freed from the confines of a space-limited and heterogeneous zone of transition, America’s white ethnics did not flock to the kinds of residential settings that appear to have been studied by Blau, Blum, and Schwartz (1982). Often they sought refuge within ethnically identifiable and culturally homogeneous neighborhoods. To the extent that intermarriage occurred, it often occurred within ethnically and culturally defined group and place boundaries. For example, Holli and Jones (1977) provide an excellent collection of historical accounts of the ways that these spatial arrangements were played out in the Chicago area long after their zone of transition residency. Often depicted as a city of neighborhoods, Chicago was during the early twentieth century a quilt-work of ethnic enclaves, and in many respects that defines its civic character even today (Sampson 2012). Furthermore, although US suburbs are often depicted as the penultimate expression of the nation’s melting pot, Holli and Jones detail the ways in which many of the oldest post–World War II suburban communities surrounding Chicago were merely extensions and replications of their core city precursors. The same patterns were observed in the suburbs of other large cities. Thus, while Farley et al. (1978) would describe America’s racially segregated residential patterns as “Chocolate City, Vanilla Suburbs,” most of the nation’s largely white suburbs from the very start were mostly white but hardly multiethnic melting pots. While the suburban fringes as a whole were quite diverse, the tendency to view them aggregately concealed the ethnic and cultural homogeneity of the individual towns and neighborhoods that comprised them. Even within truly ethnically diverse suburban towns, many of their neighborhoods were ethnically and culturally homogeneous. We believe that the jury is out regarding the extent to which the modernity-linked transformations we described have taken hold in urban White America, as well as in the hinterlands beyond. And while few will question the ameliorating effect on social problems of higher socioeconomic status, it has not been proven that as immigrant groups became more upwardly mobile, their identity as middle-class whites became more salient than their identities as members of various Euro-

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pean ethnic groupings. Further, it is not clear that middle-class status and upward mobility are inherently incompatible with the retention of decidedly ethnocultural identities. Much of the needed historiography on this topic has not been written or has been slanted toward confirming the expectations of a unified and culturally homogeneous America (Steinberg 1989). Claiming Panethnic Whiteness and Its Privileges Some have suggested that the cultural/ideological glue that helped to promote an abandonment of the diverse ethnic identities in urban White America was neither amalgamation nor economics but rather race. In recent decades and in response to such claims we have witnessed a growing literature on “whiteness” in America that has been written by historians, sociologists, legal scholars, and many others. Left only partly explored in that literature is whether an embrace of whiteness indicates a disavowal of what are typically thought of as ethnic identities. That is the topic we now address albeit in a very cursory way. Painter (2010, 288–289) notes that perhaps the dominant theme in all of US history has been an enlargement of whiteness and its use as a descriptor of the prototypical American. After centuries of enlargement and repeated cycles of neo-ethnocentrism, Feagin (2014) argues that present-day whites see themselves as the only quintessentially authentic Americans. Although the struggles by newcomer southern and eastern Europeans to avoid the label of “nonwhite” or only “near-white” have been well-documented, they were clearly not the first to face this struggle, as Painter observes. The statement by Benjamin Franklin with which we began this chapter reflects the belief during colonial times that whiteness was primarily a characteristic of the English. Franklin was among the many early colonists who believed that non-English immigrants threatened the American way of life. Beginning with the Irish, subsequent immigrant groups have gradually been admitted to the enlarging but still selective white “club” (Hacker 1992, 9). The presence, from the nation’s beginnings, of two large populations of nonwhites in the form of Native Americans and African slaves clearly helped motivate efforts at the enlargement of whiteness. However, just as entry into the regional cultural spaces described by Woodard (2011) has historically involved conflict and violence, so too has the struggle to embrace whiteness. Well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, those deemed to be whites in the United States

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continue to wage the ideological, political, and psychological battles perceived as needed to gain or shore up their skin tone identities. Like Franklin, those admitted to the club of whiteness have continued to view incoming immigrants as inherently criminal and incapable of becoming full-fledged Americans. But, as in the past, whiteness remains a fluid and ever-changing category. Recent census data reveal that many Latinos who once described themselves as nonwhites are increasingly more inclined to choose to be “white.” And while Arab Americans have traditionally been seen as white, terrorism has led many to question the appropriateness of the label for them (Ibish 2008, 7). And, although black Americans are typically seen as somewhat “beyond the pale” in terms of the contemporary white versus nonwhite debate, the legacy of “miscegenation,” racial “passing,” and legal and quasi-legal terminologies such as “quadroons,” “octoroons,” and “mulattoes” suggest otherwise. Although much of the research and discourse on whiteness has tended to focus on the United States, it is clear that Painter’s and others’ notions of the enlargement of whiteness is also a European story. Whiteness is part of a pan-European sociopolitical ideology centered on race more broadly conceived; the term has long been used in Europe. But, when transported to the United States, it becomes a race-linked conception that places extreme emphasis on skin color as the primary marker of group identity. It was perhaps this recognition by W. E. B. DuBois, who was also familiar with the roots of European racism, that led him to coin the phrase “color line” to describe the ascendancy of skin tone as a paramount and consequential human characteristic.6 As for the United States, we began by asking whether the strong and persistent regional differences in culture that we have noted make problematic the process of assimilation into panethnic whiteness, and vice versa. The answer appears to be in the negative. Little doubt exists that, despite the wide array of ethnic and cultural diversity that white Americans brought with them to America from Europe, they derived obvious benefits in the Americas not so much from those diverse cultural heritages as from the fact that those heritages permitted their claim to “whiteness.” Immigrants found much appeal in the notion of a superior white European culture, especially if their heritage phenotype and culture were allowed by gatekeepers to be a part of it. The ascendancy of whiteness as a preferred and sought after social status did not bode well for people of color. They often became the punching bags for white ethnics aiming to prove their racial worth and belonging. The economic and political competition that marked con-

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flicts among white ethnic groups was also often expressed in conflicts between those groups and nonwhite groups (African American, Asian, Hispanic). Olzak (1990) has noted that both urban violence against blacks and rural southern lynchings increased with intensified interracial competition and attempts to widen the tent of “whiteness.” The half century and more after the Civil War experienced a nearly perfect storm of conflictive intergroup relations of this type. The period witnessed the Great Migration, political challenges to white supremacy in the South, increasing immigration, and severe economic downturns. In the South, lynchings served to bolster white supremacy and along with Jim Crow led to the racialized legal and normative regimes that still drive American race relations today. Messner, Baller, and Zevenbergen (2005) have shown that this legacy positively influences contemporary levels of black homicide and white-on-black argumentmotivated homicides even today. McVeigh and Cunningham (2012) found that Klan activity in the 1960s undermined community cohesion and the legitimacy of local authority, leading to increases in southern homicide during the 1960s and in later decades. Via our propositions, we show how the legacy of Jim Crow and its social structural embodiments extend far beyond the South. Of course, conflicts between whites and blacks have never been limited to the South. Between 1877 and 1914, two-thirds of the episodes of ethnic/racial violence targeted blacks (Shanahan and Olzak 1999). Such findings suggest that although our theory does not address directly the issue of collective interracial violence in the United States, such violence is obviously part of the social control and social structural dimensions of our concept of ethnic spatial compression. We have seen that despite the overlay of white privilege, the United States has not been without its cultural divides. At the same time, it is clear that a culturally divided White America has also derived tremendous benefits from its embrace of the label of “whiteness” (Olzak and Shanahan 2014). The crystallization of the nation’s color line meant the coming to the fore of a skin tone continuum with “blackness” and “whiteness” marking its extremes. Regarding the present theory-making exercise, these developments meant that • Although they continued to be the victims of religious intolerance and conflictive ethnocentrism, newcomers within the European immigrant population were able to take advantage of the opportunities for spatial retreat and isolation that had long been afforded the old guards that preceded them. While they experienced some resistance, newcomers who were Irish, Italians, Greeks, Jews, or

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Poles could join the trek into the American hinterlands unencumbered by obstacles often encountered by African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. Whiteness also protected those white ethnic “movers” from the customs and laws at the state, regional, and local levels that placed restrictions on the internal migrations of African Americans.7 • Using their skin tone identities as a protective shield, these same newcomers were able to avoid the kinds of racialized restrictions on their spatial mobility and residential choices once they left the zone of transition. Whiteness facilitated their ethnic spatial dispersion within the boundaries of the nation’s cities and their suburban and exurban fringes. Through mortgage lending practices and redlining, white skin tone facilitated efforts at securing and maintaining the kinds of economic resources associated with declines in rates of crime and violence. • Once resettled in the rural areas, small towns, suburbs, and large cities, whiteness protected inhabitants from the Jim Crow–linked practices of racialized social control, policing, and surveillance that characterized life among people of color, especially African Americans. From the start of our theory-making venture, we, like Kornhauser (1978), have railed against what we consider rather simplistic depictions of US society as a nation that houses a singular dominant or mainstream culture and an assortment of peripheral subcultures. Our historyinformed analysis of ethnic and cultural heterogeneity in White America in this chapter raises serious doubts about the accuracy of that still prevalent view of our nation’s cultural mix. We have also contested the idea that group differences in rates of criminal involvement can be attributed to the presence among those subcultural groupings of decidedly deviant and antisocial variants. We continue our critique of that popular notion in the discussion below.

Crime and Violence in a Culturally Diverse White America We began this chapter by noting the methodological and conceptual difficulties one encounters in telling the story of the effects of ethnic and cultural diversity on rates of typically one-on-one acts of violence. Thus, research on what we have labeled conflictive ethnocentrism and its ties to lethal violence by whites, while not nonexistent, is not abun-

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dant. But there is ample documentation of the role played by ethnic group identities and ethnocentrism in producing collective violence. And, as we noted in Chapters 5 and 6, the boundary between these two forms of violence is often a very thin line. Because conflictive ethnocentrism is largely a group-level phenomenon, it is often manifested in the form of both collective and individual acts of violence. Indeed, our theory is designed to explore its ties to ordinary street crime. Olzak (1990, 1992), Shanahan and Olzak (1999), and Olzak and Shanahan (2014) have extensively documented the effects of immigration and internal migration on the struggles among various social classes. They highlight the targeting of lower-class groups as the typical victims of violence often perpetrated by those more economically advantaged. They note that in the period between the Civil War and the 1920s, a huge influx of immigrants created fierce competition among the old guards and newcomers for employment as unskilled labor. As the “inferior races” of eastern and southern Europe arrived in large numbers in the United States, they met with nativist campaigns, violent group confrontations, and attempts to exclude them from various parts of the labor market (Olzak 1990, 1992). Our theory suggests that this competition also led to individual acts of violence—both lethal and nonlethal assaults. Our contention is partly supported by the data presented in Chapter 3 on inter-nationality homicides for New York City and Chicago. Whiteness, especially within the United States, spans a very diverse array of affinity groupings; however, the benefits of white privilege are not evenly distributed among all who wear that racial label. And, as among black Americans, the conflicts that arise amid the competition that Olzak and her colleagues described are associated with varying levels of homicide. While we agree with Olzak that the lower classes may bear the brunt of acts of collective intercultural violence, our theory suggests that conflictive ethnocentrism also takes a toll in the form of acts of interpersonal violence and homicide committed by those equally economically disadvantaged. As we have shown, our theory probes the dynamics of hierarchies of dominance and privilege, and culture-linked intergroup conflicts within the same demographic base. “American Exceptionalism”: Why Are White American Homicide Rates So High? A now very widely cited finding is the fact that homicide rates in the United States are much higher than those found in other industrialized

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nations, particularly the nations of Western Europe from which the ancestors of most “white” Americans emigrated. This is true whether one compares overall US rates or rates for whites alone to those found in European nation-states. If they were a single entity, the whites alone in Woodard’s eleven cultural nations would have one of the highest homicide rates on the globe, and they would have held that distinction perhaps since the end of the Civil War. Monkkonen (2006) labeled this an instance of “American exceptionalism.” This cross-national disparity raises the question of whether the ethnocentric impulses we describe in our theory may help account for it. If the research that we reviewed is any indication the verdict is not in, but past research offers some tantalizing clues regarding that possibility. Before we consider the role of ethnicity in producing high rates of homicide in White America, we begin by providing some long-term historical perspective. In doing so we may gain insights into white exceptionalism in homicide, and whether it may derive from the same social forces that drive high rates of black homicide. Researchers have observed that homicide in Western Europe has declined since the Middle Ages. But, for the past 200 years, the United States, despite some ebbs and flows and countertrends among some subpopulations, has experienced the opposite trend (Eisner 2003; Gurr 1989a). Gurr (1989b), Short (1997), and others have noted that explaining the decline of homicide rates in Europe poses a challenge for criminologists and historians because it occurred and continued during a period of rapid industrialization and urbanization on that continent. Many criminological theories, including that of Shaw and McKay (1942), have suggested that these two social transformations provide the ideal incubator for those social processes that lead to rising crime and violence. Among crime analysts, one of the most widely noted, but contentious, explanations for the European decline has been Elias’s (2000) thesis of “the civilizing process.” Elias described what he believed to be the long-term development and widespread acceptance among Europeans of greater social control and personal self-control. Thome (2001, 71) later described the “major pacifying forces” that Elias believed to have brought about this development, which include the following: • The creation of the state monopoly of violence and its subsequent legitimation in the processes of democratization. • The extension of the market economy implying the elongation of action chains and increasing functional interdependencies between individual and collective actors.

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• The promulgation of a culture of nonviolence, increasing condemnation of and even revulsion at the infliction of serious bodily harm including corporal punishment. • The transformation of personality structures in the direction of increased self-control.8 Those who favor the Elias explanation (Pinker 2011; Spierenburg 2001; see also Roth 2009; Schwerhoff 2002) have attempted to explain the failure of the United States to follow the European lead. They have asked whether the American exception is due to the absence of the pacifying forces described above within the American context, or other factors. As many have noted, to the extent that lower rates are said to reflect civility, such speculation forces us to ask whether America is less “civilized” than Europe. Short (1997, 4–9) sees shortcomings in all of the extant attempts at explaining American exceptionalism. While our book’s introductory chapters decried the lack of explanations for high rates of black American homicide, we witness here a similar inability among criminologists to explain white violence, especially changes over time. Beyond the work of Elias, the varied attempts to explain American exceptionalism vis-à-vis Europe include (1) widely varying and competing assessments among Americans of the legitimacy of a state monopoly on the use of force as well as subcultures that encourage the use of violence as a means of social control (Black 1983); (2) the persistent belief in the right to self-defense despite some concessions to the state’s monopoly on the use of force (Spierenburg 2006);9 and (3) the presence in the United States of distinct subcultures of violence not found in Europe. Support for the first two lines of explanation is evident in the nation’s perennial debates over gun control. Recent surveys suggest that the ownership of weapons for self-protection is commonplace among Americans. Over half those participating in Gallup surveys since 1959 indicate that they have a gun in their home, and two-thirds of gun owners say they own guns for protection against crime (www.gallup.com /poll/20098/gun-ownership-use-america.aspx). The laws of the states also permit or encourage the use of deadly force in self-defense (Currier 2012; Volokh 2006). Gun ownership is said to both reflect the distrust of government and also provide the instruments that make assaults rather commonplace and more lethal in the United States than in Europe and other nations. Black’s (1983) discussion of “crime as social control” also has a bearing on the extent of the perceived legitimacy of the state’s monop-

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oly on the use of force (LaFree 1998; Pinker 2011). Echoing to some extent Sellin’s (1938) notion of culture conflict, Black highlights conflicts that have emerged with the rise of the modern nation-state. He notes that what traditional societies may have regarded as appropriate forms of social control (e.g., “violent modes of redress such as assassination, feuding, fighting, maiming, and beating” [Black 1983, 34]) are now regarded as crimes. He also notes that in modern societies, homicide is often “a response to conduct that the killer regards as deviant” (36). It is essentially a form of capital punishment. Viewing the modern scene, Black sees a resemblance between gang conflicts and clan feuds. He also suggests that the use of crime as a “self-help” tactic is connected to ethnicity and race through collective liability in the sense that, “whereby all of the people in a social category are held accountable for the conduct of each of their fellows,” “people might be held collectively liable because of their neighborhood, social class, race or ethnicity” (Black 1983, 38). Black’s observations lend credence to our contention that similar social and psychological forces related to what we have labeled conflictive ethnocentrism may impact rates of interpersonal violence in a variety of contexts. We are inclined to see the kinds of perceptions and intergroup interactions Black describes as driving forces for not only acts of collective violence but also ordinary street crime. There is much similarity between some forms of collective and group interactions described by Black (1983) and current depictions of African American inner city violence as reflecting cycles of revenge killing, self-help, and retaliation. Our theory suggests that whether these are seen as “ethnic” or “racial” intergroup interactions depends largely on the naming labels we attach to those groups involved. Our theory suggests that hidden affinity group boundaries serve as markers of such intergroup interactions in both Black and White America. We contend that the extent to which the state monopolizes force in the United States is but one factor that leads to varying levels of self-help. A related consideration is the degree to which US citizens and residents accord a legitimate monopoly on force to agencies and agents of the state. The proposition that homicide rates vary inversely with the degree of legitimacy accorded to social institutions has been propounded by LaFree (1998) as an explanation of homicide rates since World War II. Roth (2009) cited it as an explanation of trends in homicide rates throughout colonial and postcolonial American history (see also Dykstra 2010; Pinker 2011; Rosenfeld 2000). Of course, varying perceptions of state legitimacy as reflected in trust in the police and the

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criminal justice system are also used to explain levels of criminal involvement among the nation’s ethnic and racial minorities (e.g., see Tyler 1990). Even if the legitimacy of the state is granted, the uneven and racially biased application of the law often leads to self-help-related homicides among black Americans (Hawkins 1983). On the Role of White Ethnocentrism: Regional Cultures and Homicide Before reviewing recent research on a white southern culture of honor and the other culture-based explanations for white homicide, we should review the context in which cultural explanations are situated in recent scholarship. During the 1970s and 1980s, criminologists relied on the analytical distinction between cultural structure and social structure popularized by Robert Merton, perhaps giving too little heed to his statement that the two “merge imperceptibly in concrete situations” (1938, 672). Mainstream criminological theories fell into two camps: structuralists—mainly strain and control theorists—who emphasized the role of variables such as poverty, economic inequality, population mobility, and age structure, and subcultural or cultural deviance theorists, who emphasized the importance of values in conflict with the values of the dominant society, especially as embodied in the criminal law. Theories that described a southern subculture of violence fall into the latter camp (e.g., Messner 1983; Lee and Ousey 2011) Although it is clear that attempts to explain the nation’s exceptionalism regarding violence are ongoing and unsettled, we think that many of the positions taken may offer insight into the social dynamics that our theory probes. We now ask whether the intergroup dynamics we describe in Chapter 5 can be used to explain the comparatively high rates of homicide observed in White America. How does the wide range of cultural diversity that likely persists among whites affect the outlier status of the United States in regard to acts of deadly violence? We find the observations of Black (1983) particularly informative as a conceptual bridge that may help us probe these questions. When discussing the nature of clan feuds among whites and their similarities to gang conflicts in urban America, Black (1983) observed that some groups might be more likely to be held collectively liable for the alleged transgressions of their members. We now use those observations as an opening for our discussion of the now often overlooked literature on the regional differences in rates of violence among whites in the United States. This is a body of literature that stresses the etiological

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importance of culture for our understanding of homicide rates and trends. We think that this literature is important despite the fact that it has not always conceptualized interconnections between cultural diversity and violence in the ways that we do in our theory. Our review below of the highly contentious and unsettled literature in this tradition is not meant to be exhaustive or fully critical of the positions taken, which is not needed to show their relevance for our theory-making effort. Instead, we use it to illustrate the recognition by social scientists of the wide range of cultural diversity in White America and its relevance for our understanding of place and group differences in rates of homicide. Southern Exceptionalism, the Herding Hypothesis, and Homicide in Appalachia Scholars offer several cultural explanations for the widely noted high rates of homicide in the American South (Gastil 1971). The most common explanation is that southerners are more likely than residents of other regions to adhere to a “culture of honor.” Roth (2009) says that in such cultures, self-concepts are based on external respect and approval. Men, in particular, are expected to respond aggressively to any perceived slight to their honor or the honor of family members and be prepared to use violence in self-defense. Consistent with the explicit and implicit tenets of our theory, researchers have observed that this culturebased explanation pertains more to argument-motivated homicides than to homicides motivated by the commission of robberies and other felonies (Lee and Shihadeh 2009; Nisbett and Cohen 1996). In assessing the impact of a southern honor culture on homicide, Lee (2011) and Lee and Ousey (2011) apply Swidler’s (1986) conceptualization of culture as “a repertoire of strategies for action” (Hackney 1969; Lee and Ousey 2011, 901). In contrast to our theory, which places emphasis on a conflict of cultures, much of the research we review favors the traditional subculture of violence approaches. We conclude our discussion in this chapter by showing the ways in which these two approaches lead to explanations for violence in White America that are not entirely inconsistent. The rise of an honor culture (or cultures) in the South is variously attributed to the importation of European agricultural herding practices to southern areas where other forms of agriculture could not thrive; the dueling traditions of southern elites; the effects of slavery; and the repercussions of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The vari-

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ous explanations for southern cultures of honor map well with Woodard’s description of the American nations of the southeast United States in that • The Tidewater area includes the eastern coastal lowlands of Virginia, Maryland, southern Delaware, and northeastern North Carolina. Tidewater was founded by English gentry “who aimed to reproduce the semi-feudal manorial society of the English countryside” (Woodard 2011, 7) as landed aristocrats with slaves who took the place of peasants. • Greater Appalachia was founded by “rough, bellicose settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of Northern Ireland, northern England, and the Scottish lowlands” (Woodard 2011, 8). They brought with them a combative attitude emphasizing individual freedom. From the southern highlands, the nation spread to southern Indiana, Ohio and Illinois, the Ozarks, and eastern Oklahoma and Texas. • The Deep South was founded by slave owners from Barbados and persisted as a slave society until the Civil War. From Charleston, the Deep South nation spread to South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, most of Louisiana, western Tennessee, and parts of North Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas (Woodard 2011, 9). Woodard’s southern nations correspond to the various sources identified for southern cultures of honor, with a combative herding culture dominating Greater Appalachia and the dueling tradition and the effects of slavery promoting an honor culture in Tidewater and the Deep South. Most of the recent scholarship on a southern culture of violence focuses on the herding culture thesis (Cohen 1998; Lee, Thomas, and Ousey 2009; Nisbett 1993; Nisbett and Cohen 1996). A pivotal component of the culture of honor thesis stems partly from anthropology-based conceptions of hunting and gathering and pastoral societies versus settled agricultural societies. Both in the past and today, herding of livestock as a form of economic production is said to predispose people worldwide to the violent stances of the code of honor. The economic instability of the pastoral lifestyle is said to make them vulnerable to the ebbs and flows of their economies. Their livelihoods can be lost in an instant by the theft of their herds. To reduce the likelihood of this occurring, it is said that pastoralists cultivate a posture of extreme vigilance toward any act that might be perceived as threatening in any way, and they respond to such threats with sufficient force to

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frighten the offender and the community into recognizing that they are not to be trifled with (Nisbett 1993, 442). Attempts to test this hypothesis in the United States have met with mixed results, largely due to methodological issues rather than problems of conceptualization. Nisbett (1993) found that homicide rates for argument-based incidents are higher in the “hills and dry plains” rural counties where herding is the common agricultural practice. Cohen (1998) revised Nisbett’s work and proposed a strong cultural deviance hypothesis in which greater social organization is associated with higher argument-based homicide rates in the South and lower homicide rates in the North. In the South, the cohesion of the culture of honor is enhanced by social organization, whereas the northern regions are portrayed as less likely to have such cultural practices in the first place. These findings were challenged by Loftin and his associates (Loftin and McDowall 2003; Rivera, Chu, and Loftin 2002), who found no support for the honor culture hypothesis once statistical issues with the data were addressed. Later research, with more refined indicators of culture, has been more supportive of the hypothesis (Andreescu, Shutt, and Vito 2011; Baller, Zevenbergen, and Messner 2009; Lee, Thomas, and Ousey 2009). Thus, the concept of a culture of honor arising from herding traditions remains a viable explanation for high levels of homicide in the South. But, it may be in need of further refinements. Research by Baller and his associates suggests that slavery may also play a role in producing such a culture. We explore that possibility below. Dueling, Slavery, and Homicide in the Deep South and Tidewater In revising the culture of honor hypothesis, two additional sources of that tradition have been proposed. These include the practice of dueling as it persisted for southern elites and the contagion effects of the institution of slavery on nonelite slave owners and whites of lesser social status. Roth (2009) notes that after the American Revolution, southern homicide rates rose dramatically. Although he attributes this mainly to the shaky political stability and legitimacy of the new republic, he also notes the prevalence of dueling as a method for political elites to settle their differences—possibly an effect of the lack of legitimacy of and access to formal social control. He notes that among upper-class men in both the North and the South, the duel was a formal and highly ritualized event. Dueling persisted far longer in the South than in the North, as indicated by one of its foremost practitioners, President Andrew

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Jackson. But as Roger Lane (1997) observes, honor violence was common among men of all walks of life. Some have suggested that brutality of the institution of slavery reinforced the violent predispositions associated with the honor code (Roth 2009, 157–161). Thomas Jefferson was among the first to note the pernicious effects of slavery on slave owners, complaining that the children of slave owners were “nursed and educated, and daily exercised in tyranny” and thereby “stamped by it with odious peculiarities”10 (cited in Painter 2010, 110). Tocqueville found that the southern slaveholder was a “haughty, hasty, irascible, violent man” who also lived a life of idleness while his slaves did the work (cited in Painter 2010, 127). Lane (1997, 350) describes the southern institution of slavery as “an economic system built on the continuous exercise of physical force.” The continued subordination of African Americans after the Civil War required continued violent repression. Lane asserts that the daily need to assert personal dominance, first by slave owners over slaves, second by whites of any social status over blacks, and finally by any man as he related to men of the same race, institutionalized a culture of honor throughout the South, among both whites and African Americans. Roth (2009, 210ff) adds that after the Revolution, mastery of whites by whites was important to the self-esteem of the southern man. The “American Dream” of southerners was to own enough slaves to afford and need white subordinates or “understrappers” to act as overseers. For poor and middle-class whites, lacking access to elite status in the semifeudal hierarchy of the South, it was important to defend one’s honor as one’s most important social capital. Disrespect by blacks was intolerable, and disrespect by whites had to be answered with violence or convincing threats of violence. Using Woodard’s (2011) labels, a culture of honor rooted in the need to dominate African Americans and maintain a tough reputation among whites would extend beyond Appalachia to include Tidewater and Deep South nations. We can find no research that examines regional effects on homicide using categories that map the American nations described by Woodard, but we suggest that research using these categories might prove fruitful. Earlier we noted the high rates of violence found in the South as compared to New England. Of the seven southern states among the ten states with the highest homicide rates, five are entirely or almost entirely in the Deep South (Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Georgia) (www.deathpenalty info.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state#MRreg). See also Lee and

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Bartkowski (2004); Lee et al. (2007); and Lee and Shihadeh (2009). In addition to a regional effect, researchers also find that the percentage of the residents who have southern origins and the concentration of southerners are predictive of homicide, especially argument-related homicide, in regions outside of the South. Despite the findings we have reported, this line of research remains very much unsettled regarding the definitiveness of conclusions that one can reach. Many have suggested the need to explore the possibility of multiple sources of a culture of honor in the South, and whether the impact of the sources of that culture differ by location and by race. In response, Sowell (2005) has suggested that the code of honor culture is race invariant to a large degree. And while some have questioned whether the culture still has legs today, Baller, Zevenbergen, and Messner (2009) find that the antebellum characteristics of southern counties, including the percentage of the population that was enslaved in 1850, are predictive of modern homicide levels.11 This assortment of findings suggests that our insistence on emphasizing a long view of history may be justified and that further examination of the sources of a southern predisposition to violence is warranted. We also believe that, based on the work of Thorsten Sellin (1938) and others whom we have cited, we must ask whether many argument-centered homicides, which analysts in this arena have described as largely intracultural phenomena, are in reality intercultural. That is, to what extent are high rates of violence and the codes of conduct that drive it configured by the inter–affinity group ethnocentric impulses that we describe in our theory rather than by the dictates of a code of conduct? As in the case of homicide among African Americans compared to whites, researchers have concluded that etiological factors beyond poverty and relative economic deprivation help account for regional differences. And, in many instances, they have leaned toward subcultural constructs to account for observed group differences among whites. We suggest that the search should be widened to include intercultural constructs.

Conclusion A close reading of the historical record reveals significant and persistent cultural divides among white Americans that have often gone unacknowledged and their sociological relevance unexplored. Ethno-

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centric allegiances and identities among whites remain part of the social and geographic terrains that constitute American society. Competitory ethnocentric allegiances have resulted in a long history of intergroup conflict and struggles in White America. Many different ideological currents have contributed to the inattentiveness to the cultural heterogeneity found within White America. These include the rise of a social/political movement aimed at cementing a national identity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The presence of large numbers of culturally distinctive but underprivileged racial minorities also led to a rallying around “whiteness” as a panethnic group identity. The conflicts between aspiring whites and people of color were a part of the attempts of immigrant groups to define themselves as white (i.e., not “colored”). The claiming of ethnically segregated turfs has been the means by which white ethnic groupings have sought to maintain what they perceive to be their unique cultural identities. For the nation at large, regional areas and small towns have been part of that legacy. Within the urban environment, they have consisted of neighborhood enclaves. The absence of ethnicity-linked restrictions on the geographic mobility of the nation’s diverse white groupings has allowed for relatively unfettered geographic mobility in search of suitable homelands. Such movements have allowed for a diffusing of some, but clearly not all, of the tensions and conflicts associated with white ethnic identities. Movement into new territories or the successful construction of enclaves within cities has served to reduce the likelihood of contacts of the kind that contribute to intergroup conflicts and interpersonal violence. Where geographic mobility was restricted, the presence of welldocumented cultural divides within White America may be linked to elevated levels of criminal interpersonal violence during periods of prolonged contact between competing groups. These effects have been evident in both urban and nonurban contexts. Conflicts along the color line, especially in the American South, have not only taken the form of collective violence against people of color, but they have also affected rates of white-on-white homicide. We maintain that the within-race intergroup dynamics that we describe in this chapter lend support to our conception of affinitive and conflictive ethnocentrism as determinants of varying levels of interpersonal violence in White America. And some of the ongoing research designed to explore the southern roots of American exceptionalism may prove useful in helping us make a case for such. For example, in their impressive discussion of southern white cultural traditions thought to be

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linked to varying rates of interpersonal violence, Lee, Thomas, and Ousey (2009) noted the centrality of “argument homicides.” These occur largely among males and stem from often minor arguments and confrontations that end in acts of lethal aggression. They echo similar findings by Wolfgang (1958) regarding the seeming triviality of precipitating factors leading up to homicide in Philadelphia. The plausibility of our migration-centered explanations of black-onblack homicide may be supported by their observations regarding the migratory patterns of the Scots-Irish, which may reveal important parallels between Black and White America. Those descriptions of the ScotsIrish, like those of Woodard (2011), are particularly revealing in this regard and comport with our views regarding the relevance for the etiology of homicide of cultural conflict, accommodation, coalescence, and retreat among interacting affinity groups. Regarding the Scots-Irish, Lee, Thomas, and Ousey (2009, 64–65) say, As they rapidly spread throughout the south, the Scots-Irish maintained much of their cultural uniqueness, but interestingly, they made little effort to maintain their actual ethnic identification. Webb (2004:12–13) argues that this group was in fact very open to intergroup marriage, and because their cultural mores (discussed later) were so strong, when they moved into the south and the Ohio Valley, “their culture overwhelmed the English and German ethnic groups and defined the mores of the region. The spreading of the Scots-Irish culture to other groups was facilitated by their propensity for inter-ethnic marriage because they descended from a Celtic culture emphasizing collateral family relations, meaning that when they married with German, Dutch, or other ethnic group members, the entire family was absorbed into the community.

These authors emphasize the ways in which cultural norms among the Scots-Irish facilitated their comparative over-involvement in acts of interpersonal violence such as argument homicide. Our view is that this group’s experiences with such violent offending may also reflect elements of the kind of within-race intergroup contacts and the resulting conflictive ethnocentrism to which our theory lays claim. As we noted in Chapters 5 and 6, the same patterns of intergroup relations that underpin our explanations of black Americans’ contribution to American exceptionalism in the homicide arena may apply to ethnic whites as well. The quote above, and indeed all of the studies of regional differences in homicide, lend support to our contentions regarding the ethnocentrism-anchored roots of much violence in both Black and White America.

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Notes 1. Woodard’s eleven nations are Yankeedom, New Netherland, The Midlands, Tidewater, Greater Appalachia, Deep South, El Norte, The Left Coast, The Far West, New France, and First Nation. The importance of ethnicity and ethnic identities among Americans of all races has been reflected in the nation’s literary traditions from its inception (Shuffelton 1993). 2. See Berlin (2010) for a discussion of how internal migrations and regional differences affected the language styles of African Americans. 3. This observation regarding the increasing inability of regional groupings to isolate themselves captures the essence of our notion of ethnic spatial compression. 4. Of course, the foreign-born versus native-born distinction was the source of enormous points of conflict and contention between members and supporters of the two groupings. The extent to which this shaped the antiimmigration politics seen during the period between the end of the Civil War and World War II has been well documented. Of relevance for the present discussion was the contentious debate surrounding differences in rates of criminal involvement, including crimes of violence, across the two groups. Widely awaited reports centering on this debate were issued by the US Immigration Commission in 1911 and the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement in 1931. See Hawkins (1993) for a review of the argument surrounding that debate and the data cited in support of varying views. 5. An obvious exception is the Civil War, which was fueled by white-onwhite affinity group struggles but also the presence of a black enslaved population. 6. The fact that skin color distinction perhaps came to matter more in the United States than in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century likely reflected the enormous racial and skin color diversity found in the United States. It is also true that, however, DuBois saw the color line as a global phenomenon tied to colonialism. 7. The barring of African Americans from the state of Oregon as a precondition for its statehood represents a classic example of a restriction that combined elements of national, regional, and local laws and customs. 8. A full consideration of Elias’s theory and its application to trends in homicide is beyond our purpose here. Yet we should note that Thome (2001) considers the thesis of increased self-control to be the most problematic. In particular, Elias relies on “force and fear” to inculcate self-control, in contrast to later social psychological theories (e.g., Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990). 9. The Second Amendment is, of course, at the heart of this presumed right. 10. Painter (2010) describes Jefferson as more concerned about the effects of slavery on slave owners than slaves, whom he regarded as born to subservience. 11. Such future investigations may also lend insight into the questions of where and to what extent southern honor cultures diffuse to other parts of the United States, for example, into the Far West. Another issue is whether the southwestern United States (labeled El Norte by Woodard) has been affected by a culture of honor from yet another source, namely, the Mexican code of honor exemplified in the popularity of dueling throughout the nineteenth century (Piccato 1999).

8 Melting Pot Blues: Ethnocentric Black America

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, people of African descent—having survived the trauma of enslavement, the horror of the Atlantic crossing, and the nightmare of American slavery—had rooted themselves on the west side of the Atlantic. Most were American born. Many had American-born parents, grandparents, and even greatgrandparents. Black life took a variety of forms—slave and free, rural and urban, and plantation and farm—and it differed from place to place. But, for the most part, African Americans were confined to the long arc along the North American coast reaching from New England to the Mississippi Valley, with the majority crowded into a narrow strip of land between the Atlantic tidewater and the Appalachian Mountains. There, over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, distinctive African American cultures had emerged, a confluence of the diverse heritage of Africa, the American experience, and the unique status of peoples of African descent. —Ira Berlin, The Making of African America Race, place, and crime are inextricably linked, both in actuality and in the minds of the public, in the contemporary United States. The image of the crime-ridden ghetto is prevalent in popular cultural portrayals on television, in movies, and in daily news reports. . . . This imagery conveys the notion that African American neighborhoods are to be feared and avoided while white communities are havens of safety; Latino and other non-white areas are less well known but potentially risky. The fact that the vast majority of residents of African American and other minority neighborhoods are never involved in serious crime does little to dispel these images. Only a few researchers dig deeper to illuminate the complex elements at the root of continued patterns of criminal inequality by race and ethnicity. —Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo, Divergent Social Worlds

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hese two insightful quotes reveal the essence of our theory. Berlin’s observations go to the heart of our claims regarding the presence of unacknowledged cultural diversity within black communities. And, by highlighting the role of stereotyping, Peterson and Krivo not only point to the ways such slanted perceptions affect the study of racial disparities in criminal offending but also how they affect efforts at crime prevention and control. As we observed in Chapter 6, the story of the etiology of racially differential rates of homicide is one that must take into account both the largely unexamined ethnic heterogeneity found among African Americans and the many ways in which racialized social control intersects with that diversity. Here and in Chapter 9, we aim to add historical and social scientific substance and rigor to the theoretical propositions outlined in Chapter 6. We begin by examining the evidence that supports our claims of hidden ethnic diversity in Black America. Having explored such diversity within White America, we now ask whether the kinds of enduring cultural differences found among whites as symbolized by Woodard’s (2011) eleven regional nations may also exist among black Americans. We also seek to determine if there exist in Black America intergroup cultural distinctions that do not exist in White America, or among other US races. Much of what we discuss in this chapter are facts and observations that are well known to students of American, African American, and southern history. As noted earlier, however, our attempt to link the historical observations we make to the discussion of ethnicity, race, and crime represents a rarity in the criminological sciences. Our exploration of this interface reveals some aspects of the historical record that are less widely known than others are.

Black America: How Culturally Diverse Is It? Before assessing the historiography and social science evidence needed to support the claims we make regarding hidden African American cultural diversity, let us examine the ways public perceptions and the ideological currents they embody have helped frame that discussion. In their illuminating study of crime and the nation’s racial-spatial divide, Peterson and Krivo (2010) accurately describe the hurdles our theory-making effort faces. They also lay down a challenge for research efforts such as ours. It is clear that perceptions of African American communities as violence-ridden are caricatures that negatively affect intergroup relations. They reinforce long-standing racial stereotypes and serve as justi-

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fication for the implementation of race-linked policies of surveillance and social control (Jackson 1989; Muhammad 2010). They also act as impediments to our efforts to devise a theory aimed at exploring and explaining high rates of homicide in black communities. That is because embedded within these racialist caricatures are assessments of the range of cultural diversity in Black America. As compared to whites for whom attentiveness to regional, cultural, and ethnic differences is evident from time to time, black Americans are much more likely to be viewed as one people with no significant cultural divides. When pressed to make within-race distinctions, often the only forms of heterogeneity acknowledged by scholarly analysts and the general public are those that arise from obvious and growing class distinctions. And even these distinctions are often understated. For example, nearly four decades ago, William Julius Wilson (1978), relying on the work of earlier analysts of Black America such as Frazier (1957) and Drake and Cayton (1945), brought the topic of class differences within Black America to the fore. His subsequent work and that of many others have highlighted the existence of a black underclass. Patillo-McCoy (1999), building on the work of Frazier (1957), has chronicled the effects of Peterson and Krivo’s racial-spatial divide on the lives and residential options of the urban black middle class. While each of these studies has probed the extent of socioeconomic differences among African Americans, public perceptions of those distinctions have been slow to catch up. This lack of change is evident despite the public prominence and media exposure over the years of iconic and economically prosperous black athletes, entertainers, and business leaders. Indeed, their presence has been cited by some as evidence of a wide and growing divide along the lines of socioeconomic status in Black America. Nevertheless, Anderson (2012) has noted that Black America continues to be viewed by outsiders as mired in economic deprivation and, in essence, an expansive “iconic ghetto.” When criminal violence is added to the mix, Black America is viewed by many as an internally undifferentiated subculture of violence. The fact that the black community is viewed as culturally unitary does not mean that the labels and stereotypes used to describe it have not been subject to some change over time. During the pre– and post– World War II eras, racial stereotypes surrounding the nature of black social life centered on portrayals of the rural South. Caricatured images of southern black sharecroppers once filled the media and became the iconic image of pre-urban black life in the United States. Once seen as a culturally homogeneous rural folk, blacks are now seen as culturally

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undifferentiated city folk. Hence, it is not uncommon in the music industry to see the use of the moniker “urban” to describe the varied popular musical styles within the black community.1 Further, despite the perceived utility of such labels as “Ebonics” and “black English” to describe the language of African Americans, built into such labeling is the idea that the spoken word in Black America displays few, if any, regional differences. To that extent, the dictates of the fourth narrative we outlined in Chapter 4 continue to drive perceptions of African American culture within social science and public opinion. Observations and findings such as those of Berlin (2010), cited above, and Blauner (1972) continue to be rare. Neither in academic writings nor in the mass media do we find recognition of the possible existence in Black America of the kinds of place-based group identities Woodard shows to be part of the cultural and ideological landscape inhabited by white Americans. Despite the tendency to discount the existence of cultural cleavages in Black America, there are some signs of change. For example, as a result of the obvious cultural distinctiveness of newer black immigrants to the United States, as compared to the native-born black population, there is some evidence of growing public awareness of ethnic divides within Black America. And, as we have observed, there have also been breakthroughs among academics in coming to grips with the likelihood of cultural divides within urban Black America that are similar to the ones we now propose. In the discussion that follows, we will provide evidence in support of our claims that not only is Black America culturally diverse, but it is also home to largely hidden group divides that are deep-seated, geographically dispersed, and historically continuous. Many Different Roots: The Making of a Culturally Heterogeneous Black America We observed in Chapter 4 that questions surrounding the African cultural heritage of black Americans became something of a political and ideological hot button issue during the mid-twentieth century. It is beyond the scope of the present investigation to engage in a full-fledged discussion of that debate. However, we attempt to summarize below some aspects of that debate to strengthen the plausibility of the theory we present. The period of slavery marks an obvious starting point for our historical excursion, and it offers much tantalizing evidence in support of our claims regarding the likelihood of within-race cultural variation among African Americans.

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Supporters of the view that African Americans were not cut off entirely from their African roots point to the fact that the transatlantic slave trade was so massive that slaves arrived in the Americas from a very broad swath of the African continent along its western shores. The vast geographic terrain that constitutes West Africa has been shown to have contained during the slavery era a particularly rich array of cultural diversity and distinct ethnic group identities. The transatlantic slave trade also extended far beyond that part of the continent (e.g., see Berlin 2010; Blassingame 1979; Franklin 1980; Franklin and Moss 1994; Herskovits 1941). We refer the reader to important online resources at www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces and www.slate.com /articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/06/animated_inter active_of_the_history_of_the_atlantic_slave_trade.html?wpsrc=sh_all _dt_tw_top. That both slave traders and slave owners were keenly aware of that diversity is a matter of historical record. Some accounts suggest that they used it to their advantage. The intentional bringing together of culturally diverse groups may have served as a device for minimizing insurrection and revolt. But, while we know that much cultural diversity existed among imported Africans themselves, the debate we referenced is not about the extent of that imported diversity. It instead centers on the question of the retention of that rich array of heritages within Black America. We believe that both the possibility of cultural retentions and the range of the cultural divides slaves brought with them matter immensely for examining the kinds of affinity group ties our theory describes. Herskovits (1941) and many others have provided convincing evidence that many aspects of the ethnic/cultural traditions Africans brought with them were indeed retained and often flourished in the Americas. While African cultural survivals have been much more visible and acknowledged in Latin America than the United States, even today evidence of such survivals can be seen in the United States (Holloway 2006). The coastal regions of the US southeast from South Carolina to Louisiana show a cultural distinctiveness that not only sets them apart from other regions but also provides much evidence of persisting African cultural traits, including language. The African influences found among the Gullah of South Carolina and Georgia have been extensively documented. Blassingame (1979) found evidence of African survivals among blacks living in Alabama and other states of the interior South. And, in his rebuttal of the notion of a nonexistent black culture, Blauner (1972) surveyed the evidence of African survivals in the United States

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through a meta-analysis of the historiography. He reports the likely existence of African cultural traditions in Black America well into the late twentieth century and also far beyond the regions we just cited. Other analysts who support the view that Africanisms have existed and perhaps continue to exist in Black America point to the organization and long duration of the slave trade. They suggest that the continual infusion of African cultural traditions increased the likelihood of their retention. The centuries-long existence of the slave trade meant that some African traits would be brought in by later arriving slaves, even if the cultural traditions among earlier arrivals were quashed. There was a continual infusion of African traditions into the North American cultural landscape and ethnic mix over a span of nearly three centuries (Holloway 2006). Differences in Africans’ place of origin reflected differences in the nationality and place of origin of slave traders and the differing regions on the African continent to which they had access (e.g., English versus Spanish, French, and Portuguese slave trading routes). These territorial divides may have dampened the full range of African ethnic diversity found in a given slaveholding region in the Americas. But even within the delimited areas of Africa to which each European nation had access, there were culturally distinctive affinity groupings whose range of cultural diversity equaled or surpassed that found in geographic spaces of similar sizes in Europe or Asia. In response to those continual inflows and their impacts on cultural diversity, Berlin (2010) noted the development of an “earlier arrivals” versus “newcomers” set of intergroup interactions. He described the ways that those intergroup interactions shaped African American history. He notes that such interactions shaped black cultural diversity not only during the period of slavery but also during all of the later waves of migration that followed. This contrast was a vital part of the television portrayal of Alex Haley’s (1976) retracing of his family heritage in his book Roots. Of course, as we have shown, such patterns of old guard versus recent arrival interactions marked the experiences of immigrants and internal migrants within White America as well. In noting those similarities, Berlin (2010, 45) says, While the distinction between forced and free migrations cloaks the fact that all migrations involve cultural transformations, these various migrations also mask the essential reality that even the most traumatic uprootings do not necessarily dissolve the migrants’ humanity, their sense of self, and the determination to shape their own lives. Forced migrants, like free ones, carried with them ideas about family, work, religion, and much else that they put into practice at the first opportu-

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nity, albeit in different circumstances. Emphasizing the distinction between the voluntary and the coerced, moreover, revivifies the myth of stability—the timelessness of premodern society and the fixity of peasant life. Such notions may be useful foils for understanding the hyperactivity identified with modernity, but they have long since been exposed as hollow stereotypes.

Geographic movements in the form of migration, as Berlin (2010) and many others have noted, have been and remain the normal condition of humankind. Hence we see such movements as an integral part of our conceptions of global ethnocentrism, which we outlined in Chapter 5. Woodard (2011) also notes the influence of African cultural leanings in his regional cultural analysis. Despite his emphasis on European cultural survivals in the United States, he observed that cultural traditions now existing within US regions display significant African influences. They also display pronounced borrowings of those traditions on the part of the regions’ white inhabitants. These cross-race cultural exchanges are also described in Blassingame’s (1979, 49–104) informative chapter titled “The Americanization of the Slave and the Africanization of the South.” Finally, though touting the existence of an overarching American culture shared by all and while emphasizing the lack of difference between mainstream white and black culture, Frazier (1949) also noted the impact of black culture on that mainstream. All of these observations would suggest that the tendency to view black culture as either absent or essentially the equivalent of some monolithic mainstream culture is not without its contradictions, many of which lend credence to our theory of ethnocentrism and violence. In sum, American slavery marked the beginnings of the still ongoing processes of ethnic/cultural differentiation among blacks. We believe that identifiable and distinctively different cultural continuities and cultural communities have existed amid the cycles of cultural transformation that characterize black American history. The mix of cultures in Black America today reflects cultural markers of both ancient and more recent vintage. Diverse African roots may have served as the underpinnings of all black American cultural leanings, and they may help configure the mix of affinity groups and interactions we describe in Chapters 5 and 6. We propose that the slave trade can be viewed as the entry into the American landscape of a diverse array of African peoples, each of which had distinctive cultures and concomitant expressions of affinitive ethnocentrism. That African heritage helped to create in the United States a diversity of cultural leanings and associated ethnocentric intergroup interactions among those later labeled as African Americans.

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That said, we think it is highly unlikely that the unique cultures brought by Africans have remained entirely intact.2 To the extent that they have, it is also clear that the retention of authentic and unchanged African cultural leanings alone does not account for the hidden cultural diversity within Black America that we propose. Rather, those cultural traditions mark a starting point for the cycles of neo-ethnicity and neoethnocentrism that we propose via our theory. Black America’s concealed diversity reflects the history of a neo-ethnocentric cultural churn among African Americans that included (1) the cultural and biological intermixing of the diverse African roots that slaves brought to the Americas; and (2) biological intermixing across racial lines after their arrival. Both of these processes had culture-producing and culture-altering effects that impacted both Black and White America. While the former has not been documented for many of the reasons we have noted in preceding chapters, the latter has been explored extensively by historians. Slaves and free blacks in the Americas had offspring-producing sexual encounters with both whites and American Indians even before the full “blooming” of the institution of slavery in the original American colonies. Such intermixing also occurred in those territories held by the French and Spanish before the English took control of them. Higginbotham (1978) and numerous other historians of the period between 1619 and the rise of full-blown slavery have noted that blacks in early colonies married and produced offspring with American Indians and indentured whites. Similar enclaves of blacks, whites, and Indians in which “miscegenation” occurred dotted the landscape of the Spanishand French-held areas of the US southeast and lower Mississippi River valley. Similarly, Africans or mixed race persons of African and Spanish heritage were common among the conquistadors who seized the lands of Native American populations in the Southwest. Cultural change and transformation were part and parcel of those encounters. As Berlin (2010) notes, such biological and cultural intermixing is a defining feature of all human migratory movements and flows and has obvious significance for the development of new cultural identities among individuals and groups.3 Intermixing among blacks and Native Americans was pervasive both before and after the forced movement of America’s indigenous populations from the eastern United States to points west. While the earliest years of settlement along the East Coast saw much intermingling, such associations appear to have diminished over time. Free blacks and Native Americans often married and their offspring added to the cultural diversity within Black America since many of the offspring

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were legally classified as blacks. To that extent, African American communities in the United States have been infused with Native American cultural traditions, and those traditions also represent a storehouse of cultural diversity. Those cultural currents have become a part of the black American cultural landscape, just as they have among whites. The intermixing of Blacks and Indians in both the southeast United States and the western states also made for culturally distinct ethnic enclaves within black communities. Today, Louisiana may offer instances of the continued existence of such enclaves. These historical observations suggest that even before slavery became fully ensconced in English, French, and Spanish territories in the Americas, the cultural diversification within Black America had already begun. Because biological and cultural intermixtures among diverse African peoples and across racial lines have shaped Black America, far from having a singular culture, African American communities may be the poster child for the nation’s efforts to be a truly multicultural society. We contend that patterns of both intrarace and interracial contact and biological intermixing before and during entrenched slavery offer historical evidence in support of our belief that affinitive ethnocentrism and conflictive ethnocentrism have characterized the social lives and intergroup interactions among African Americans since the nation’s beginnings. Slavery as a Cultural Churn Apart from miscegenation and its culture-diversifying impacts, the more than 200-year duration of fully institutionalized slavery in the United States involved other practices that significantly affected African America’s cultural diversity. Especially as the slavery regime in the Americas grew, many of the shiploads of black slaves from abroad who entered the United States came not only from Africa but also from established slave colonies in the Caribbean. In addition to their regional diversification and varying cultural roots brought from Africa, many slaves within these continuous streams of formerly Caribbean slaves had already experienced during their stay in the islands cycles of what we described in Chapter 5 as neo-affinitive ethnocentrism. Also, because of the organization and structure of the island slavery regimens, they were more likely to have retained many of their African traditions and practices. Thus, as the US slave trade expanded, the enslaved population was characterized by greater cultural diversity. They harbored cultural leanings, some of which were African in origin,

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but also some that were “indigenous” to the Americas. For many slaves, their stays and that of their offspring within the Caribbean had lasted long enough to produce the kind of cultural amalgamation that Berlin (2010, 99) described as occurring on the US East Coast before the mass shipment of slaves into the American interior. Fogel (1989, 168) observes that The material and social circumstances that served to shape slave culture varied over both time and space. Household organization, language, planter policies, policies of religious and secular authorities, demographic rates, conditions of labor, the extent of contact with whites, and the extent of direct contact with Africans were so different from one slave colony to another that they produced quite different slave cultures in the various colonies despite the common African heritage and the common oppression experienced by all slaves in the New World.

The constant physical churn of slaveholdings meant a continual churn of cultural diversification among the black slave population. This demographic churn gave rise to the processes of cultural diversification and constant cycles of cultural transformation. And, we note in Chapters 5 and 6, the ethnic heterogeneity to which these processes gave rise may also have set the stage for varying levels of intergroup conflict. Beginning in the antebellum era, it is likely, therefore, that identifiable, place-based regional cultures emerged among African Americans that were similar to those among whites (Woodard 2011). And, as is true of Woodard’s regional nations, these cultural clusters were not entirely cultural imports from the Old Country. Since slavery occurred within many of the white cultural regions described by Woodard, we must ask to what extent the hidden cultural diversity among blacks today and during the past may mirror some aspects of the cultures of their white regional compatriots—and to what extent they may differ. In any case, beyond the Caribbean to mainland migrations of future black Americans, internal migrations during and after slavery added to their cultural diversity. Since ours is a theory that highlights and treats as causally significant the interface between African American cultural diversity and mechanisms of social control, we now turn our attention to an examination of those interconnections. In our listing of propositions in Chapter 6, we referenced the now vast social science and criminological literature that examines the development over time of race-linked laws and customs that have imposed ecological and spatial constraints on the

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movements and places of residence of people of color. What is the evidence that such constraints were in effect during the period of slavery and before its rise to institutional prominence? What is the relevance of that past for the theory we have developed?

Patrolling the Boundaries of Black America: History Repeats Itself Blackmon (2008) and Alexander (2010) are among those who have argued that much of what has happened to the black population since Emancipation represents slavery by another name and the new Jim Crow. Both Blackmon and Alexander make a case for the continuation of antebellum social policies and laws into the immediate postslavery era, and now far beyond. Although we aim to trace the roots of contemporary American Apartheid to the past, the starting point for our discussion of those historical continuities begins a bit earlier than their accounts. We believe that 1. The white nation’s response to the first signs of a growing and biologically and culturally diversifying Black America offers clues regarding the origins and evolution of the race/place restrictions that characterize life in urban America today. Thus, the earliest roots of American Apartheid can be traced to the treatment accorded black indentured servants and freedmen, rather than those persons held in official bondage. 2. Mixed-race persons were well represented among freedmen during the period of slavery and also before slavery became fully entrenched, institutionalized, and a widely dispersed feature of American life. From the colonial period onward, they were frequent targets of efforts at spatial confinement and social control. 3. Regarding the impacts of both racialized law and law enforcement, a comparison of blacks in the contemporary urban inner city to free blacks living during both the preslavery and slavery eras reveals many parallels and similarities. Higginbotham (1978) meticulously describes the legal no-man’sland that existed for many years between the 1619 entry into the colonies of black indentured servants and the Revolutionary War. He notes that it took many decades for the rights and privileges of slave owners to be legally defined. It also took time for the restrictions placed

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on the rights of slaves, free people of color, and white indentured servants to be legally defined and enforced. That period of American history is similar in many ways to the period during which the nation witnessed the post–Great Migration rise of American Apartheid in the urban US North and West. American hypersegregation flourished during an era in which the legal status of black Americans was in a state of change and redefinition. De jure racial restrictions were being erased, and the debilitating effects of race-linked customs and practices were becoming more apparent. In the late 1960s, sociologists and urban demographers began to document white flight and to note the increasing social and spatial isolation of inner-city African Americans. Massey and Denton (1993) described these changing residential patterns as evidence of American Apartheid. These analysts stressed the economic and social harms suffered by African Americans in the wake of white flight. Especially after it was followed by the movement of middle-class black residents to residential areas outside of the inner cities, their concerns for the plight of the inner city heightened. White flight alongside the effects of deindustrializationlinked job loss was said to give rise to an urban underclass, and the communities left behind would be described as areas of concentrated poverty, concentrated disadvantage, and social isolation; see Anderson (2011, 2015); Anderson et al. (2012); Farley (1977); Farley and Taeuber (1968); Farley et al. (1978); Jargowsky (1997, 2002, 2003); Massey (1990); Massey and Denton (1993); Massey and Eggers (1990); Peterson and Krivo (1999); and Wilson (1978, 1987, 1996). Most studies of the social impacts of these demographic shifts emphasize the extent to which they lead to racial disparities in such outcomes as educational achievement, employment opportunities, rates of poverty, social isolation, and, of course, crime. These concepts became needed explanatory adjuncts to the original theory of social disorganization, which encompassed, albeit implicitly at times, these same views of the underlying causes of crime (St. Jean 2007). Thus, in various ways, these racially disparate outcomes have been linked via criminological theory and research to the varying levels of interpersonal violence our theory seeks to explain. Back to the Future We believe that the similarities between the period in American history described by Higginbotham (1978) and that which gave rise to American Apartheid are much more than coincidental. Further, understanding

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the roots of those similarities is vitally important for our effort to establish the historical foundations of our theory. In both eras, laws and customs regarding race were in a state of flux. Like blacks of that earlier period before the rise of fully institutionalized slavery, today’s African Americans are technically “free persons of color.” And, like free blacks of the past, contemporary black Americans remain largely confined to their own spatially delimited living quarters. Even though many of the practices that now drive American racial separatism and racialized social control were once enshrined in the law, the fact that they now reflect deeply embedded but largely covert racial biases makes them no less consequential. There are other parallels. The presence of a growing underclass in contemporary Black America may have had its seventeenth-century equivalent in the form of the growing size of the slave population at that time. Indentured or free blacks and whites existed alongside that rising tide. In each instance, these changing population demographics resulted in laws and customs that reflected quite draconian protocols of social control and law and order. For example, the presence of slaves, white indentured servants, free blacks (some of whom were mixed-race persons), and Native Americans was seen by ruling elites as a threat to the existing social order. Often because of both their freed status and their dual heritages, racially mixed persons were perhaps especially suspect in the eyes of whites. Thus, during the decades before the rise of full-blown slavery, Higginbotham (1978, 26–30) observed that many of the judicial rulings and, later on, acts of legislatures reflected “the fear of an alliance among white indentured servants, Indians, and blacks.” Further, as the years passed and slavery became more firmly entrenched and mixedrace persons increased in numbers, mulattoes much more so than their white indentured counterparts likely came to trigger symbolically those fears of insurrection among the white slave-owning class. This may have been true especially when the black-white mixed-race people were the product of marriages or sexual encounters between non-propertyowning whites and free blacks. As a result, colonial America had in place, even during the period before the rise of massive enslavement of blacks, apartheid-like rules that amounted to encouraging the spatial confinement of peoples of color. Even when they were not codified into law, the customs derived from them were just as powerful regarding their social impacts. Whites showed an eagerness to extend such restrictions on movement not just to slaves but to the whole of the black population. Much later, despite

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their labeling as “slave codes,” many of the laws enacted before the ending of slavery were designed primarily to control the spatial movements and behaviors of these part-black free persons who had now been joined by their “darker brothers.” Higginbotham (1978) chronicled the evolution of these kinds of restrictions in the form of laws and court decisions regulating the lives of free and enslaved blacks and other people of color in the early colonial period. He noted how these restrictions were not confined to the southern region and reported many parallels between laws in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania as compared to laws in Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia. Higginbotham (1978, 39–40, 170–172, 215–307) also reported that the “pass system,” which originally regulated the travel of enslaved blacks during the early to mid-eighteenth century, often had its equivalents in customs and informal laws regulating the travel of free blacks as well. As the number of free blacks living in the South grew, such cities as Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans attracted large numbers of them, despite their image as beacons of slavery. And, out of fear of being enslaved and later in response to customs and laws, their movement to other parts of the colony in which they resided was severely restricted. We contend that those laws and customs provided a template for the post-Reconstruction South and later for the urban areas of the US North and West. For example, after the brief period of Reconstruction ended, this template of race-based social control would be applied to the entire black population in the form of the Black Codes and later in the form of more elaborate Jim Crow laws, customs, and rules (Rabinowitz 1978; Rohrs 2012). Thus, although Berlin (2010) has described the fluidity of movement of Americans across the national landscape, freed blacks, many of whom were racially mixed, are early examples of those who were barred from such free movement. North Carolina, for example, prohibited free blacks from migrating to the state (Rohrs 2012). Given those rules, mixed-race people in the South and elsewhere often lived in communities alongside other blacks, not of mixed race.4 Some small towns, often at the periphery of larger black ex-slave communities, were populated primarily by colored, mixed-race persons. Plantations, small towns, and cities in the postbellum South all enforced rigid residential segregation. Planters preferred that their sharecropping tenants be either black or white, and rarely had tenants of both races on the same plantation. Segregation was more pronounced in cities, particularly in border towns such as Louisville and Baltimore (Aiken 1998; Rabinowitz

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1978). But “municipalities in plantation regions were rigidly segregated residentially” (Aiken 1998, 155). American Apartheid had its non-southern roots as well, as Higginbotham’s analysis showed. A growing body of scholarly work conducted by both historians and social scientists has noted the extent to which states outside of the South have usually gotten something of a pass regarding their association with racist practices. Loewen (2005) reported that especially after the Civil War ended, most states bordering the South and many far beyond initiated efforts intended to control the movement of the black population, which took the form of legal codes he labeled “sundown laws.” Such laws were aimed at preventing African Americans from remaining overnight in towns and cities along their northward and westward migration routes after 1865. Further, in many border state towns where African Americans were allowed to take up permanent residency, they often were required by law and custom to live in spatially restricted neighborhoods. Unlike Berlin (2010, 10), who paints a portrait of the enormous progress made by African Americans toward successfully dismantling the nation’s legacy of Jim Crow, we think that the job remains largely unfinished. We believe that the laws, social policies, and customs that resulted in severe restrictions on the place of residence and spatial mobility of black Americans are vital and homicide-related aspects of the historical legacy of American racism. Contemporary events that have highlighted the importance of race for determining patterns of policing in the United States have revealed racialized social control. The race-threat and social control dimensions of these past and contemporary laws, institutional practices, and customs are clearly at work today and underpin the ethnic spatial compression and hypersegregation that define the social and physical boundaries of black communities in urban America. But, unlike many recent analyses of Black America that highlight the effects of the phenomena in the urban areas outside of the South, we think that it is important to probe more deeply into the largely forgotten history of the American Apartheid in the South. Below, we show the ways in which the omnipresent regulations regarding the geographic movement of blacks and the fear of white racial violence served to create compressed, culturally heterogeneous black enclaves within the small towns and urban areas of the pre–Great Migration South. We describe the ways in which these forced concentrations of diverse cultural groupings of African Americans became a more or less permanent feature of the American landscape in the South long before its twentieth-century northern, urban counterpart emerged.

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And, to a large extent, they remain in place today. Because the historiography of the American South has emphasized black-white relations, many of the more localized within-race developments we describe have not been fully explored or documented. We use available sources to paint a picture of what we believe are overlooked facts regarding black American diversity and crime.

Black Cultural Diversity Before the Great Migration Unlike those historians who tend to focus primarily on Black America’s rural to urban migration flows during the post–World War I and World War II eras’ Great Migration, Berlin’s (2010) accounting of spatial mobility among African Americans covers a much longer time frame. His more expansive portrait of the history of black migration helps show the plausibility of the theory we have proposed. He described four different migrations that impacted the kinds of cultural churn, ethnic diversity, and ethnocentrism we posit to exist among past and contemporary African Americans. They are (1) the transatlantic passage that created America’s slavery regime; (2) the passage into the US interior regions and the forced mass movement of slaves to the western United States as slavery expanded; 5 (3) the postEmancipation passage to the North and West, a move that began and culminated in the Great Migration;6 and (4) the late twentieth-century immigration to the United States by peoples of African descent from Latin America, Africa, and beyond. This more recent movement also included an augmentation of the population of immigrants from the Caribbean, who had arrived much earlier. He labels the latter movement “Global Passages.” For each movement, he shows the many ways in which the daily lives, cultural traditions, and cultural identities of African Americans were shaped and altered. Particularly in his discussion of the global dimensions of recent black migrations, Berlin describes conflicts between old guards and new arrivals that bear the characteristics of those processes we call conflictive ethnocentrism. While he sees them as an omen of what is to come, it is clear that they are reflections of the past as well. For example, he notes instances in Seattle and New York City where acts of interpersonal violence among native blacks and new arrivals during the 1990s led to heightened tensions and distrust. In noting such incidents, Berlin (2010, 222) writes,

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The newcomers’ desire to maintain ties with their countrymen—for example, their own churches and associations, endogenous marriages, culinary preferences, frequent returns to their homelands, and celebrations of their holidays and heroes—suggested a sense of difference in the eyes of many African Americans. While they shared a similar complexion and African roots, they had little else in common. “A shared complexion does not equal a shared culture,” observed Kofi Glover, a native of Ghana and professor at the University of South Florida. Even the recognition of similar circumstances and appreciation of common ancestry does not always draw natives and newcomers together.

Berlin goes on to describe ways in which the divides have been overcome and have led to a blending and merging of old and new customs among peoples of African descent in the United States. He cites as an example the creation of hip-hop music in the extremely ethnically diverse borough of Bronx, New York (225). He attributes this easing of tensions to what he earlier described as the immense “cultural malleability” (19) displayed by African Americans throughout the black diaspora. He goes on to suggest that tensions associated with cultural differences remain. These observations lend support to our contentions regarding the linkages among ethnocentrism, within-race ethnic conflictive tensions, and homicide. At the same time, we believe that his rather optimistic accounting of black migration and predictions for the future of black neighborhoods and the nation (Berlin 2010, 201–240) may suggest an unquestioning buy-in by the author to the Americanization narrative. Many of his depictions of intergroup relations within America as a whole and in Black America may not comport with some of the facts on the ground. As we have noted, the demographic churn Berlin describes has not always resulted in the kind of cultural accommodation and assimilation he suggests. Although Black America, like its white counterpart, has been a nation of wanderers, the fluidity of black movements over the course of the four great migrations he describes may not have been nearly as unrestrained as his account suggests. The forced movement between 1800 and 1860 of 1 million black slaves from the East to the US interior marks an important milestone in the history of Black America. We refer the reader to Berlin’s (2010, 99– 151) well-documented accounting of that movement and its effects on the kinds of cultural transformations of interest to us. But, it is our contention that the story of cultural heterogeneity in contemporary urban Black America begins in the Old Country South after that “passage to

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the interior” was completed. And it is a story that includes but is not limited to the Great Migration saga. Unlike many earlier accounts of the South to non-South transition, ours is a story about culture and cultural differences in Black America. We will show how those cultural identities and affinities likely defined and drove migration and residential settlement patterns of black Americans both inside and outside of the South. We also aim to show the ways in which those within-race cultural differences, when subjected to the external social control dynamics we described above, may lead some portion of the observed racial disparity in rates of homicide. Kinship Networks, Selective Migration Paths, and Urban African American Diversity Numerous studies across a variety of disciplines have documented the movement of African Americans from the South to the North and West. Many of these studies examine migratory paths mainly to describe the population flows and demographic changes observed in the end points and final destinations of black southerners’ migratory movement. That is, they are studies in the tradition of urban studies of the Chicago School variety. And, because most of such studies have highlighted the era of the Great Migration, they have been inattentive to the largely undocumented movement of the black population within the South in the years between the end of the Civil War and the end of World War II. That movement is of much relevance for our theorizing. We also deem it important to view the Great Migration as a story that must include attention to cultural dynamics at points of origin and stopover locations. We contend these largely unexamined dimensions of the Great Migration contribute to hidden cultural diversity. What we present below also reflects our belief that the story of black within-race diversity and its links to migration paths and processes requires a nuanced reading of the social and cultural landscape found within the American South. Surveying that landscape objectively requires that we disabuse ourselves of many of the mediainduced and historically inaccurate images and portrayals of community organization and social life, past and present, in that region. These include the view of plantations with large numbers of slaves as the typical mechanism for organizing the economic and social lives for both black and white southerners during slavery, and afterward. Such imagery contributed during the past to the tendency among both scholars and the public to accept the diversity-denying “sharecropper” rubric

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when depicting black migrants from the South. Just as Peterson and Krivo (2010, 2012) have shown that stereotypes shape our views of urban Black America, they also configure public and scholarly perceptions of the American South. Historians of both slavery and the South have repeatedly reminded us that the typical slaveholding operation in the South involved relatively small numbers of slaves. These smaller operations were scattered across much of the southern terrain while the big plantations were rarer and more geographically concentrated (Bourne 2008). Thus, a more accurate portrait of the American South requires the acknowledgment of the fact that most southern slave owners held in captivity relatively small numbers of slaves and large plantations were the exceptions. These patterns have obvious implications for the kinds of ethnic diversity that would emerge in the American South during the nearly 200 years of formal slavery. Fogel (1989) notes that much of this diversity is hidden because historians have far greater documentation of life on large plantations than smaller holdings. However, he was able to amass evidence to suggest profound differences in critical variables such as age at birth of first child, the stability of slave families, sexual mores, family structure, housing, and richness of community life. These facts mean that even during the pinnacle of the slave economy’s spread across the South, the black populace was scattered far beyond the regions where large plantations predominated (e.g., the southern Atlantic coast, the Gulf of Mexico coastal region, East Texas, and the lower and upper Mississippi Delta regions) (Bourne 2008). While large plantations did house an overwhelming share of the total slave population in the areas where they existed, even in those regions small slaveholdings could be found. Further, areas outside of the major slaveholding regions also housed sizeable enclaves of black slaves, and often free blacks. Many of the landowners in the interior hill country regions of the South that were not conducive to large plantation agriculture also held slaves. So too did many in those states we often label as the border south (Bourne 2008). A more accurate framing of the nature of black community life and, with it, an appreciation for the range of nascent ethnic identities in the South after slavery, also requires that we reexamine currently popular notions of the nature of economic enterprises in the region. Regarding their economic base, many of these areas were not dependent on rowcrop agriculture. Mining, logging, fishing, and other commercial enterprises were part of the landscape in the South during slavery. And, these other economic enterprises also utilized slave labor and that of free

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blacks as well, making for a much more diverse grouping of black rural to urban migrants than is often told. Studies of the rise of the coal mining and steel industries in Alabama by Armes (2011 [1910]), Bennett (1986), Bond (1994), Adams (2001), and Blackmon (2008, 279, 289– 295) provide a glimpse into the economic and occupational diversity found in that region and the participation of African Americans in those enterprises. Similar stories can be told about the fishing industries that emerged on the coasts and the interior logging industries. Thus, while much notice has been given to the rural plantationbased populations that found their way to urban areas, the historiography that is available to describe those non-agricultural migrants, their lives, and the pathways they took to urban residency is far more limited than that for the larger numbers of southerners who resided in plantation zones within the Black Belt. We do know that many of them did make a move toward urban living during and after slavery (Rabinowitz 1978). And in some cases, they made for culturally distinctive migration paths and urban concentrations. For example, some cities such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Cleveland, with their economic ties and proximity to Appalachia, likely attracted larger numbers of such nonplantation rural blacks than did cities like Chicago. But all major cities probably attracted a much more occupationally and culturally diverse population of black migrants than stereotype suggests. The Legacy of “Freetown”7 Many extant studies of black migration tend to ignore the fact that blacks often took circuitous routes from their rural places of residence to urban areas, and also that there were black small-town and urban dwellers even during the period of slavery. These residential patterns were not only true of the Northeast but were evident in parts of the South as well. The southern elite who lived in urban areas utilized the services of slaves. Small clusters of emancipated blacks(by their owners) living in the South before and after the Civil War resided in the small towns and villages of the region. Of course, free blacks became a part of the demographic landscape in the North even before the full operation of the Underground Railroad. In most cases, their place of residence was in cities. But a story that remains largely untold is that of small-town and urban residency among formerly plantation-based slaves in the South after 1865. During slavery, large plantations in the South were, in reality, small villages/towns in a rural setting, as small towns everywhere are (Fogel

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1989). They were congregations of white elites, lower-class white overseers, and black slaves, all of whom lived on the grounds of the plantation or close by. After formal slavery had ended, many slaves chose (or were forced) to remain in these small towns/villages as free persons, at least in name. After the Civil War, black residential areas “evolved from settlements created by former slaves who flocked to urban areas” (Aiken 1998, 156). Many of these postslavery villages and small towns grew because they were important cogs in plantations that remained labor-intensive agricultural enterprises, and they were the continuing backbone of the southern economy. In many areas the large plantations that existed before slavery were situated near each other. The spatial mobility of former slaves, albeit limited, allowed for movement between these ex-slave enclaves, thereby increasing the likelihood of more cultural exchanges than had often been possible during slavery. Somewhat ironically, the proximity of many of these settlements to the residences of those plantation owners helped to protect their inhabitants from the roving bands of lower-class whites who often terrorized blacks after the demise of Reconstruction. Racial antipathy toward black workers to the point of severe injury and death was not a luxury the owners could afford, or tolerate. Once settled, it was those rural, racially segregated villages in the South that attracted the first church-run and philanthropist-funded public schools aimed at educating blacks. The Rosenwald Schools, established by Booker T. Washington and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, are the prime example of this important effort (Aaronson and Mazumder 2011). Funding from Rosenwald only covered about 15 percent of the costs of building the schools, with the remainder coming from community fund-raising efforts (Provenzo 2009). The ability of blacks to garner these resources reflected the growing sense of community found among black populations. These educational institutions along with the black churches that existed in the same enclaves helped in forging the nascent affinity group identities in those enclaves. The forging of new identities within this context likely displayed much neo-ethnocentrism and potentially conflictive ethnocentrism as identities forged over long periods in one plantation setting came into contact with those derived from another. The extent to which these identities were place-based has been noted in many works of fiction by both black and white writers, most recently in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. These identities were hardly nascent in the sense that long after slavery ended and sharecropping was on the wane, many blacks continued to tie their kinship and group identities to their plantations of origin, indicating a form of affinitive ethnocentrism.

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Internal Migrations in the South and Treks to the West Although the massive movement of blacks away from the South is well documented, often ignored are two rather obvious but often underemphasized facts: (1) Large numbers of former slaves chose to remain in the South even as others fled north and west. They attempted to escape the brutal reality of a rigged sharecropping system by moving into the existing, white-dominated and -controlled small and mid-sized towns of the region (Rabinowitz 1978). Indeed, most blacks currently residing today in small and mid-sized towns all across the former plantation areas of the South are descendants of those masses. And (2) many blacks who eventually migrated had spent two or more generations living in the South before they moved away. These two observations may be of immense importance for understanding the range of cultural diversity now found in both the urban South and the urban non-South. As alternatives to the plantation-linked towns, before World War II larger southern cities attracted many former plantation workers who had left their rural enclaves in search of work. As cheap labor, they were highly sought after in those towns as alternatives to white labor, just as they would later be sought after and recruited for the same reasons by northern business owners. But there were also artisans and semiskilled workers, some of whom traveled the South in search of work (Rabinowitz 1978).8 Their labor was obviously more in demand within those somewhat more urbanized contexts. And, like their less skilled counterparts, their labor costs were less than those of competing whites. These transient populations may have experienced ethnocentrism on two fronts. As “outsiders” and “strangers,” à la DuBois’s (1899) depiction of life in late nineteenth-century Philadelphia, they were likely involved, as both victims and offenders, in some of the affinity group–related conflictive struggles occurring within the black communities that they passed through. There is also much evidence that their outsider status made them more likely victims of lynching at the hands of whites (Bailey et al. 2011; Tolnay and Beck 1992; Tolnay, Deane, and Beck 1996). Like their counterparts who remained in the sharecropping venues, many in these more urbanized and racially segregated southern enclaves had self-acknowledged group identities tied to family and place. Many continued to link aspects of their personal and kinship group identities to the plantations where they or their forbearers once lived. Residents would often refer to their family as having moved into the bigger towns from places that bore the name of the plantation owners (e.g., the Shelby Plantation or Johnson’s Place). Within these larger towns,

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beyond extended family ties, larger group–based identities had clearly been established as a linguistic reality, and likely far beyond that. Also, as the pitfalls of a rigged sharecropping system became more evident and the early stages of agricultural mechanization lessened the attractiveness of the rural, plantation-based residential enclaves, these larger southern towns became magnets for legions of displaced agricultural workers who had remained in the nearby plantation enclaves. By the 1950s, most residents of those old Freetowns had moved on to bigger cities in the South or outside of the region. But in some cases, they had spent more than eighty years in such settings. A sense of place was almost inevitable. Cobb (1992) noted the strong sense of regional identity associated with the Mississippi Delta region. Robinson (2014) described the continuing significance of those Delta identities among contemporary African Americans. Bolstered by population inflows, external philanthropy, and aggressive determination on the part of residents to throw off the chains of both slavery and its post-Reconstruction sharecropping namesake, these small and mid-sized southern towns grew and prospered even under the weight of Jim Crow. Like similar existing enclaves in the US Northeast and upper Midwest populated by preEmancipation free blacks, they produced the first group of black workers whose educational status and earnings would classify them in the middle class. They became the sites of religion-based philanthropic investments that led to the establishment of many of today’s historically black colleges and universities. Because these southern cities attracted blacks from different parts of their states and often different states, cultural diversity was likely on the rise. They likely provide evidence of the processes of cultural retransformation and assimilation, which we have labeled neo-ethnocentrism, to a much greater degree than the Freetown enclaves. However, since the existence of such cleavages and identities has been downplayed in Black America, no historiography can be found to support such claims. To the extent that the populations brought together were much more diverse within the urban environment, their interactions may have showcased the cultural malleability that Berlin (2010) noted. It is also possible that that malleability came with a price: higher rates of interpersonal violence. At the time, many of these communities achieved much social stability. They became zones of economic prosperity for the upper working class and middle-class segments of the southern black population. As sites for the nation’s first historically black universities and segregated elementary and secondary education facilities, these

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cities provided the social cohesiveness that would later give rise to the Civil Rights movement and the push for racial equality. Obviously, economic betterment was not the only factor motivating the clustering of former slaves and their descendants in southern cities. Given the tenor of the immediate post-Reconstruction period and continuing for many decades, most blacks saw the move into large black enclaves within these cities as strength in numbers and thus as a bulwark against the terroristic activities of marauding racist whites. The fact that many of these enclaves were spatially isolated by man-made or natural barriers led to their increased safety in that regard. Especially in the first several decades following the war, neither the relatively large size of the black neighborhoods nor their separation from whites protected them from racial violence (Rabinowitz 1978; Blackmon 2008). With no self-interested protection from the white landowning aristocracy, many of the smaller of these communities were prime targets for episodes of lynching, rape, and other acts of violence. Larger cities were not immune. New Orleans, a mid-size city during Reconstruction and afterward, was the site of one of the largest mass lynchings in the nation’s history. Aside from slavery-based racial animus, some of the aggression toward urban blacks came from lower-class whites who saw them as economic competitors. Ongoing research designed to assess the characteristics of lynching victims and the motivations that may have driven these deadly assaults are informative in this regard. They have suggested that many acts of violence were linked to the internal migration of former slaves within the South and the social marginality and “stranger” status of those black migrants in the areas to which they migrated (e.g., see Bailey et al. 2011; Bailey and Tolnay 2015; Beck and Tolnay 1990; Tolnay and Beck 1992, 1995; Tolnay, Deane, and Beck 1996). And when blacks chose to move west they did not fare much better. The legacy of the postslavery risks that black residential settlements encountered also extended beyond the South. In her pathbreaking study of the first major migration of black ex-slaves from the South to points west and north, Nell Painter tells a story that had been largely absent from the historiography of both the United States and of Black America. It also lends support to our view that the wide range of regional and cultural diversity found among African Americans during both the past and today remains largely a story untold. In her book Exodusters, Painter (1977) describes the beginnings of the movement of African Americans to the largely unsettled lands of the American Midwest and West after the war and their emancipation from slavery.

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The group of migrants she studied was part of what was called the Kansas Fever Exodus. The group consisted of ex-slave tenant farmers who were inspired by the legacy of John Brown and the image of Kansas as a progressive free state before the war. In 1879 thousands of “Exodusters” left their homes in Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana to seek their fortunes in Kansas. Painter describes the ways in which their hopes of prosperity and the rights of citizenship in that northern, formerly slave-free state were dashed by patterns of exclusion from schools, the ballot, land ownership, the right to hold office, and so on, which were almost identical to those of the Jim Crow South. Antiblack terroristic violence aimed at assuring the denial of these rights and privileges was commonplace. All-black towns emerged in response, with the town of Nicodemus having retained that distinction many decades later. Many of the sundown towns that later arose in the Midwest were in response to this and later migrations of blacks to areas outside of the South after Reconstruction (Loewen 2005). For our theory of ethnocentrism, the experiences of black migrants in Kansas after 1879 and the rise of sundown towns are contributors to patterns of constraints on geographic mobility and place of residency among African Americans long before their arrival in the nation’s largest cities. Painter’s analysis would seem to suggest that those sentiments and practices that would lead to extreme levels of ethnic spatial compression within black communities extended far to the north of the traditional north-south divide in the United States. Blacks who left the South for points west and north often found themselves subjected to apartheidlike restrictions that led to their forced places of residency in all-black communities or towns. The restrictive covenants of that earlier era would take effect in a decidedly less urban and a more small-town and rural environment. But they had the same impacts as those later observed in Chicago and other big cities.

The Great Migration and Black Cultural Diversity The migration processes and paths we have described in this chapter so far would appear to have characteristics that serve to both enhance and counteract affinitive ethnocentrism within urban black neighborhoods, in both the North and the South. The group/family affinity-based migration paths we described for the flow of black migrants from the rural South into Freetown and from there into larger cities may have served to counter the conflictive aspects of these geospatial movements. As

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noted, these same affinity-based movements characterized what has been labeled the Great Migration. We have already suggested ways in which on-the-ground events and developments in the South enhanced diversity among those who would later migrate. We now describe some of the ways in which the migration process and events on the ground in the West and North may have served to enhance cultural diversity among urban black Americans. The popular image of the migration of African Americans to points outside of the South is largely one that is associated with the post– World War II streams of migrants. That image involves packed Greyhound buses and steaming passenger trains filled with people eager to find jobs and escape southern racial oppression. Those modes of transportation and the rapidity of movement they provided were not part of the pre– and post–World War I exodus from the South. Slower modes of transportation and the dire financial straits of migrants often meant that they engaged in staged migration. Using their limited resources, they moved gradually from their southern homes through the border states and eventually to destinations farther north and west. According to Lewis (1991, 22), “more blacks migrated to southern cities between 1900 and 1920 than to northern cities—and would continue to migrate to those cities through World War II.” For males, especially unattached males and those leaving rural areas before the end of the nineteenth century, migration often occurred in stages (Hine 1991; Rabinowitz 1978). They sought jobs along the way, and stopovers were of considerable duration. In some cases, several months or several years were not uncommon. In some instances, it may have taken a generation for a family who had left the South to arrive at their final destination. A stopover becomes a stay-over becomes a more or less permanent residence. This gradual movement out of the South offered further opportunities for increased cultural differentiation among migrants over and beyond that which had occurred in small towns or cities of the South. Along some migration routes, that southern-born diversity might be enormous. For example, along the Mississippi River valley migration route, some of the intermediate stopovers were in southern Illinois and Missouri. Towns along this route might attract migrants from Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and eastern Texas, and also some points farther east. Along the Atlantic seaboard migrants stopping over in Washington, DC, and Baltimore might find themselves cloistered among others coming from southern Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and northern Florida. In Cincinnati, travelers may have come from Ken-

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tucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. See Spear (1967, 138–140) for a discussion of some of these regional pathways. Also, the operation of sundown laws and white vigilantism caused much ethnic spatial compression among these slow movers. Many of these wanderers had no specific destination in mind and had only vague notions of what to expect in the larger cities north and west. They were the advance scouts who, once settled at their final destination, would become the magnets that attracted others within their families and kin groups and their neighbors. These diverse places of origin among migrants led to extremely culturally diverse way stations along the routes headed away from the South. And with that diversity among what were often transient populations came the risk and reality of conflictive ethnocentrism. As we proposed in Chapter 6, an examination of the extent to which stopover cities and towns experienced elevated rates of homicide and other interpersonal violence, especially during the years of peak migration, provides a way to test the theory we propose. It is also true that once arrived in a northern urban destination, migrants would confront evidence of the staged nature of the Great Migration, and the ones that preceded it. For example, by the mid1960s when the south-to-north migration had lessened substantially, a migrant arriving in a city such as Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, or Chicago often came into contact with fellow African Americans who were (1) the descendants of small bands of free blacks who were born in those cities and had no southern roots but whose numbers in those cities had grown over time; (2) the descendants of free blacks who once lived in the South and escaped slavery before the Civil War; (3) the descendants of blacks who moved to the North between 1865 and World War I; (4) earlier-arriving fellow Great Migration migrants and their descendants who came to those cities between World War I and the end of World War II; and (5) fellow Great Migration migrants who arrived in large numbers between 1945 and 1960, the peak period of the southern exodus. This was also a period when the geographically constrained migration pathways may have loosened to a much greater extent than during the earlier waves of internal migration (e.g., see our discussion of Chicago in Chapter 9). We contend each of these groupings, culturally speaking, may have brought something different into their interactions with each other. The first two consisted of old guard residents who by 1960 may have spent four generations in the city, and culturally speaking were never or no longer southerners (see Gottlieb 1991; Pleck 1979).

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Geographically Constrained Migration Paths Geography itself and the more limited modes of transportation of an earlier era often dictated many of the paths chosen for migration, and these often served to reduce the cultural diversity that migrants would encounter en route and also upon arrival. For example, freed blacks migrating to Boston before 1900 came mainly from the Tidewater towns of Virginia (Pleck 1979). Virginia was also the birthplace of migrants to Pittsburgh before World War I, especially those experienced mill workers recruited by Pittsburgh mills (Gottlieb 1991). In their treks northward, freed blacks from South Carolina and Georgia were more likely to end up in Baltimore or Philadelphia, while those from Mississippi and Louisiana were much more likely to choose St. Louis or Chicago, especially during the earliest years of the Great Migration. Even today, however, evidence of those state-specific migration patterns remains. Some large northern cities developed fraternal organizations centered on the members’ southern states of origin. These geographically constrained migration paths served to lessen the diversity found among blacks during the early years of the Great Migration. And to some extent, they still do so today. However, their diversity counteracting effects began to wane during the post–World War II period when the search for industrial jobs and better modes of transportation led to less confined migration paths. For example, during the late 1940s and 1950s, the Detroit auto industry attracted job seekers from the full breadth of the South. It is also true that decades before the lure of post–World War II industrial jobs began to alter the once geographically constrained migration paths of black migrants, some cities displayed much regional diversity among new arrivals. Chicago was one of them. Spear (1967, 139– 140) notes that Chicago was one of the favorite destinations of World War I–era (1916–1919) migrants from the South, many of whom also moved to Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and Michigan. Hence, during the World War I era, more migrants chose Chicago than were attracted to such cities as Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, or Philadelphia. As a result, Spear (1967, 16) observes that in 1910, 77 percent of black Chicagoans were born outside of Illinois and that only three major black communities in the nation—Los Angeles, Denver, and Oklahoma City—had higher proportions of out-of-state migrants. Hence, Chicago resembled western cities with their highly mobile populations headed toward points ever farther west. For the state of Illinois as a whole, the top ten southern and border states contributing the largest numbers of non-Illinois-born residents in 1910 were (1) Tennessee, (2) Kentucky,

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(3) Missouri, (4) Virginia, (5) Mississippi, (6) Alabama, (7) Georgia, (8) North Carolina, (9) Louisiana, and (10) Arkansas (Spear 1967, 18–19). Thus, the state’s black residents came from the whole of the South. We contend that this regional diversification was a vital demographic component of the within-race ethnocentrism and violent crime linkages we describe in this book. We earlier noted the extent to which all immigration tends to be driven by kinship and friendship ties and networks. This practice often serves to counter cultural diversity and ethnic heterogeneity, especially at their final destinations. For example, the use of social networks has often meant that black migrants used such ties to establish residential patterns based largely on place of origin within northern and western cities. As is well-documented, this practice is common among immigrants of all races and nationalities. Even as recently as the 1980s, large swaths of the West Side and South Side areas of Chicago retained identifiable clusters of people who migrated from specific states and certain areas in those states. For that city, some of the largest clusters involve migrants from Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Although it has not been studied extensively, it is likely that the movement of blacks to the suburbs, like that of whites, tends to flow along the lines of place of origin from within the cores of various cities. And to the extent that such movements among whites appear to have been linked to ethnicity and nationality, hidden affinity group ties among blacks may influence their choices of suburban sites. Clearly, the familiarity that comes with geographic proximity matters. In Chicago, African Americans who reside on the West Side tend to choose the western suburbs of the city, while South Side residents appear to choose the southern suburbs. But, as we have noted those areas of the city have themselves tended to reflect place-of-origin differences from the South. Those are the kinds of possibilities that must be explored by future researchers who aim to test the validity of our theory. While such spatial differentiation is widely acknowledged within the black community, it has been largely ignored by social scientists who study such phenomena as nonviolent crime, homicide, gang turf wars, and so forth. Such labels as inner city and underclass, while acknowledging obvious class divisions within communities, completely ignore these potentially more ethnicity-laden dimensions of black American identities and social interactions. The theory outlined in this document is an attempt to bring those aspects of African American identity to the fore and show the relevance they have for our understanding of violent crime. But first, let us consider one other potentially over-

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looked dimension of the rural South to urban North and West migration of black Americans. Over the years, both racial hypersegregation and ethnic spatial compression have often served to limit the extent to which African Americans can manage their diversity and avoid conflicts by using the homophilous residential patterns described earlier. Numerous studies have shown the ways that racist and racialist social policies put into place within cities at the federal level (e.g., redlining) have removed from blacks the kinds of control over turf that whites display. Chicago has provided many valuable studies that have chronicled these developments. For example, Allan H. Spear’s (1967) work Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920 describes the impact of Jim Crow sentiments and practices that gave rise to that city’s ethnic spatial compression. Spear examines the impacts of the 1919 Chicago riot and how “in a thirty-year period, a relatively fluid pattern of race relations gave way to a rigid pattern of discrimination and segregation” (ix). Later on, the building of housing projects, and in recent years their destruction, compromised the ability of African Americans all across the United States to manage the cultural and class diversity within their communities. In Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940– 1960, Arnold Hirsch (1998) chronicles in intricate detail the rise and fall of public housing and other ways that race has affected housing choice in that city. It shows the limits of the counteracting forces we describe in managing the now hidden and unacknowledged cultural diversity found among black Chicagoans. Similar accounts of the impacts of public housing projects on the stability and character of African American community life can be found in cities such as New York, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, and many others. In Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (1965), Gilbert Osofsky documents these apartheid-like dynamics as they played out in New York City. Important for the present discussion, these externally imposed constraints on neighborhood choice and spatial mobility negatively impacted the ways in which the kinship and friendship networking so vital to all immigrants and migrants could play themselves out at ground level. Spear (1967) describes the ways in which Chicago’s black community became increasingly concentrated in segregated enclaves, but still with much geographic dispersion. He also revealed the template for what was to come later in his own discussion, a template that mirrored the earlier observations of Drake and Cayton (1945), and later work by Hirsch (1998) and Massey and Denton (1993), when he said,

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The growth rate between 1900 and 1910 had decreased from the previous decade, but was still 50 percent greater than that of whites. Most of the population increase was the result of migration, particularly from the nearby borderstates. Negroes could be found throughout much of the city and the Negro neighborhoods were by no means exclusively black. But the concentration of Negroes in two enclaves on the South and West Sides was increasing. As the population grew, Negroes were not spreading throughout the city but were becoming confined to clearly delineated areas of Negro settlement. (1967, 17– 19; emphasis added)

These observations highlight both the likely staged movement of the black population into Chicago after stopovers in border states and also the coming of more rigid spatial confinement of those migrants.

Claiming Blackness While Fighting White Supremacy At this point, we must pause to ask a question also posed at the end of the preceding chapter regarding white Americans. What drives the inattentiveness to cultural diversity among African Americans? We suggest that just as whites find merit and reward in defending whiteness, African Americans have found benefit in defending blackness. Even at the turn of the twenty-first century, W. E. B. DuBois’s prescient observation in 1903 regarding the nation’s color line still holds—and for the same reasons he noted more than a hundred years ago. Throughout the nation’s history, African Americans have had a vested interest in maintaining within-group solidarity. That solidarity is seen as a counterweight or buffer to the nation’s enduring racism. One consequence of that centuries-long struggle against racial subordination has been a tendency among past and contemporary African Americans to be fully aware of the many divides within their own racial group but to waylay such observations in the interest of achieving race-linked goals and objectives. Just as white Americans have seen economic and political advantages and privileges to be gained by accepting a panEuropean whiteness identity, so too African Americans have sought refuge and strength in strategically embracing a pan-African group identity as a counterbalance. The career of W. E. B. DuBois reflects his intellectual status as both “a scholar denied” and pan-African scholaractivist (Geiss 1968; Morris 2015; Sundquist 1996). The effort at promoting cultural and political solidarity as a counterweight to white racial oppression has been fraught with contradictions.

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Beginning with the reality of black-white miscegenation and legal descriptions and definitions of racial intermixtures that ranged from octoroons to quadroons, and on to the imposition of the “one drop rule,” African Americans have been keenly aware of the divides within their community. So too has there been a centuries-long awareness of class divides among blacks. As in White America, proclamations of unity and solidarity often conceal very real within-group divisions and tensions. Many observers have cited the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s as evidence of both the need for solidarity among African Americans and the ability to accomplish it. Conversely, both before and during the political movement for black equality, many African Americans questioned whether the wideranging and sought-after solidarity existed. Both scholars and creative writers noted the extent to which social class differences and skin tone affected the social and personal lives of black Americans (e.g., Fanon 1967; Frazier 1957; Himes 1954). We believe that the glass is half empty on both counts. We believe that a push for solidarity aimed at confronting America’s color line need not blind us to the reality of cultural diversity and heterogeneity found in Black America. In the chapter that follows, we aim to show the ways in which that diversity has impacted the very high rates of interpersonal violence often found in two urban areas of Black America. Given the ways that the workings of the nation’s color line appear to have given rise to more than a century of racial disparity in rates of interpersonal violence, true solidarity among African Americans requires an attentiveness to both diversity and togetherness. They are not mutually exclusive. Two social realities, one firmly anchored in the nation’s past and another in its likely future, help illustrate the need for African Americans to confront boldly the ethnic and cultural heterogeneity within their ranks. They also call for the kind of critical analysis by social scientists of that diversity and its ties to racial disparity in crime and justice. Black, Yellow, Beige, and Brown: The Tones Within In his orchestral suite Black, Yellow, Beige, and Brown, composer Duke Ellington musically celebrated the wide range of skin tones seen in Black America. In the academic arena, a large and steadily growing body of research has documented the extent to which skin tone and complexion differences among African Americans continue to shape interpersonal social interactions among African Americans and between

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blacks and whites. They have also been linked to the ability to create social capital or gain access to it, and occupational and geographic/ spatial mobility. Herring (2003) and Herring, Keith, and Horton (2004) describe the ways that complexion differences matter in the modern “color-blind” era. Russell, Wilson, and Hall (1992) explore their political and social dynamics during an earlier period. Over the years, skin tone and complexion have been linked to • Mate selection and intimate relationships among African Americans (Edwards, Carter-Tellison, and Herring 2004; Hill 2002; Hughes and Hertel 1990; Udry, Bauman, and Chase 1971) • Perceptions of beauty and more generalized cognitive/affective processing (Anderson and Cromwell 1977; Hughes and Demo 1989; Hunter 2005; Maddox 2004; Maddox and Gray 2002; Thompson and Keith 2001) • Differentials in earnings and status attainment, employment, and hiring (Blair et al. 2002; Edwards, Carter-Tellison, and Herring 2004; Hill 2000; Hughes and Hertel 1990; Keith and Herring 1991; Wade, Romano, and Blue 2004) • Psychological and physical health of blacks (Borrell et al. 2006; Harvey 1995; Klonoff and Landrine 2000) • White voters’ evaluations of black candidates for political office (Terkildsen 1993) • Severity of sanctions for juvenile and criminal offenders (Hannan, DeFina, and Bruch 2013; Hochschild and Weaver 2007) We contend that these studies give credence to our belief that there exist within Black America cultural divides that are in essence “ethnic.” Indeed, in their insightful analysis of the ways in which skin tone affects life chances and mate selection among African Americans, Hughes and Hertel (1990) refer to “ethnic consciousness” as one of the dimensions of this set of causal connections. As viewed by both insiders and outsiders, skin tone appears to represent one of the significant correlates of the hidden ethnocentrism that exists within Black America. It is clearly a significant marker of personal and subgroup identities within black communities and has been so for much of the nation’s history. In reviewing the extant literature on skin tone, we note a study that addresses one of the queries posed in our earlier discussion of attempts at promoting racial solidarity within Black America. In 2005 after a

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careful reexamination of longitudinal data on skin tone, Gullickson reported that those data appeared to reveal a post–Civil Rights movement decline in the importance of skin tone preferences among black Americans. He noted a significant decline after 1980. This would seem to suggest that some of the black pride sentiments reflected within the rhetoric of that movement may have impacted the favoring of lighter skin tones found in earlier studies. In some instances, and in some social settings, it may well be that skin tone is a marker of cultural distinctiveness and difference. For example, in those regions of the country where there has been substantial racial intermixing over long periods of time, skin tone differences may mark the infusion of white and Native American cultural traditions into areas where there were historically and continue to exist large numbers of persons whose cultural leanings are toward African roots. Thus, for example, in the coastal regions of South Carolina and Louisiana, skin tone might have signaled lines of demarcation between African versus European cultural traditions. However, we think it is much more likely that the preference for lighter skin tones is not rooted in those kinds of culture-based considerations. Instead, they are tied to those more broadly dispersed and ingrained racial prejudices against black skin found among American blacks, whites, and other races as well. Lighter skin tone allows the wearer to access the benefits of white privilege. Of course, such a conception of skin tone effect does not rule out the likelihood that it also has its cultural dimensions as well. Culture is but a bundle of values, and to value whiteness, even in the nuanced level of varying skin tone shades, is an act of culture-making. It is also true that phenotype differences, including some of the markers that are presumed to be racial, do seem to matter for configuring what are usually thought of as ethnic groups around the world. In sum, it is likely that differences in skin tone alone do not serve as markers of the cultural divides and affinitive ethnocentrism that we argue give rise to conflicts as individuals and groups compete for turf and resources within Black America. Instead, we believe that given the enormous racial intermixing that has occurred within the melting pot that is Black America, skin tone variations are ensconced in the regional place of origin group identities we describe above and in Chapters 5 and 6. It is also true that because perceptions of phenotype differences underpin the labeling of humans into “races,” it is not inconceivable that skin tone and other physical race traits may figure into the calculus of affinity group clustering among African Americans during the past

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and today. The fact that skin tone matters for family and intimate relations to black Americans has been chronicled in autobiographical and fictional writings of African American writers (Himes 1954; Morrison 2015). To that extent it may well affect the kinds of intergroup associations our theory describes. The Continuing Cultural Churn We conclude by observing the impact on perceptions of solidarity among African Americans by describing the second of the challenges it faces. This challenge derives from the “unhidden” ethnic diversity now found among the peoples of African ancestry who have recently immigrated to the United States. Berlin (2010, 203) observed that in 1900 only 20,000 black citizens of foreign birth resided in the United States. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, blacks from the Caribbean added to their numbers, but the racialist immigration restrictions enacted in 1924 put an end to that inflow. Hence, by the 1950s the foreign-born black population in the United States totaled only around 114,000. But change was in the air. Little noticed at the time, during the late 1960s bands of Ethiopian students turned refugees from Ethiopia became the first black Africans “to come voluntarily to the United States since the end of the slavery era in 1865” (Scott and Getahun 2013, xi). Followed by many of their compatriots, today they inhabit a culturally distinctive community of more than 10,000 located within the city of Seattle, Washington. Their rise in numbers and that of other peoples of African ancestry were facilitated by changes in immigration policies enacted in 1965. The result has been a rapid rise in the non-US-born population of African Americans from the 1970s onward. Berlin (2010, 207) notes that since 1965 more than 2 million black migrants have arrived from the Caribbean, more than 900,000 arriving during the 1990s alone. He noted that during the last decade of the twentieth century an average of around 40,000 continental Africans entered the United States each year. By 2000, there were 700,000 foreign-born Africans in the country. The rise over time in the entry of persons of African descent from around the globe has transformed urban Black America. Thus, the social science research agenda for the future must include the study of the consequences of this bringing to the fore of Black America’s heretofore hidden ethnic diversity. How will it affect race relations, efforts at political and cultural solidarity within Black America, and the skin tone effects we have described? Important for the present discussion, how will those

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altered perceptions of within-race diversity affect racial disparities in rates of crime and violence and the criminological analysis of them? Like all other global migrants arriving in the United States, groupings of foreign-born persons of African descent display all of the trappings associated with affinitive ethnocentrism. They cling tightly to the cultural heritages that derive from their places of origin. In most cities, they tend to aggregate within spatially identifiable enclaves, such as the Little Ethiopia area of Seattle described by Scott and Getahun (2013). In most instances, they tend to have much lower rates of crime and violence than do native black Americans. For example, Martinez (2003) found that Haitian American residents in Miami, though often mired in the same kind of poverty as their Florida-born black counterparts, had much lower rates of homicide. Immigration guidelines facilitate the entry into the United States of more educated and skilled migrants, so some of the crime differences can be attributed to that fact. Other factors are at play as well, including the historical evidence accrued from studies of immigrants of all races showing that the notion of higher rates of criminality among the foreign-born is often a product of politically motivated stereotyping rather than statistical fact (US Immigration Commission 1911). That said, there is also evidence in many cities that more recently arrived persons of African ancestry have found themselves exposed to the same kinds of race-centered attitudes, behaviors, policies, and patterns of inter-race interactions that are the essence of American Apartheid and the nation’s enduring legacy of racial caste. In many instances, attentiveness to skin color has restricted the housing and residency options that these newer black Americans have, and it has subjected them to similar race-based measures of criminal justice– related social control as native blacks. The result in many cities appears to be some evidence of ethnic spatial compression in which newly arrived black migrants, much like mulattoes in the Old Country South, are forced to live within or near already existing communities of US-born African Americans. These trends help create within Black America some communities that display the kind of hidden cultural diversity we have described in this book, but they also create communities that embody cultural variances within them that are far from hidden. In some instances, it is very likely that within racially defined and confining social spaces the latter communities may come to display the kind of conflictive ethnocentrism that gives rise to higher rates of crime and violence.

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Conclusion We conclude our discussion of ethnic diversity among African Americans and the external forces that impacted it by offering the following summations. • The early seventeenth-century arrival of persons of African descent into the English-dominated regions of North America and the subsequent arrival of a large slave population led to the creation of decidedly place-based cultural groupings. • Over time those place-based cultural entities among both enslaved and free blacks would come to reflect an amalgam of diverse cultures from the African continent, North America, and Europe. For 200 years, these place-based affinity and identity groupings flourished in eastern North America. A steady stream of slaves from both Africa and the Caribbean helped to reinforce the indigenous African roots of persons of African ancestry in the United States. • Both the biological diversification of the “black” population and its close association with the dominant white cultures within various regions of North America led to an increase in the range of cultural variation. The forced movement of the slave population to interior regions of the United States between 1800 and 1860 served to expand further the range of place-based cultural affinities found among persons of African ancestry. Their forced and voluntary coalescence would result in what was later to become Black America. • Post–Civil War and post–World War II migrations of an emergent Black America further enhanced and spread to the north and west of the United States the wide range of cultural moorings found in Black America. • Although largely unacknowledged, the black population in the United States today consists of a broad spectrum of culturally distinctive, place-based, and historically continuous affinity groupings. The ethnic heterogeneity and concomitant ethnocentrism existent in most large urban communities in Black America are not inherently criminogenic. However, when combined with the effects of the spatially confining dictates of American Apartheid and economic deprivation, they contribute to the excess of lethal violence seen in those communities.

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Finally, while we have emphasized via our theory the importance of recognizing within-race divides within Black America, this does not mean that many of the choices regarding residential clustering and social interactions are not driven by broader racial/cultural affinities as well. Race clearly matters as we have shown throughout. Conscious and implicit sentiments of racial solidarity are at work in both White America and Black America. Our theory is aimed at describing how the social structural and social psychological effects of racial solidarity intersect with the undeniable ethnic heterogeneity that is found among whites, blacks, and all other socially constructed racial categories. In a highly racialized society, all of the cultural divides within Black America we describe are nested within the confines of the nation’s color line, since both ethnic and race-based separatism and ethnocentrism have been enduring features of American life. As our theory proposes, and we will show in Chapter 9, trends and patterns of homicide offending and victimization in urban Black America reveal the consequences of such hidden diversity amid the throes of racial separatism and economic inequality. Despite our focus on criminality and violence, it is important to keep in mind that these social behaviors are not the only consequences of the African American past. The cultural diversity we describe in Black America is evidence of the personal and group agency people of African ancestry have exhibited. That sense of agency may be what leads to the sense of optimism for the future that Berlin (2010) expressed in describing Black America’s “four great migrations.” Such agency is clearly reflected in the observations made below. Rather than identifying with and submitting totally to his master, the slave held onto many remnants of his African culture, gained a sense of worth in the quarters, spent most of his time free from surveillance by whites, controlled aspects of his life, and did some personally meaningful things on his own volition. This relative freedom of thought and action helped the slave to preserve his personal autonomy and to create a culture which has contributed much to American life and thought. (Blassingame 1979, xii)

Notes 1. Of course the use of the label “country and western” also embodies similar group stereotyping. Especially today, the residency of practitioners and consumers of that musical genre is hardly limited to the rural countryside or to the South and West. Yet, faced with our rich cultural diversity, Americans have

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developed a fondness for ethnic and regional stereotypes as a means of pigeonholing that diversity. 2. For example, it is improbable that there exists in the United States an equivalent of the Ibo versus Yoruba versus Hausa ethnic divide found in modern day Nigeria. Not unexpectedly, however, Berlin (2010, 215–216) finds that among recent African immigrants in the United States, these precise distinctions and other west and east African identities are much in evidence. The institutions that those immigrants establish in the United States reflect those divides. But, Berlin notes that like white European immigrants, nationality distinctions also matter. 3. Indeed, the timing of those very early patterns of biological intermixing of Africans and Native Americans may help explain the recent finding by Henry Louis Gates regarding black ancestral roots (PBS, “Finding Your Roots). He observes that DNA profiles of modern-day black Americans show much less evidence of Native American roots than what would be expected on the basis of folklore within the black community. Many African Americans attribute light skin tones and facial features found among themselves and other blacks to their Indian roots. However, Gates noted that DNA tests reveal much more European ancestry than such folklore suggested. Such a present-day finding could be explained by the fact that some of the intermixing of blacks and native peoples occurred several generations before black-white intermixing became the norm during full-blown slavery. Both the Trail of Tears and the confinement of native populations within reservations has meant fewer African–Native American pairings within the last two centuries. The fact that modern-day African Americans show smaller quotients of Native American than European American DNA likely reflects the much greater levels of black-white intermixing that is widely documented to have occurred in the United States during the slavery regime and in the years following it. 4. The term mulatto first appears in the US Census in 1840 and is found in every census after that, with the exception of the 1910 census, until 1930. After that, the term disappears from census classifications (Hochschild and Powell 2008; Nobles 2000). 5. Berlin (2010, 99–151) notes that in response to a growing slave-based economy in the South, this “Passage to the Interior” involved the transport of more than 1 million African Americans from the East Coast to serve as slaves on plantations as far away as East Texas. All of this occurred between 1800 and 1860. 6. The label Great Migration also has been used to refer to the massive movement of blacks from the South to the industrial North after World War I. 7. We use the term freetown to describe actual historically traceable residential enclaves that existed all over the South after the Civil War. We also use it in a more metaphorical sense to label all aggregations of ex-slaves during the period of Reconstruction. By definition, some of these aggregations were mobile and transitory, much like refugee camps in the present day. Whites variously referred to such areas as free towns, liberias, or simply quarters (Aiken 1998, 156). 8. The numbers of black skilled workers were not inconsequential. Silberman (1978, 17) noted that “in 1865, blacks dominated the construction industry in the South, filling 80 percent of the skilled jobs.” While describing the ways that racism served to reduce these numbers, he went on to note that in 1890, 25 percent of the carpenters and painters in the region were black.

9 A Tale of Two Cities: Race and Homicide in Chicago and St. Louis

I go to the movie, and I go downtown But somebody keeps telling me don’t hang around . . . Then I go to my brother And I say, brother, help me, please But he winds up knocking me Back down on my knees —Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come” To avoid being bothered, decent and street youths alike must say through behavior, words, and gestures, “if you mess with me, there will be a severe physical penalty coming from me. And I’m man enough to make you pay.” —Elijah Anderson, The Code of the Street

I

n Chapter 8, we described the ways that numerous waves of migration formed and reconfigured Black America. We now turn our attention to an examination of the effects of the Great Migration on demographic trends and social conditions in two of its final destinations: Chicago, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri. As white-on-black violence escalated in the postbellum South, many African Americans saw the hope for a better and safer life in cities located in northern and western states. With the jobs afforded by the growing industrial base found in those regions and with the perceived absence of overt racial bigotry, for many African Americans, cities outside of the South represented a “Promised Land” of opportunity (Drake and Cayton 1945). We have noted that despite an extensive historiography describing the inner workings of African American migration and processes of 189

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urbanization, little attention has been paid to the impact of this Southto-North and rural-to-urban demographic transition on the ethnic and cultural diversification of Black America. Given that omission, the ways in which black cultural diversity of the kind we describe in our theory affects rates and patterns of homicide remain largely a matter of conjecture. The examination of population trends and homicide in Chicago and St. Louis that we undertake in this chapter affords us the opportunity to both explore those intrarace dynamics as we localize and concretize what have been to this point mainly theory-driven observations. In the telling of our story of these two important US cities, we focus on the causal associations among black internal migration, cultural diversity, systemic racism, urban ethnic spatial compression, and the dire socioeconomic conditions that in past research have been shown to give rise to high rates of homicide. Many of the findings and causal associations we report are well established in the social science literature. However, we believe that they nevertheless offer grist for the mill of our attempt to empirically extend our theory-making venture. That said, the data presented and our discussion of them are designed to show not primarily the explanatory worth of our theory as it now stands, but rather its potential for aiding in the formulation of testable hypotheses and follow-up data analysis.

The Great Migration: The Roots of Urban Ethnic Spatial Compression As blacks arrived in their chosen non-southern destinations, or as they were en route to them, they found that the systemic racism that had been so much a part of the fabric of southern culture was alive and well in the North as well as in the West. They found themselves relegated to sections of cities that did not differ in many respects from the southern rural and urban environments they had left behind. For example, see Drake and Cayton’s (1945) detailed and informative accounting of the numerous setbacks and triumphs experienced by black migrants both in the pre–Great Migration South and in Chicago. Those in the Great Migration who came to St. Louis experienced the same conditions. Racial prejudice and segregation led to the development of densely populated communities that were unequal regarding the economic amenities available to them when compared to those urban enclaves occupied by whites. As many before us have done, we seek to link those racial differences in the urban living experience to varying levels of homicide.

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Thus, despite the novelty of our focus on cultural heterogeneity within urban black neighborhoods, our tale trods a well-worn analytic path. However, our attentiveness to intrarace cultural diversity sets our study apart from most earlier work on this topic. While we will point out some differences between the two cities, and the black communities within them, the cities are in essence identical twins whose similarities derive from the melding of the effects of the Great Migration and American racism. In the telling of our tale of two cities, we aim to avoid the kind of stereotypes surrounding public perceptions of crime among African Americans that we described in Chapter 8. As with white immigrants, many of whom entered the country from peasant roots, social class differences became a vital part of the community lives of African Americans in the United States. In fact, most southern and non-southern cities had areas of the black community, sometimes referred to as Strivers Rows, where affluent blacks resided. Indeed, during the Great Migration, both Chicago and St. Louis became icons of urban black economic prosperity and popular cultural innovations. But their race mattered. Regardless of financial status, urban black Americans most often lived apart from their white fellow citizens. Rapidly growing populations of urban blacks were confined to living quarters that were more geographically restricted and boxed in than their white counterparts. This was not solely a Great Migration problem. It was a feature of each of the phases of black out-migration from the South. DuBois’s The Philadelphia Negro (1899) mapped out the distribution of the social classes within Negro communities of that city. In the unequal spaces created by white prejudice and racialized urban social policies, the challenge of crime and violence was also ever present. To the extent that our theory is correct, the existence within these cities of a hidden and unacknowledged ethnic/cultural divide added another level of complexity to the sets of social forces that drove rates of those antisocial behaviors. A core element of our theory revolves around the role of south-tonorth migration flows, alongside racially separatist policies and customs, in establishing ethnocentric affinity group relations in Black America. Post–Great Migration urban black communities were geographic areas where the burden of race drove the local economy, social relations that emerged within them, and broader intergroup relations within the urban centers in which they were found. Race and racism configured the social landscape and the geographic terrain. That reality underlies the modifications we made in Chapter 6 to the original model of social disorganization (see also Anderson et al. 2012).

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As we observed in Chapter 6, our goal is to begin to explain why patterns of intrarace violence within the assorted northern promised lands, including cities such as Chicago and St. Louis, occurred at levels that go against narratives and proclamations of racial solidarity and cultural homogeneity in Black America in the midst of white oppression. In many instances, rates among non-southern urban blacks were higher than those seen among their sometimes more impoverished southern counterparts. In Chapter 8 we described the interface between white-onblack violence and the largely black-on-black violence that we seek to explain. In the case of both Chicago and St. Louis those interconnections are much in evidence. The historical record suggests that within the new urban environments to which new black migrants came, two forms of conflict began to develop. First, the large influx of migrants was met with racial animus that deepened the cities’ racial divisions. White-on-black race riots, such as the Chicago riot of 1919, became increasingly commonplace (Armstrong 2016). They occurred not only in destination cities but also in border towns along the Great Migration pathway. While this racially motivated violence is vitally important, what drives and motivates our present writing and theory-making is the second and more prevalent form of conflict and violence: intraracial violence within that same pathway and final destination cities. In examining the homicide data from Chicago and St. Louis, we are keenly aware that homicide rates are notoriously changeable from year to year and that many other factors are clearly at play even if hidden cultural diversity and conflictive ethnocentrism matter. In Chapter 6, we addressed the multiplicity of causes that our largely ecologically framed theory of ethnocentrism may not fully explain. We offered perspectives based on the notion of immersion in risk developed by one of the present coauthors. The concept of immersion allows us to disentangle at the neighborhood level the various causal forces that influence violence in these communities, which work in conjunction with the ways that conflictive ethnocentrism impacts and influences violence among African Americans. Finally, we are mindful of the fact that many of the years for which we were unable to obtain homicide data mark the height of the Great Depression. These are critical missing data given the logic of our theory. We also acknowledge that our interpretations of the data for Chicago and St. Louis as well as later attempts to elaborate and test our theory also require greater attentiveness to the particulars of the public policy dynamics that underpin American Apartheid. Although we have

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incorporated that concept in our theory, space constraints have not allowed us to describe all of its dimensions. In this instance, its on-theground manifestations in cities such as Chicago and St. Louis must be spelled out to appreciate the inner workings of our theory and adequately interpret our findings regarding their population trends and varying rates of homicide. Our discussion in Chapter 6 suggests that these include the particulars of redlining and racist real estate marketing practices, urban renewal, urban politics, patterns of law enforcement, and so on. We make a note of some of these social policies but, clearly, more of this kind of analysis is needed for fully informed interpretations of the findings we report for our two cities.

Migration Flows and Population Trends in Chicago and St. Louis Below we provide both population and homicide data for Chicago and St. Louis. Population shifts and homicide rates over time, in conjunction with migration flows into these cities, are of central concern in our discussion. As aggregated, city-level, descriptive data, they clearly do not allow the kind of analyses needed to test our theory in ways proposed at the end of Chapter 6. Nevertheless, they may shed light on the overall credibility of the hypotheses we outline there. Table 9.1 shows census counts for blacks and whites in Chicago from 1900 to 2010. The counts for African Americans clearly reveal the effects of the Great Migration. During the first two censuses of the twentieth century, blacks represented just a fraction of the city’s population. By 1980, they accounted for nearly 40 percent of Chicago’s population. The black population in Chicago steadily increased from 1900 until reaching a peak of nearly 2 million in 1980. From the 1980s onward, the size of the black population in Chicago steadily declined. The city’s white population also steadily increased over time but it peaked fifty years earlier than that of blacks, with over 3 million whites living in Chicago in the 1930s. It then steadily declined in size to a little over 1 million in 2010 (which is lower than the number of whites that were in Chicago in 1900). Even at the purely descriptive demographic level, the data reveal some of the race relations dynamics we describe in our theory. As the number of blacks in Chicago increased, the number of whites decreased. It has been widely noted that the decline for whites reflected both outmigration to other cities, many of which were likely in the West, and the

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Table 9.1 Black and White Population Trends in Chicago, 1900–2010 (percentage) Census Year 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Black Population

White Population

Population Change Blacks

Population Change Whites

30,150 (1.8) 44,103 (2.0) 109,458 (4.1) 233,903 (6.9) 277,731 (8.2) 492,265 (13.6) 812,637 (22.9) 1,102,620 (32.7) 1,197,000 (39.8) 1,087,711 (39.1) 1,065,009 (36.8) 887,608 (32.9)

1,667,140 (98.1) 2,139,057 (97.9) 2,589,169 (95.8) 3,137,093 (92.9) 3,114,564 (91.7) 3,111,525 (85.9) 2,712,748 (76.4) 2,207,767 (65.6) 1,490,216 (49.6) 1,263,524 (45.4) 1,215,315 (42.0) 1,212,835 (45.0)

46 148 114 19 77 65 36 9 –9 –2 –17

28 21 21 –1 0 –13 –19 –33 –15 –4 0

Source: US Census Bureau. Note: Hispanics are included in both white and black population counts. Mixed-race individuals (those who identify as more than one race) are also included in these white and black population figures.

gradual movement to suburbia.1 The last two columns of Table 9.1 track the percentage changes in the black and white populations from one census year to the next. For instance, the black population in Chicago grew by 46 percent between 1900 and 1910, and the white population grew by 28 percent during the same period. Starting in 1940, the white population began to decline. There was a 1 percent drop in 1940 while the still relatively small black population in Chicago continued to grow. There was a 19 percent increase in the number of blacks in Chicago from 1930 to 1940. The biggest surge in population for blacks occurred between 1910 and 1920 when it grew by 148 percent. This population inflow was the first wave of the Great Migration of southern blacks to Chicago between 1914 and 1918. There was a significant surge in population again between 1920 and 1930, when Chicago’s black population grew by 114 percent. Although population growth did not increase as rapidly for blacks after 1930 as it did before 1930, it did continue. Only in 1990 did the number of blacks in Chicago begin to diminish (by 9 percent), with 2010 marking the largest decrease in the black population in Chicago as it decreased from 2000 to 2010 by 17 percent. Increasingly, Chicago became the iconic symbol of midwestern urban Black America that it remains today. The changes in both the white and black populations in Chicago offer some bare-bones support for our notions regarding a culturally heterogeneous African American population that is confined within a

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perpetual zone of transition and subjected to the ethnocentrism enhancing effects of ethnic spatial compression. Although choice obviously matters in place of residence, based on the changes in the white population from the 1940s to the 1990s, it is clear that they enjoyed unrestricted movement away from Chicago. Fleeing both the earlier zones of transition, and then the city, their numbers steadily declined after 1940, with the biggest exodus from Chicago occurring between 1970 and 1980 (a population decrease of 33 percent). In the case of Black Chicago, the long-term trends appear to reflect the effects of both choice and the residency-restricting social forces that past research and our theory describe. As illustrated in Table 9.1, blacks represented only a fraction of Chicago’s population during the early decades of the twentieth century. They reached their highest numbers in 1980, with a population of nearly 2 million, after which their numbers consistently declined with around 900,000 African Americans in Chicago as of the last decennial census count (2010). However, with the even greater decline in the white population, the percentage of the Chicagoans who were black continued to increase until 2010. Population rises and declines alone clearly do not address the kinds of cultural diversity claims we make in our theory. But, for future researchers who might have an interest in examining intergroup diversity and relations, we propose the temporal trends observed, especially within Black Chicago, may tell them a lot. We believe that the observed place-of-birth data found within the census provide invaluable clues regarding the cultural mix found in the city’s black neighborhoods. Spear (1967) found them to be useful in tracing the population flows into the city as a whole. To the extent that the tracing of the place of origin can be done at the community level in Chicago both retrospectively and today, it may offer clues regarding the accuracy of the hypotheses we propose in Chapter 6. Moving on to St. Louis, there are both similarities and differences in the migratory patterns of black and white St. Louis settlers as compared with those who settled in Chicago. As shown in Table 9.2, one fundamental difference between the populations of the two cities is the overall population size. Despite a comparable number of blacks residing in both cities before the Great Migration, St. Louis has consistently had a smaller population than Chicago. The pre–Great Migration black population in St. Louis was comparable to Chicago’s black population at that time. However, the 58 percent increase in the number of black residents in St. Louis during the beginning of the Great Migration (1914 to 1918), was not as remarkable as the 148 percent increase in Chicago

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Table 9.2 Black and White Population Trends in St. Louis, 1900–2010 (percentage) Census Year 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Black Population

White Population

35,516 (6.2) 43,960 (6.4) 69,854 (9.0) 93,580 (11.4) 108,765 (13.3) 153,766 (17.9) 214,377 (28.6) 254,191 (40.9) 206,386 (45.6) 188,408 (47.5) 178,266 (51.2) 157,160 (49.2)

539,385 (93.8) 642,488 (93.5) 702,615 (90.9) 727,699 (88.5) 706,794 (86.6) 702,348 (82.0) 534,004 (71.2) 365,603 (58.8) 242,576 (53.5) 202,085 (50.9) 152,666 (43.8) 140,267 (43.9)

Population Change Blacks 22.5 58.0 33.9 16.0 41.3 39.4 18.5 –18.9 –8.8 –5.4 –11.9

Population Change Whites 19.1 9.3 3.5 –2.9 –0.7 –24.0 –31.6 –33.7 –16.7 –24.5 –8.2

Source: US Census Bureau. Note: Hispanics are included in both white and black population counts. Mixed-race individuals (those who identify as more than one race) are also included in these white and black population figures.

between 1910 and 1920. This population trend seems to support the idea of staged migration described in Chapter 8. For example, in addition to its smaller job market, the size of the black population may reflect St. Louis’s service as a stopover city for many blacks migrating from the South on their way to a final destination city farther north or west. This likely meant that population turnover was frequent, and with that may have come the potential for ethnocentric conflicts. This potential may have been an abiding feature of urban life in St. Louis for many decades of its early, and even more recent, history. The largest population of blacks residing in St. Louis in a single year during the period studied was 254,191 in 1970, and the largest number of whites residing in St. Louis during this period was in 1930 where the white population peaked at 727,699. What is most interesting about this migration pattern for our purposes is that the white population in St. Louis peaked at the same time that the white population in Chicago reached its highest number of 3.14 million whites in 1930. By 1930, the first great wave of European immigration that occurred in the 1840s had been reduced greatly due to the outbreak of World War I. The peak in the numbers of whites in both cities was due to increases in the numbers of native-born whites, not European immigration (Drake and Cayton 1945). This pattern of growth was likely replicated in cities across the nation, and, as is indicated by the percentage change in population for whites in both cities, by the next census

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year 1940, whites had begun to spread out since they were unrestricted in their ability to move away from one another. This pattern shows that for whites there was no racial hypersegregation. Without restrictions on their residential choices, whites did not experience the same levels of ethnic spatial compression as blacks. Instead, as the white populations of both cities reached their highest population levels, relief was available without restriction as is demonstrated in the simultaneous population decreases for whites in both cities. The overall migratory patterns (in and out) of the people who settled in St. Louis parallel those of the blacks and whites who settled in Chicago. For both cities, as the absolute numbers of blacks increased, the numbers of whites decreased, making for the Chocolate City effect described by Farley et al. (1978). Blacks only represented 6.2 percent of St. Louis’s population in 1900, while whites comprised 93.8 percent of St. Louis’s population. This is similar to Chicago, where blacks made up just 1.8 percent of the population in 1900 while whites represented 98.1 percent of it. By 2010, African Americans represented nearly half of St. Louis’s population (49.2), while the percentage of whites was reduced to less than half (43.9 percent). In Chicago, blacks comprised 32.9 percent of the population in 2010 compared with whites who represented 45 percent of the population. For both cities, the timing of the population movement of whites away from the city was the same. The decline in the size of the black population was nearly synchronized as well. The black population in Chicago began to decline after 1980 (see Table 9.1). That city experienced a decline of 9 percent between 1980 and 1990, while the decline in the black population in St. Louis started a decade earlier in 1970. There was a 19 percent decrease in St. Louis’s black population between 1970 and 1980. There are two notable differences in the movement of whites and blacks away from the two cities. First, the change in the white population in St. Louis after 1930 was more dramatic, at least during the 1960s and 1970s, than that in Chicago. The white population in St. Louis declined by 24 percent between 1950 and 1960, 31.6 percent between 1960 and 1970, and 33.7 percent between 1970 and 1980. In Chicago, the white population declined in the 1960s and 1970s by much less, by 13 and 19 percent, respectively. Secondly, although the decline in Chicago’s white population was steady after 1930, the size of the decline began to diminish after it peaked in 1980. The result is that in 2000, Chicago’s white population declined by only 4 percent with no

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discernible decrease in the white population between 2000 and 2010 (see Table 9.1). In St. Louis, the white population decline was more robust. For instance, the white population decline in St. Louis for 1990– 2000 was roughly 24 percent compared with only 4 percent in Chicago, and the 2000–2010 white population decline in St. Louis was 8.2 percent compared with no decline in Chicago. Two other observations are worth noting. First, in 2010, the black population of Chicago declined by 17 percent, which was the highest decrease during the entire period of population decline for blacks in Chicago (1980 to 2010). Second, in 2010, as the black population reached its peak decline in Chicago, the white population stopped its decline, which started after 1930. One additional observation is that not once during the period studied did the size of the black population in Chicago outnumber that of the white population, unlike in St. Louis, where starting in 2000, the number of blacks was higher than the number of whites in that city. Like Chicago, the City of St. Louis experienced population increases in both the black and white populations that continued through 1920. These steady increases were followed by a decline in the size of the white population in both cities. Compared to Chicago, the prewar percentage increase in the white population of St. Louis was much smaller. Perhaps an explanation for the less rapid growth for St. Louis whites over time can be found in the important remnant of the state’s racial heritage that the city carries, which is also of importance for our theory. In 1876 residents of the outlying communities in the metropolitan area voted to separate themselves from the city of St. Louis. The city was contained within the boundaries that it had known up until that time and was unable to expand beyond those boundaries from that point forward (Cassella 1959; Cohn 1974). This civic separation is important with regard to the growth of the white population in the city. Much of the change in the white population reflected movement into areas of St. Louis’s metropolitan area outside of the city (Gordon 2008). Increases in the white population were small in comparison to blacks, and the white population began to decrease dramatically beginning in 1930. As a city, St. Louis became majority African American in 2000, where 51.2 percent of the city’s inhabitants were black. The black population decrease during the 1970s is most likely linked to the demolition of the Pruit-Igoe housing projects in 1974, which displaced a substantial number of African Americans. It is also linked to the removal of barriers to housing mobility due to redlining practices. Like middle- and working-class whites, St. Louis’s black middle-class residents left the city to find their American Dream in the

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north county suburbs where they could purchase homes. The result of these social forces was an increasingly hypersegregated community in north St. Louis city that was extremely economically deprived and resource poor. Further evidence of spatial compression may be found by examining the levels of racial residential segregation found in Chicago and St. Louis over time. Massey and Hajnal (1995), using data compiled by several researchers, show that an index of dissimilarity between city wards increased from 67 to 83 from 1910 to 1940 in Chicago, and from 56 to 78 during the same years in St. Louis. Massey and Hajnal characterize dissimilarity index scores over 60 as indicating high levels of segregation. A similar increase was found in an index measuring the extent to which blacks lived in isolation from whites. Similar patterns were found for other cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Data for St. Louis were not available for 1950 to 1990. However, by 1950, Chicago segregation was high, and it remained so throughout the twentieth century. A dissimilarity measure of segregation among census tracts remained nearly constant at around .90 between 1950 and 1990, and an isolation measure of segregation hovered around .84 between 1960 and 1990. This means that for the last half of the twentieth century, the typical black Chicagoan lived in a census tract that was 84 percent black (Massey and Hajnal 1995). Further evidence of spatial compression is provided by examining segregation at the city level. Massey and Hajnal (1995, 536) report that after 1950, “blacks and whites not only tended to live in different neighborhoods; increasingly they lived in different cities as well.” Frey (2016) computed index-of-dissimilarity data for census tracts in the largest metropolitan areas (not cities) in 1990, 2000, and 2010. Although most metropolitan areas experienced a slight decline in levels of segregation, the pattern of stable levels of segregation that Massey and Hajnal (1995) described has not budged. Notably, Chicago experienced one of the largest declines in area segregation, from 84.4 in 1990 to 76.4 in 2010, an 8.5 percent decrease. Segregation levels during that time in the St. Louis metropolitan area declined from 77.2 to 72.3, or only 1.8 percent. In 2010, Chicago remained the third most segregated metropolitan area in the United States, and St. Louis was ranked number seven.

Homicide Trends and Patterns Below we provide data on homicides occurring in the two cities during the twentieth century and the first part of the twenty-first century.

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Chicago has been one of the most studied cities in the country for nearly a century. The data provided give an overview of homicide from 1900 through 2013. Data on St. Louis are not as accessible, so for St. Louis we provide information on homicide by race only from 1976 through 2013. The data presented in Table 9.3 reveal the wide and persistent racial gap in numbers, percentages, and rates of homicide over a period of decades in Chicago. Focusing on disaggregated local data gives us the advantage of uncovering nuances that can be easily masked within aggregated national-level counts. Chicago, Illinois Table 9.3 provides the data for homicide victimizations in the city of Chicago. As the century progressed, blacks began to make up more of the share of homicide deaths in Chicago and by 1930, they accounted for well over a quarter of the homicides in Chicago, while whites accounted for 70 percent, down from the 90 percent that they accounted for in 1900. By 1965, the homicide death trend among blacks and whites had shifted, with blacks representing a larger number and higher percentage of Chicago homicides, a trend that continues today. In 1965, 284 (72 percent) of Chicago’s homicides involved blacks compared with 91 (or less than a quarter) that involved whites. By 2013, nearly 80 percent of all homicides in Chicago were among African Americans as compared to only 2 percent that involved white, non-Latino victims. The toll that homicide has taken on the lives of African Americans in Chicago is observed in the traditional calculation of the rate of homicide deaths per 100,000 for blacks compared with the rate for whites. For instance, in 1900, the white population was over fifty-five times larger than the black population and whites accounted for nearly 93 percent of all homicides in the city. But, per capita rates were much more disparate. There were only 7 homicide deaths for every 100,000 whites. Compare that to black lives lost to murder in 1900, which stood at 30 blacks out of every 100,000. The rate that African Americans have lost their lives to homicide in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century in Chicago has been and continues to be consistent and alarming. During the twentieth century, double-digit murder rates and even triple-digit rates have been the African American story in Chicago. The rate that blacks were being murdered in Chicago was particularly alarming in 1919 and then again during most of the 1920s. The 1919 homicide rate among blacks of 140.6 per 100,000 blacks reflects the carnage

Table 9.3 Homicide Trends in Chicago, 1900–1930 and 1965–2013

Year

Number of Black Homicides (%)

Number of White Homicides (%)

Number of Blacks in Chicago

Number of Whites in Chicago

1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927

9 (7.3) 9 (9.0) 14 (10.6) 18 (12.1) 21 (15.4) 19 (12.8) 20 (13.0) 16 (10.5) 14 (10.3) 19 (11.9) 15 (9.1) 13 (6.1) 34 (14.8) 35 (14.3) 26 (10.1) 22 (9.3) 31 (10.7) 42 (14.3) 27 (10.4) 62 (18.1) 49 (15.0) 53 (13.9) 88 (21.5) 120 (27.0) 139 (26.9) 164 (26.5) 177 (29.3) 174 (31.0)

115 (92.7) 91 (91.0) 118 (89.4) 131 (87.9) 114 (83.8) 128 (86.5) 133 (86.4) 134 (87.6) 121 (89.0) 140 (87.5) 149 (90.3) 196 (92.5) 193 (84.3) 204 (83.6) 226 (87.9) 211 (89.4) 249 (86.2) 240 (81.9) 228 (87.7) 273 (79.6) 273 (83.7) 318 (83.5) 312 (76.1) 315 (70.9) 368 (71.3) 418 (67.6) 393 (65.0) 344 (61.3)

30,150

1,667,140

44,103

2,139,057

109,458

2,589,169

Black Homicide Rate per 100,000 Residents 29.9 29.9 46.4 59.7 69.7 63.0 66.3 53.1 46.4 63.0 34.0 29.5 77.1 79.4 59.0 49.9 70.3 95.2 61.2 140.6 44.8 48.4 80.4 109.6 127.0 149.8 161.7 159.0

White Homicide Rate per 100,000 Residents 6.9 5.5 7.1 7.9 6.8 7.7 8.0 8.0 7.3 8.4 7.0 9.2 9.0 9.5 10.6 9.9 11.6 11.2 10.7 12.8 10.5 12.3 12.1 12.2 14.2 16.1 15.2 13.3

Ratio of Death Rates 4 5 7 8 10 8 8 7 6 8 5 3 9 8 6 5 6 8 6 11 4 4 7 9 9 9 11 12 (continues)

Table 9.3 continued

Year

Number of Black Homicides (%)

Number of White Homicides (%)

1928 1929 1930 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989

182 (26.7) 163 (27.2) 188 (27.9) 284 (71.7) 368 (71.9) 391 (70.8) 472 (73.2) 528 (73.9) 604 (74.5) 608 (73.9) 520 (72.9) 600 (69.5) 683 (70.3) 570 (69.8) 552 (67.6) 552 (66.6) 522 (66.6) 547 (63.8) 586 (68.6) 565 (64.4) 454 (67.8) 514 (70.4) 507 (68.7) 457 (68.4) 526 (70.4) 483 (70.6) 468 (70.6) 528 (70.7)

488 (71.7) 426 (71.1) 473 (70.3) 91 (23.0) 110 (21.5) 124 (22.5) 139 (21.6) 146 (20.4) 141 (17.4) 151 (18.3) 126 (17.7) 172 (19.9) 167 (17.2) 164 (20.1) 172 (21.1) 150 (18.1) 139 (17.7) 121 (14.1) 113 (13.2) 142 (16.2) 110 (16.4) 95 (13.0) 96 (13.0) 100 (15.0) 101 (13.5) 93 (13.6) 96 (14.5) 76 (10.2)

Number of Blacks in Chicago

Number of Whites in Chicago

233,903

3,137,093

1,102,620

2,207,767

1,197,000

1,490,216

Black Homicide Rate per 100,000 Residents 166.3 148.9 80.4 34.9 45.3 48.1 58.1 65.0 54.8 55.1 47.2 54.4 61.9 51.7 50.1 50.1 47.3 49.6 49.0 47.2 37.9 42.9 42.4 38.2 43.9 40.4 39.1 44.1

White Homicide Rate per 100,000 Residents 18.8 16.5 15.1 3.4 4.1 4.6 5.1 5.4 6.4 6.8 5.7 7.8 7.6 7.4 7.8 6.8 6.3 5.5 7.6 9.5 7.4 6.4 6.4 6.7 6.8 6.2 6.4 5.1

Ratio of Death Rates 9 9 5 10 11 11 11 12 9 8 8 7 8 7 6 7 8 9 6 5 5 7 7 6 6 6 6 9

Year

Number of Black Homicides (%)

Number of White Homicides (%)

Number of Blacks in Chicago

Number of Whites in Chicago

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

639 (75.0) 705 (76.1) 741 (78.7) 643 (75.2) 700 (75.3) 617 (74.4) 612 (77.4) 549 (72.0) 511 (72.6) 464 (72.4) 464 (73.3) 454 (68.1) 482 (73.5) 435 (72.4) 328 (72.4) 341 (75.6) 350 (74.3) 337 (75.2) 370 (72.1) 347 (75.3) 332 (76.0) 331 (75.9) 388 (75.6) 340 (79.1)

78 (9.2) 87 (9.4) 83 (8.8) 75 (8.8) 64 (6.9) 64 (7.7) 54 (6.8) 79 (10.4) 51 (7.2) 53 (8.3) 38 (6.0) 45 (6.7) 48 (7.3) 41 (6.8) 30 (6.6) 25 (5.5) 30 (6.0) 27 (6.0) 27 (5.3) 16 (3.5) 19 (4.3) 20 (4.6) 32 (6.2) 9 (2.1)

1,087,711

1,263,524

1,065,009

1,215,315

887,608

1,212,835

Source: Chicago Police Department. Note: Data on Chicago homicides are not available for 1931–1964.

Black Homicide Rate per 100,000 Residents

White Homicide Rate per 100,000 Residents

Ratio of Death Rates

58.7 64.8 68.1 59.1 64.4 56.7 56.3 50.5 47.0 42.7 42.8 41.9 44.5 40.1 30.3 31.5 32.3 31.1 34.1 32.0 36.4 36.3 42.5 37.2

6.2 6.9 6.6 5.9 5.1 5.1 4.3 6.3 4.0 4.2 3.0 3.5 3.7 3.2 2.3 1.9 2.3 2.1 2.1 1.2 1.5 1.6 2.5 0.7

10 9 10 10 13 11 13 8 12 10 14 12 11 12 12 16 13 14 16 25 24 23 17 52

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from the 1919 anti-black race riot in Chicago that took more than 38 black lives (Drake and Cayton 1945, 65), and represented more than half of the number of homicides recorded for that year. The African American community experienced triple-digit murder rates during most of the 1920s, from 1923 to 1929. St. Louis, Missouri Table 9.4 provides data on the occurrence of homicides in the city of St. Louis by race. The disparity in homicide rates between blacks and whites is evident. Although there were substantially fewer people, black or white, living in St. Louis over the span of years from 1976 to 2011 than those living in Chicago, the homicide rate in St. Louis for the black population is consistently higher than the rate for whites. The magnitude of difference in homicide rates between the races in St. Louis is not as large as it is in Chicago. The difference in the homicide rate in St. Louis for blacks and whites from 1976 to 1992 fluctuated between two to five times higher. However, in only one year during the forty years covered in Table 9.4 did the difference reach double digits, and that was in 1993 when the homicide rate among blacks was ten times higher than that for whites. Comparing Homicide Trends in Chicago and St. Louis The magnitude of the difference in homicide rates between blacks and whites is not as large in St. Louis as it is in Chicago. In Chicago, the homicide rate among blacks was eight to ten times as large as that found for whites. In St. Louis, the ratio of black to white homicides fluctuated within a relatively low range of between two and five. However, the history of St. Louis may be responsible for this artifact. St. Louis County has a population of slightly more than 1 million. In 2000 and 2010 the white to black ratio was three to one. If the numerator and denominator were changed to include the populations of both the city and county, the racial difference in homicide rates would likely become larger. However, the task of obtaining the data to compile the homicides for all of St. Louis County as opposed to the city alone is challenging. Police data for the county are not the most reliable given the presence of some sixty or so police departments. Coupled with the span of time of interest in formulating our theory, available sources cannot help us determine where homicides occurred and whether they were accurately

Table 9.4 Homicide Trends in St. Louis, 1976–2011

Year

Number of Black Homicides (%)

Number of White Homicides (%)

Number of Blacks in St. Louis

Number of Whites in St. Louis

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

119 (78.2) 113 (72.4) 96 (72.1) 107 (79.2) 107 (73.2) 95 (74.8) 61 (65.5) 59 (66.2) 31 (59.6) 70 (70.7) 105 (70.4) 58 (72.5) 74 (71.8) 72 (75.0) 69 (67.6) 72 (72.7) 74 (72.5) 177 (89.8) 160 (82.1) 148 (80.9) 101 (77.1) 96 (78.0) 76 (71.7) 77 (80.2)

33 (21.7) 43 (27.5) 37 (27.8) 28 (20.7) 39 (26.7) 31 (27.5) 32 (34.4) 30 (33.7) 21 (40.3) 29 (29.2) 44 (29.5) 22 (27.5) 28 (27.2) 23 (25.0) 33 (32.4) 27 (27.3) 27 (26.5) 19 (9.6) 34 (17.4) 31 (16.9) 30 (22.9) 27 (21.9) 30 (28.3) 18 (18.8)

254,191

364,992

206,170

242,988

187,995

202,276

Black Homicide Rate per 100,000 Residents

White Homicide Rate per 100,000 Residents

Ratio of Death Rates

46.85 44.45 37.76 42.09 51.89 46.07 29.58 28.62 15.03 33.95 50.92 28.13 35.89 34.92 36.70 38.29 39.36 94.15 85.10 78.72 53.72 51.06 40.42 40.95

9.04 11.78 10.13 7.67 16.05 12.76 13.17 12.34 8.64 11.93 18.10 9.05 11.52 9.46 16.31 13.34 13.34 9.39 16.80 15.32 14.83 13.34 14.83 8.89

5.18 3.77 3.72 5.48 3.23 3.60 2.24 2.31 1.74 2.85 2.81 3.11 3.12 3.69 2.25 2.87 2.95 10.00 5.07 5.14 3.62 3.83 2.73 4.60 (continues)

Table 9.4 continued

Year

Number of Black Homicides (%)

Number of White Homicides (%)

Number of Blacks in St. Louis

Number of Whites in St. Louis

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

76 (80.0) 68 (73.9) 72 (75.0) 58 (71.6) 64 (82.1) 61 (73.5) 59 (72.8) 58 (82.9) 59 (68.6) 65 (74.7) 58 (77.3) 66 (75.0)

17 (17.8) 23 (25.0) 24 (25.0) 21 (25.9) 14 (17.9) 21 (25.3) 22 (27.2) 11 (15.7) 26 (30.2) 22 (25.3) 17 (22.7) 21 (23.9)

178,266

152,666

157,160

140,267

Black Homicide Rate per 100,000 Residents

White Homicide Rate per 100,000 Residents

42.63 38.14 40.38 32.53 35.90 34.21 33.10 32.53 33.10 36.46 36.90 41.99

11.13 15.06 15.72 13.75 9.17 13.23 14.41 7.20 17.03 14.41 12.12 14.97

Source: US Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Note: St. Louis homicides are not yet available for 1940–1975.

Ratio of Death Rates 3.83 2.53 2.57 2.37 3.91 2.59 2.30 4.52 1.94 2.53 3.04 2.81

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recorded. As was noted earlier in this discussion of homicide trends and patterns, long-term homicide data before 1976 for St. Louis are not readily available. However, there has been some research on homicides in St. Louis that provides evidence of the magnitude of the difference in homicide rates between blacks and whites before 1976. Meyers (1954) examined race differences in homicide arrests in St. Louis between 1949 and 1953 and found that the gap between black and white homicide rates was substantial. The white rate ranged from 1.41 to 3.52 per 100,000 residents. The rate for blacks ranged from a low of 41.37 to a high of 68.95. Decker, Rojek, and Baumer (2005) examined a century of homicide arrest trends in St. Louis, reporting on race differences beginning in 1930. They reported that homicide arrest rates among blacks between 1930 and 1960 were between two and three times as large as whites. The rates almost converged in the late fifties, as the data revealed little difference in black versus white rates. However, they reported that beginning in the early 1960s, levels of racial disparity increased, with data for some years showing the black rate to be as much as four times the size of the white rate. Decker and his associates report on arrests for homicide while we calculate our rates in Table 9.4 using counts of crime reported to the police even if an arrest was not made. Although the rates differ, the trends are quite similar regarding increases and decreases observed in homicides that have occurred in the city. Because of the unavailability of data for St. Louis during earlier years, we will limit our two-city analysis of homicide to the years after 1975. Because the effects of the Great Migration had lessened during this period, our St. Louis data are not as informative for our theorymaking as that for Chicago. As expected based on national data and a litany of past research studies, whites have consistently lower rates of homicide deaths than those found among blacks. Also, the numbers and population-based rate of homicide became increasingly larger for blacks in the second half of the twentieth century, a trend that has continued into the new millennium. What St. Louis blacks have in common with Chicago blacks is that during the period for which we have data for St. Louis (1976 to 2011), the population-based rate at which blacks lost their lives in both cities remained in the double digits during the entire period. During these thirty-six years of homicide data seen in Table 9.4, the highest rate of death for blacks in St. Louis was in 1993, when they died at a rate of 94.15 per 100,000. In Chicago, the highest rate during this period was in 1992, with blacks dying from homicide at a rate of 68.1

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for every 100,000 blacks (Table 9.3). Both of these high points in homicide rates in the two cities occurred after blacks began migrating away from the cities (1980 for St. Louis, and 1990 for Chicago; see Tables 9.1 and 9.2). From City to Suburb: White Ethnic Spatial Dispersion As compared to that of whites, the out-migration of African Americans away from the central city has not gotten a lot of attention from social scientists who have examined social problems, including homicide. The movement of the black population within the boundaries of cities also has not been thoroughly examined. Thus, except for the limited findings from the Moving to Opportunity program we describe in Chapter 10, we know little about the potential effects of both movements on rates of crime and violence. William Julius Wilson and other supporters of the underclass thesis have suggested that the city-to-suburb movement of blacks to the suburbs has involved primarily middle-class blacks. Before the rise of gentrification, the people left behind are less educated and poorer, with a resulting concentration of poverty, and with it higher rates of crime and violence. There is much evidence to support this claim, and it has become the lynchpin of most of the place-centered analyses of crime to which we referred in earlier chapters. Based on our theory, this movement should result in greater ethnic spatial dispersion of a metropolitan area’s black population, and the potential for a lessening of the conflicts that give rise to homicide among those left behind. But, as noted in this chapter’s introduction, in a given locale the inner workings of American Apartheid will determine whether these potentially ameliorating effects are realized in Black America. There is, however, some evidence that demographic shifts within city boundaries might lead to the heightening of ethnic spatial compression. Within the confines of American Apartheid, population movements resulting from the destruction of public housing projects and other nonrelated intracity movements may increase levels of affinity group heterogeneity and conflictive ethnocentrism in many cities. Future work designed to test our theory must disentangle these competing effects of spatial movements of urban African Americans. But, we think that our data from Chicago and St. Louis offer some clues regarding the ways that potentially culture-linked people movements appear to affect rates of homicide at the city level. In comparing Chicago and St. Louis, beyond an enduring blackwhite gap in rates of homicide, Tables 9.3 and 9.4 reveal how starkly

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different the cities are when one compares their homicide rates. Unlike Chicago, the homicide rate for whites in St. Louis was surprisingly similar to black rates in that they were consistently in double-digit figures. Only in nine of the thirty-six years covered did the homicide rate among whites in St. Louis drop to single digits, as opposed to the homicide rate among whites in Chicago. Not once during this thirty-six-year period did the white rate in that city move beyond single digits. The homicide rate for whites in Chicago fell continuously between 1976 and 2013. That rate declined from 7.8 in 1976 to 0.7 in 2013 (see Table 9.3). These observations emphasize the need for greater attentiveness to white-on-white homicide rates and the trends that we provide in Chapter 7. As that discussion suggests, the workings of ethnocentrism-linked homicide likely know no racial boundaries. While whites never accounted for even a quarter of the homicides in Chicago during this thirty-six-year period, whites in St. Louis often accounted for not only a quarter of the homicides but in some cases a third or more, and in 1984 accounted for 40 percent of all homicides in the city. For St. Louis, in all years other than 1993, the ratio of white homicides fluctuated within a relatively low range of between two and five times the homicide rate among blacks (see Table 9.4). Even though in St. Louis blacks die at a higher rate than whites do, when comparing the ratio of black to white deaths in Chicago to those in St. Louis the data suggest that these city differences, and not racial difference alone, require explanation, as these trends are consistent over time. For instance, in St. Louis during 1984, only fifty-two homicides were recorded. There were thirty-one homicides among blacks that year compared with twenty-one homicides among whites, and a ratio of black to white homicide rates of 1.74 to 1 (Table 9.4). By comparison, in Chicago during the same year, the black homicide rate was seven times higher than the white rate. By 2013 blacks in Chicago were dying from homicide at a rate fifty-two times greater than that for whites. In St. Louis in 2011, black rates were only 2.81 times higher than white rates. To the extent that the out-migration of the white population matters, perhaps St. Louis whites are different from Chicago’s whites. They may be people who were left behind and unable to flee the city as their more affluent counterparts fled to other places outside of St. Louis city, to places that those left behind could not afford. Perhaps the homicide trends depicted in Table 9.4 for St. Louis whites reflect an economicsbased spatial compression as compared to the dual economics- and racebased spatial compression experienced by urban blacks. The least afflu-

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ent whites who did not leave the city would be expected to have rates that are relatively high and closer to the rates for St. Louis blacks, thereby lessening levels of racial disparity. These homicide trends among whites may represent the white equivalent of Wilson’s (1996) truly disadvantaged. This more race-invariant take would suggest that whites in St. Louis, who did not move away, were forced to live in spatially compressed and economically disadvantaged communities. And, to the extent that their communities are ethnically diverse, our theory suggests that they will experience ethnic conflict resulting in the kind of violent interactions that end in homicide (i.e., spatially confined conflictive ethnocentrism). As we have shown in Chapter 7, however, a countervailing explanation for the city differences observed in rates of homicide among whites has tended to lean toward subcultural views. Whites in St. Louis have tended to be seen as part of the outpost of the southern subculture of violence. As we observed in that chapter, while this explanation will likely remain on the table, our theory calls into question some aspects of that line of theorizing. For example, the areas of Missouri and southern Illinois that encompass the St. Louis metropolitan area lie in or in close spatial proximity to several of Woodard’s (2011) cultural nations (Greater Appalachia, the Midlands, and the Deep South). Among whites in St. Louis, cultural influences from each of these regions are likely evident as a result of the long-term regional expansions and movements of people Woodard describes. And, although their participation has been understated, whites were also part of the Great Migration. In response to environmental disasters and crop failures in the South, many from that region used St. Louis as a stopover for points north and west. So too did many whites from Woodard’s easternmost nations (Barry 1997). Add to this mix the inflows of pre– and post–World War II immigrants from Europe, and St. Louis whites may have experienced the conflictive ethnocentrism that contributes to higher rates of homicide. To what extent, therefore, did the out-migration of white residents, especially those of greater economic means, from the city of St. Louis affect the city’s ethnic heterogeneity and conflictive ethnocentrism? We believe that the population and homicide trends we have described in our tale of two cities may be informative in this regard. Our theory proposes that increases in rates of violence for blacks occur alongside a simultaneous decrease in rates of violence for whites, as whites can spread out and freely move away from their original, more spatially confining areas of settlement, thereby dissipating violence tied to within-group cultural conflict and ethnic heterogeneity. By comparing

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Table 9.1 with Table 9.3, we observe some evidence of these trends. These tables show that as the white population in Chicago began to decline after peaking in 1930, by 1965, the numbers and percentages of homicides among whites had decreased drastically and steadily. We contend that the population changes observed for whites signal a diminution in levels of within-race conflict to the extent that suburbanization eased their ethnic spatial compression. For blacks in Chicago, a different picture emerges. It was not until 1990 that we witness a decline in the population numbers for blacks in Chicago as illustrated in Table 9.1. As illustrated in Table 9.3, we see that blacks begin by 1965 to represent the lion’s share of homicide deaths in Chicago. As time has passed. that racial disparity has only increased. By 2013, blacks accounted for nearly 80 percent of all homicides in Chicago and whites accounted for only 2 percent. Compare this to 1900 when homicides among whites represented 93 percent of all Chicago homicides, and homicides among blacks were only 7 percent of the total. Much research supports our contention that these trends reflect the fact that unlike whites, blacks were unable to move due to forced segregation. This segregation fostered economic deprivation, culturally compressed communities, sustained intercultural group conflict, and persistently high rates of homicide for blacks. Conversely, the decreases over time in rates for whites reflected their greater degrees of freedom in minimizing these ecologically determined and debilitating effects. Thus, from the beginning of this century, the homicide rate for blacks has been higher than it is for whites, but this difference has become even more pronounced since 2000. In 2000, the homicide rate for blacks was fourteen times higher than the white rate, and in 2009, 2010, and 2011 this difference intensified as the homicide rate among blacks reached twenty-five, twenty-four, and twenty-three times higher, respectively, than the white homicide rate. In 2013, the homicide rate among blacks of 37.2 per 100,000 black residents was fifty-two times higher than the homicide rate among whites of 0.7 per 100,000 white residents, as only 9 whites were killed in Chicago in 2013 compared with 340 blacks who were killed.

Conclusion In observing the population trends and homicide patterns for blacks and whites in St. Louis and Chicago, several factors have been uncovered

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that not only portray the similarities and differences between the people in the two cities but also lend some support to our suppositions concerning place/space, race, and violent conflict. Ironically, the curious case of double-digit homicide rates for St. Louis whites between 1976 and 2011 may lend support to our contention that the ethnocentrism-centered theory we propose is race invariant to a large degree. Although lower than the double-digit rates of death for St. Louis blacks, they may suggest that as in the case of blacks, high rates of homicide among whites can also result from hypersegregation, ethnic spatial compression, and restricted residential choices. Residential segregation is a phenomenon that takes two to tango, even if one is a more passive actor. Also, the effects of economic inequality are not race-specific. Thus, while segregated along the lines of race and not subject to the kind of American Apartheid constraints we have described, St. Louis whites nonetheless experienced economicbased spatial compression. In other words, they were too poor to move, and such immobility may have led to spatial compression and withinrace ethnic conflict that resulted in their double-digit homicide rates. Data on poverty rates by race are consistent with this hypothesis. In 2012, St. Louis white residents had a poverty rate of 15.8 percent, which is 39 percent higher than the 11.3 percent poverty rate in Chicago (Wogan 2013). For African Americans in St. Louis and Chicago, the story is similar but also a bit different. The demise of the housing projects in Chicago that occurred during the latter part of the twentieth century ushered in the era of gentrification in that city. These developments put a nuanced and reverse migration spin on the movement of that portion of the city’s white population who are privileged and not poor and who continued to be unrestricted in their residential choices. Unlike their poorer citydwelling counterparts in St. Louis, these white Chicagoans have many choices about where to live thanks to Chicago’s physical size. The lack of race-linked restrictions on residential choices among whites, including within the gentrified areas of the city, has enabled them to move away from undesirable city blacks or the undesirable city whites who remain there. This has allowed Chicago whites the choice to stay and enjoy all that the city of Chicago has to offer, without the burden of hypersegregation and race-based or even economic-based spatial compression. Over the years, and especially after 1980, the white flight away from the city began to decline in Chicago, yet homicide rates among whites continued to decrease as whites began to occupy gentrified spaces in Chicago’s numerous neighborhoods.

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We have noted that there are many stories to be told by analyzing population and homicide trends in these two cities. With the growth and decline of the black and white populations, and the trends in homicides among blacks and whites for these two cities, the plausibility of our theory appears to be reasonably supported by the data at hand. The data are merely suggestive, as they do not permit us to test directly hypotheses concerning our theory. Doing so will require us to drill down into data at the neighborhood, block, and individual levels. Moving Forward We conclude our discussion in this chapter with ways that our theory might be extended and operationalized. In doing so, we must recognize two important unexamined (by us) research streams—ethnography and developmental studies—as inextricable parts of the theory we are proposing. The rightness or wrongness of our theory can best be determined through the use of carefully designed analyses developed to determine the extent to which the kind of cultural diversity we propose to exist in black America can be conceptualized and measured. Our conceptualization of culture is at times quite consistent with and also at times decidedly at odds with some aspects of the definitions and conceptualizations of culture that Kornhauser (1978) articulated. But we share her view that to be of utility, culture must be clearly defined and shown to exist using empirical research methods. That is the task ahead for us and for those who view as plausible our views of ethnic and cultural divergences within Black America. If cultural differences exist within black communities, they will matter only if they exist in the perceptions of residents themselves. And those perceptions will define and confirm for us the meanings of culture as we have used it in our theory. Ethnographic studies of black communities are needed to define and refine our now loosely conceived notions of culture and to determine if they matter in the minds of those who purportedly possess them, namely, the black American public. Anderson (1978, 1999) and Miller (2001, 2008) have conducted the kinds of ethnographic analyses that may be quite capable of probing, within urban settings, the kinds of questions we pose about hidden cultural diversity and other dimensions of our proposed within-race group identities. We think that the techniques they use can effectively define what in our theory are now largely unarticulated ideas regarding the nature and parameters of the affinity group divides we claim exist in Black America.

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The second stream of vital importance, and one that brings to the fore the need for truly interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to the study of crime consists of developmental theories and their accompanying research modalities. To the extent that hidden ethnicities and ethnocentrism do exist in Black America, like all social-behavioral repertoires, they are passed along from generation to generation via developmental processes. Similarly, to the extent that conflictive ethnocentrism does exist and leads to acts of interpersonal violence, that behavioral repertoire is also the result of developmental processes. But a take-home lesson from all that we have written is the fact that all of such processes are shaped by the social structures within which they are embedded.

Note 1. Implicit in our earlier discussion of staged migrations is the possibility that both Chicago and St. Louis were stopover destinations as well as final destinations for both internal migrants and immigrants from abroad. Often, after a brief stay in both cities, people sought work in the West or other industrializing cities of the Midwest such as Milwaukee, Detroit, Minneapolis, etc. As a folkloric gateway to the West, St. Louis is often portrayed as such a stopover destination. But it was a gateway to the North as well. Drake and Cayton’s (1945) and Spear’s (1967) studies of inflows of internal migrants for Chicago may indicate its stopover status as well. Also, it is likely that the population declines for whites in both cities reflected both the appeal of local suburbia and the growing appeal of such destinations farther west.

10 Public Policy to Prevent Violence

For the most part, traditional approaches to addressing the problem of violence have focused on after-the-fact strategies, largely through enforcement and criminal justice strategies. Much violence is preventable and investments in prevention will result in lives saved, improved quality of life in highly impacted neighborhoods, improved academic outcomes, and reduced expenditures in the criminal justice and health care systems. —Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Testimony on Preventing Violence to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security

T

hroughout this book, we have stressed the necessity and utility of efforts to devise theories that can explain racial differences in rates of homicide and other interpersonal violence. We have also noted the extent to which this is not a purely academic exercise. We write in response not simply to the earlier efforts at theory-making found among our disciplinary colleagues, but also to developments in the world beyond our journals and classrooms. That is, our efforts at theorymaking are prompted by the grounded, on-the-streets realities of the brutality of life in urban America and increasingly beyond those confines. We write not only to fill a void in the literature but also in response to the sense of urgency those real-world events have prompted (Hawkins 2012). Thus, the final chapter of our book is devoted to a discussion of the potential policy relevance of our proposed theory of ethnocentrism and crime. As we have shown, the tremendous loss of life and accompanying collateral damages associated with high rates of homicide have been an abiding feature of African American community life for more than a century. We conclude with an attempt to respond to the need for remediation and solutions. 215

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When attempting to apply our theory to the solution of the problem we have described, several hurdles await us. All theories designed to describe and explain human behavior contain within them unavoidable tendencies toward determinism and inevitability. On the surface, our theory clearly embodies aspects of both cultural determinism and social structural determinism. One might conclude, therefore, that our takehome message is that cultural diversity inevitably leads to violent conflicts, especially when it is impacted by the nation’s still evident legacy of racial apartheid. While fully acknowledging the relevance of the social structural constraints that we have described throughout our book, we think that what we have written also offers guidance for advancing attempts at violence reduction. We believe that our theory of ethnocentrism accurately describes the social forces that lead to the elevated rates of violence observed over time in Black America. We also think that interpersonal violence is quite amenable to prevention and interventions aimed at reducing levels of involvement. We do not believe that efforts designed to effect changes in social policies that might ameliorate the social structural conditions that serve to exacerbate levels of interpersonal violence are a waste of time. We also do not adhere to the belief that cultural diversity and affinity group ties of the kind we describe in our theory inevitably lead to intergroup conflict. That said, we do think that to be effective, extant efforts at prevention and intervention of violence in African American communities will be more successful if they are both race-conscious and affinity group– conscious. We believe that they must reflect a recognition that ethnocentric interactions among culturally distinct and spatially concentrated social groups within African American communities may contribute to elevated rates of homicide among them. And, any proposed solutions must address the problems posed by the confounding intersectionalities of the ethnocentrism alongside the woes of economic deprivation. Below we describe what we consider promising interventions and policy initiatives that might help counter some of the structural racism- and ethnocentrism-linked social dynamics that our theory depicts.

Violence Prevention Initiatives: The Public Health Perspective One of the major contributions of the approaches taken by those who have begun to treat violence as a public health problem is their insis-

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tence that violence is preventable (e.g., see US Department of Health and Human Services 2001; Hoffman 2004). Successful prevention need not await major reductions in violence-enhancing poverty and socioeconomic inequality, even though these should be targets of public policy and social change. Heeding that call to action, public health scholars and practitioners have paid attention to developing and assessing the efficacy and effectiveness of various violence reduction initiatives. We think that many of these provide intervention and prevention protocols that would be amenable to the kinds of needed modifications we just described. While acknowledging the importance of violence prevention initiatives aimed at individuals who are exposed to the conditions that promote violence, these researchers and practitioners have embraced the traditional public health medical model, which views violence as a disease. And because medical models emphasize the communicability of diseases and the environments within which they occur, they saw the need to look at the community contexts within which violence occurs. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, whose book with coauthor Michaele Weissman, Deadly Consequences (1991), identified violence as a public health issue for communities, was one of the pioneers of this effort. She proposed that a broader net needed to be cast to address the problem of gun violence, calling for efforts that went beyond justice-oriented approaches and those that, to use a public health term, went upstream to examine causes that may alter the long-term trajectories of violence within a community. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also taken the lead in advancing the concept of interpersonal violence, including homicide, as a public health problem. There are many inherent weaknesses of the public health model as it applies to violence prevention, but also many unheralded strengths as well. Within criminology and allied social sciences, much attention is also now paid to the need to move beyond causal analysis alone. Researchers now seek to use the basic science knowledge from their studies to devise interventions that have the potential for reducing levels of violence and accompanying racial disparity. In both public health and the criminological/behavioral sciences most of those proposed interventions involve efforts to promote resilience and desistance. The former is associated with the ability of some youths in very high-risk environments to avoid involvement in acts of crime and violence. The latter is associated with the ability of some already criminally involved youths in such environments to desist or stop offending. Understandably, developmental and social psychologists have been at the vanguard of efforts

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to devise interventions that will prove effective in promoting each of these behavioral repertoires among youths, especially within economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Violence Prevention: Does Ethnocentrism Matter? In the fifteen years since the Surgeon General’s report propelled the effort, researchers have attempted to identify which of the many violencefocused programs in existence are effective at identifying those youths who are resilient to violence or who quickly desist. They have sought to specify reasons why they do so and develop successful intervention and prevention protocols aimed at increasing the likelihood of both sets of behavior. In recent years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has supported numerous interventions rooted in the psychological sciences that use families, schools, and broad-based community organizations as sites for interventions aimed at affecting youthful resilience and desistance. In surveying those efforts, several streams of basic and applied research described as effective in the Surgeon General’s report resonate with the theory we have developed. They may offer guidance regarding ways that the most conflictive dimensions of the affinity group ethnocentrism we have described within African American communities might be managed and reduced. But, we contend that potential will be realized only if both race and cultural differences are brought to the fore in those intervention and prevention protocols. For example, many of the interventions aimed at preventing or delaying the initial involvement of youth in acts of violence have shown great promise. These typically involve programs aimed at positive youth development, social development, and so on. The Seattle Social Development Project (http://ssdp-tip.org/SSDP/index.html) has become the icon of this kind of universal intervention aimed at enhancing the development of at-risk youths of all races. As opposed to these one-size-fitsall types of interventions, other violence prevention programs are more targeted. There has been a tendency to advocate the use of limited resources to target at-risk individuals and the communities in which they live. In the case of African Americans, the importance of simultaneously implementing both forms of interventions has been stressed. Given the emphasis that we place in our theory on race, racism, and ethnocentrism, an obvious concern for us is the extent to which current prevention and intervention modalities reflect those considera-

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tions. There is evidence of some attentiveness to these matters, but much more needs to be done. In response to the far above average rates of violence found in black communities, many of the universal youth development programs have been redesigned around interventions aimed specifically at addressing violence among African American youths. As such they are Afro-centric in many respects. Often, these programs have been severely underfunded and consequently have not been subjected to rigorous testing of their effectiveness. Nevertheless, an impressive body of basic research on this topic has long existed, and it may offer some guidance regarding the likelihood that some of those untested interventions may address the kinds of causal forces we describe in our theory. In their comprehensive survey of the psychological literature on ethnicity, race, and violence, Jagers, Mattis, and Walker (2003, 303– 318) offered a “cultural psychology framework for the study of African American morality and violence.” That framework, which we referenced earlier, built upon a large body of work conducted by African American psychologists. In terms of prevention, that research has led to the advocacy of initiatives aimed at promoting positive youth development but in the form of race pride and racial socialization. In response to both that basic research and public health initiatives aimed at preventing and reducing youth violence, many of these insights have found their way into the criminological and sociological research. At the heart of the latter is the effort to identify interventions that will promote resiliency among African American youths living in economically distressed environments. Burt, Simons, and Gibbons (2012) have provided an illuminating and comprehensive survey of the basic research in this area and data designed to test the idea that ethnic-racial socialization can help counter the effects of racial discrimination and thereby reduce levels of crime. After analyzing data assessing youths’ exposure to racism and discrimination, they conclude, Dominant theoretical explanations of racial disparities in criminal offending overlook a key risk factor associated with race: interpersonal racial discrimination. . . . We . . . explore whether . . . cultural socialization and preparation for bias . . . provide resilience to the criminogenic effects of interpersonal racial discrimination. . . . We find that racial discrimination is positively associated with increased crime in large part by augmenting depression, hostile views of relationships, and disengagement from conventional norms. Results also indicate that preparation for bias significantly reduces the effects of

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discrimination on crime, primarily by reducing the effects of these social psychological mediators on offending. Cultural socialization has a less influential but beneficial effect. (2012, 648)

Unnever (2015) used data collected in the influential study of youth development in Chicago city neighborhoods (PHDCN-LCS) to test the racial invariance thesis and his jointly produced theory of race and crime (Unnever and Gabbidon 2011). Unnever (2015, 1) concluded, “our results question the validity of the invariance thesis by showing that the impact of perceived discrimination by the police has a stronger influence on African American youths’ externalizing problems than it does for other youths.” Each of these research streams suggests that discrimination-linked anxiety, anger, and depression usually manifest in the form of criminal activity and aggression, with most of the latter being largely intraracial. Are such findings of relevance for the amelioration of the kind of ethnocentric impulses we describe? To what extent does cultural heterogeneity within black communities interact with the effects of racial discrimination? Apart from the effects of discrimination, do such cultural divides help to determine which specific individuals or groups become the targets of acts of aggression? Studies of resilience and efforts to curb violence among already involved youths may provide some clues regarding ways to probe these questions. Enhancing Resiliency We believe that observations made above and those contained in the much earlier work described by Jagers, Mattis, and Walker (2003) may provide a potential template for devising violence prevention programs aimed specifically at countering the effects of ethnocentrism within Black America. The socialization that promotes race pride and progroup cultural socialization may well help to counter the effects of both externally imposed racial discrimination and within-race conflictive ethnocentrism. Although such speculation is only grist for the mill of future research on this subject, some extant efforts at prevention may offer some guidance regarding how such change promotion efforts might be implemented once devised. Greater specificity regarding how this can be accomplished must await refinement of our conceptualization of hidden affinity group identities within African American communities—and actual testing of the theory once that is done. However, we can offer some very broad out-

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lines as to the direction of those future efforts. Among the implications of our theory is our belief that efforts to reduce lethal violence ideally should be focused on youths before their prolonged exposure to either racial discrimination or within-race affinity group conflicts. Intervention programs should be designed to provide a kind of social inoculation or resiliency building for the diseases of racism and ethnocentrism. We think that many of the extant violence prevention programs directed at cultural socialization and racial pride, when properly configured to address the kinds of affinity group ethnocentrism we have described, may prove to be very effective at building such resiliency. But the proof is in the pudding, as such relevance clearly must be documented. School-based interventions, especially those that are operant within disadvantaged urban communities, offer the possibility of devising early interventions that may help counter the effects of racial discrimination at both the interpersonal and ecological/structural levels. But schools themselves often pose a problem. Shedd’s (2015) insightful analysis of the intersection of race, place, and opportunity in the lives of Chicago schoolchildren has shown that schools either reinforce or ameliorate the social inequalities that shape the worlds of these vulnerable youths. Her ethnographic accounting of Chicago schoolchildren’s views of their lives, communities, and perceptions of injustice covers much of the same perceptual terrains and conflictive interpersonal interactions we describe in our depiction of ethnic spatial compression amid racial segregation and poverty. Given the pervasiveness and omnipresence of risk-enhancing social forces, however, it is clear that programs also must be devised to counter their destructive effects once they have begun to lead to violence. Thus, there is a need to identify extant or future programs that may fit the bill. Our theory suggests that given the nuanced nature of the within-race identities we have described, to be effective such interventions must employ persons who are residents of or are familiar with the neighborhoods in which they will be implemented and rely on their insights. Also, their preventative focus must be on addressing ethnocentric conflicts that could escalate into violence, and as this implies, program organizers must take a proactive approach. Desistance Promotion Interventions One neighborhood violence prevention program that closely maps these kinds of requirements is the Cure Violence model.1 Cure Violence incorporates many of the characteristics described above. In its original

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Chicago version, CeaseFire-Chicago, the program used a public health approach similar to that employed in campaigns to reduce smoking or increase childhood immunizations. In addition to public education campaigns, the program employed community mobilization, services relevant to violence reduction among at-risk youths, and, most notably, the use of “violence interrupters,” who are often former gang members (Ritter 2009). A detailed evaluation of the CeaseFire-Chicago program has been reported by Wesley Skogan and his associates (2009). According to them, the program is a theory-driven effort that is narrowly focused on reducing shootings (as opposed to “going straight” in all respects). The focus was also on intervening with youth at high risk of “either ‘being shot or being a shooter’” (Skogan et al. 2009, 1–2). Youths were recruited on the street rather than in schools, both because that’s where the clients were and to enable workers to form relationships untainted by institutional associations. Like the Boston Gun Project (Kennedy 2011), the program was designed to “pull levers” (Skogan et al. 2009, 1–3): First, the program aimed at changing operative norms regarding violence, both in the wider community and among its clients. A second goal of CeaseFire was to provide on-the-spot alternatives to violence when gangs and individuals on the street were making behavior decisions. Finally, the program aimed at increasing the perceived risks and costs of involvement in violence among high-risk (largely) young people.

A distinctive feature of CeaseFire’s staffing was their commitment to hiring what they dubbed “culturally appropriate messengers” to carry the word to the community. Whom they hired was a strategic consideration. True to the public health model, the program was not staffed by trained social workers. Outreach workers and “violence interrupters had to fit in, they needed enough street savvy to maneuver through an often rough-and-tumble environment, and they had to pass muster with gang members and leaders” (Skogan et al. 2009, 1–12). Above all, they needed to know the social structure of the neighborhood (Skogan et al. 2009, 5–27): Violence interrupters mediated conflicts that were rooted in deepseated rivalries and resentments. Others arose when people felt suddenly disrespected. To resolve both kinds of situations, violence interrupters needed to be familiar with the personalities and interpersonal dynamics of people in the neighborhoods they serve. In order to

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address such problems, a CPVP staff member said interrupters “need to know who got into an argument yesterday, who slapped who. If you don’t know that shit, you ain’t stopping stuff.”

Skogan and his associates conducted an impact evaluation of CeaseFire that indicated that it produced a marked reduction in frequency and geographic density of shootings and homicides in the neighborhoods in which it was implemented. This finding was independently verified in another evaluation by Henry, Knoblauch, and Sigurvinsdottir (2014). Similar programs in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York (Picard-Fritsche and Cerniglia 2014), and Baltimore, Maryland (Webster et al. 2012), produced similar results. For us, Cure Violence programs illustrate the necessity to be sensitive to the web of ethnic affiliations within urban neighborhoods as well as to the persistent structural sources of isolation from the wider society. In particular, the need to accept the drug trade as an integral part of the economic life of the neighborhood suggests that any effort to reduce violence must address the role of current criminal justice policies and practices in producing it, including the abiding effects of racism.2 Also, we think that our theory argues for community-level approaches aimed at desistance that go far beyond the often gang-centered focus of the Cure Violence programs. Because of the visibility of gangs and the openness of the sworn allegiances to them, gangs become an easy symbol of the rifts and divides that permeate many urban African American, Latino, and some Asian communities. Nevertheless, if our theory is correct, they may reflect merely the tip of the iceberg of the hidden and often conflictive diversity found within Black America. Hence, effective intervention strategies must be reconfigured to address those multilevel divides. Finally, all who would attempt to use gang affiliation as identifiers for purposes of developing intervention and prevention modalities must remain aware of the potential for actions that may serve to effect changes that are opposite of those desired. In her well-researched study, Leyton (2003) described the threats to personal and civil liberties uncovered in gang databases maintained by police departments in many American cities. Zatz and Krecker (2003) described many antigang initiatives as racialized policy. To the extent that gang affiliations are used as potentially invalidated markers of affinity group identities and as conduits for violence prevention, such labels may serve to continue the legacy of race-centered law enforcement that has given rise to the ethnic spatial compression observed in Black America.

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A Community-Wide Violence Perspective In Chapter 6 we extended our theoretical model to include propositions derived from a developmental perspective. We suggest that ethnic spatial compression contributes to a condition we describe as individual and collective risk immersion. This conception is quite consistent with the core elements of the Shaw and McKay (1942) model and our more race-centered modification of it. We showed that it has impacts at both the individual and community levels. The concept of risk immersion suggests that individuals living in communities that are subjected to ethnic spatial compression are not “at-risk” in the ways this term is typically used. Rather they exist within communities that are immersed “inrisk.” Thus, any individual-level inoculations or cessation tactics such as those we just described must take into account the broader community settings in which acts of interpersonal violence occur. Remedies must be aimed at both individuals and the communities in which they reside. This has been a theme that has run throughout our book, and it is one that is of critical importance for conceiving remedies for conflictive ethnocentrism. As noted in our discussion of intersectionality, the presence of ethnic spatial compression and risk immersion means that any solution must address the extraordinary social pressures in disadvantaged black communities that stem from a multitude of social problems. For example, recent work on toxic stress has shown that the consequences of living in-risk are significant in a variety of ways; the impacts can be felt in health, economic, and other social outcomes (Purnell 2014). These conditions create a social and social psychological pressure-cooker effect for those who reside in spatially confining and culturally diverse communities. As DuBois (1899, cited earlier) observed, the presence of a large number of social problems in the same geographic space is the greatest challenge to developing solutions for distressed communities. To the extent that the social pressure-cooker effect derives from ecological dynamics operant at community-wide levels, the pressure within them must be released at those same levels. That said, broad-based solutions to this multiplicity of problems are typically seen as both politically and financially unfeasible. They are said to cost too much. Fifty years past an earlier War on Poverty, they are seen as unlikely to gain any traction among policymakers at federal, state, or local levels. These macro-level ideological and political dynamics, rather than the proven efficacy of the programs themselves, explain in large part the nature of the currently popular intervention and

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prevention programs aimed at reducing violence. While we support targeted interventions that do not always require massive expenditures of funds, we remain aware that over the long run they will be ineffective in the absence of other more multifaceted remedies. It is important to remind the reader that throughout our book we have noted that other ethnic groups experienced the same ecologically constrained community living as black Americans. However, at the level of social policy and amelioration of these similar plights, there was a divergence we have carefully documented as well. European immigrants also exhibited homophily, the tendency to affiliate with similar others. Hence, ethnic spatial compression was not unique to the black experience. However, in terms of the social policies that guided the development and maintenance of those communities, race mattered. Kennedy (1986) and Muhammad (2010) described the development of settlement houses during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America’s urban core. They have reported that although settlement houses were designed to aid the urban poor in assimilating into American culture, there were few of these for African American communities. Hence, during the past, as today, there was not an absence of broad-based social policy and attempts at remediation; rather those policies and initiatives were highly racialized. Among their policy recommendations are calls for investing in the nation’s cities to aid in building capacity for interrupting violence before it occurs, such as the CeaseFire Interrupter program, and for data-driven, community-centered initiatives representing a partnership of stakeholders to work toward reducing violence. The UNITY network initiative serves as a clearinghouse for model programs and community-based researcher-practitioner approaches to community-centered development (www.preventioninstitute.org/unity.html). These approaches employ data collection, assessment of strengths and challenges, and community members to not only help shape the questions being asked, but also to identify solutions to be undertaken (Cohen, Chavez, and Chehimi 2010; Prevention Institute 2008). Hence, within a city there may be several approaches developed even within black communities as the specific assets and challenges within geographic spaces are examined. The Prevention Institute has fostered a network of communities across the nation that work together to identify local solutions that are data driven and that reflect collaborative partnerships for change. The UNITY Network was initially comprised of the forty-five largest cities in the nation. An evaluation conducted on twelve of the forty-five cities showed that among those who work together the rates of violence and

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gun violence decrease. However, the evaluation showed that few of the cities had created comprehensive plans to address the problem of youth violence. The lessons learned during the initial period of program implementation led to a reduction of cities in the network and a process that requires cities to outline the comprehensive approach they are proposing (Weiss 2008). That approach requires multisectored buy-in from city government, community stakeholders, civic and business leadership, and community members. It also strongly encourages the inclusion of a broad range of programs across the life course. Such an approach suggests that any comprehensive plan should include programs that address all dimensions of violence including prevention, intervention, reinforcement, and reentry. However, a major challenge is evident. While it is clear that cross-sectored interdisciplinary models are the most effective way to take on the problems of violence in a community, residents and stakeholders are interested in more immediate solutions. They often don’t have a desire to wait to build coalitions leading to a focus on the law enforcement dimension of violence prevention (Weiss 2008). There are other efforts to incorporate community-centered partnerships to take on the challenges faced. In Cincinnati, StriveTogether is an effort that employs a collective impact approach to support the healthy development of children from cradle to career. Employing a collective impact framework, StriveTogether uses a collective impact approach that involves multi-sectored coalitions that jointly establish a shared vision and mission and shared metrics across a wide number of organizations (Kania and Kramer 2011). StriveTogether covers the greater Cincinnati region, bringing together some 300 organizations and stakeholders to enhance youth development and success. This initiative is modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone, the inspiration for the federal Promise Neighborhoods program (Tough 2008). StriveTogether has grown to a network of forty-one cities working to reduce youth violence (Vector Communications Corporation 2013). The efforts that follow a public health approach, which is mindful of the problems presented by violence in the daily lives of citizens and also recognizes that sustainable change will come with shifts in community, allow residents to thrive and flourish. Such an approach is slow and not easily assessed. While focusing on ethnic spatial compression and collective risk immersion, we are addressing quite clearly the significant impact that community distress has on citizens. Any effort to address violence with the intention of reducing homicides certainly must have proximal programs that address secondary prevention needs. However, for enduring change, it is necessary to take a comprehensive

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approach that supports a more substantial and lasting change in the life conditions found in compressed communities (Tough 2008). These changes must be quite global in their scope and reach.

Needed Broad-Based Public Policy Initiatives Because of the undeniable relationship between economic disadvantage and all social problems, it is widely accepted that reductions in rates of poverty must take center stage in the devising of public policies aimed at lowering rates of interpersonal violence in the United States. Initiatives designed to do so face several notable sets of headwinds. At the global level, recent economic data and forecasts suggest a widening rather than a diminution of rates of wealth inequality. Similar trends are observed at the national level. Within urban areas, deindustrialization has produced an urban underclass for whom jobs have largely disappeared (Wilson 1978, 1987, 1996). The increasing gentrification of US cities has highlighted the racial-spatial divide between divergent social worlds that configures rates and patterns of criminal offending and victimization in the United States (Peterson and Krivo 2010). Acknowledgment of these trends does not mean that the goal of reducing economic inequality must be abandoned. It also does not mean that the remedies we have already proposed for easing the effects of conflictive ethnocentrism and spatial compression within Black America are not capable of addressing some of the violence-linked problems we have noted. We have proposed via our theory that a much more broad-based set of socioeconomic, legal, and ecological forces are also among the root causes of an excess of violence in a diverse and ethnocentric Black America. Hence, the following forms of remediation are also recommended: • The establishment of job-creation programs aimed specifically at areas inhabited by the urban and rural poor. • More aggressive enforcement of existing laws prohibiting ethnic and racial discrimination in housing, and better monitoring of the effects of such enforcement on the spatial containment of African American communities. • A rethinking of the place of public housing within the nation’s residential housing stock, and of the ways that both the demolition of older housing and the placement of new housing affect crime and violence. • A critical examination of the roles played by aggressive policing

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and mass incarceration in the destabilization of community life, interpersonal and intergroup interactions, and social institutions in urban communities of color. • An acknowledgment of the link between historical and current drug control policies and practices and violence between drug sellers, especially those operating within spatially constrained and culturally diverse communities of color (Provine 2007). The need for these changes suggests that no matter how successful they appear to be, many of the resiliency enhancing and CeaseFire initiatives described earlier will fail in the long run if they are not supplemented with initiatives aimed at more systemic change. Our theory presents a perspective that is grounded in historical realities that suggest the need to heed DuBois’s clarion call to address all components of the ecologically constrained ethnocentrism that drive high rates of violence in black communities. However, as noted, we do not believe that the push for more systemic and macro-level changes designed to prevent ethnocentrism-linked violence in Black America must come to a standstill while “waiting for Godot.” We conclude with a note of caution. Whether used to describe individuals or communities, descriptors such as at-risk and in-risk may add to pervasive tendencies to stereotype African American youths, thereby actually contributing to the social control risks they face. Even if such labels are well-intentioned, and conceptualized so as to be anchored in concern for the kinds of cultural diversity and ecological constraints our theory advances, they may serve to stigmatize individuals in ways that are counterproductive. Peterson and Krivo (2010) have noted the stigmatizing effects of such labeling for entire communities of color. In a nation that continues to cling to its enduring color line, those negative perceptual consequences are made more likely. Caution is needed when employing those descriptors. But also sorely needed, in communities victimized by ethnic spatial compression and an excess of lethal aggression, are effective and sustained risk reducing and ethnocentrism-countering violence prevention measures. From the cradle to the grave, African Americans are confronted with the toxic effects of two forms of ethnocentrism. One derives from the effects of the nation’s legacy of white-on-black racism. The other is a product of the concealed and unexamined cultural divides we have described throughout this book. One is tempted to think of these sources of ethnocentrism as external versus internal or from within versus from without. But, to do so is to ignore the many ways in which the deleteri-

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ousness and deadliness of their effects derive from their historically grounded interconnectedness in an ethnocentric America.

Notes 1. The Cure Violence program has different names in different jurisdictions. In Chicago it is known as CeaseFire-Chicago (not to be confused with Operation Ceasefire, although these programs are similar [Kennedy 2011]). Baltimore also has a CeaseFire program based on the Cure Violence model. New York City’s program is called Save Our Streets. 2. The connection between crime and drugs, as well as the criminogenic effects of drug prohibition, are well-documented. For overviews of the complex issues involved, see Lyman (2014) and Whitford and Yates (2009).

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Index

Affinitive ethnocentrism. See Ethnocentrism Affinity group[s], 86, 92, 96–97, 98, 101, 109, 117, 119, 120, 127, 137, 147, 148n5, 155, 169, 213, 218, 223; conflictive ethnocentrism and, 89, 90, 93n4, 102, 113, 170, 208, 216; definition of, 85, 87, 93n5, 94n6; ethnic spatial compression and, 91, 93, 100, 104, 105; hidden cultural diversity and, 85, 87, 93n5, 94n6, 187, 220; identity formation and, 88, 89, 92, 110, 111, 147; migration and, 89, 128, 129, 177; place and, 102, 112; prevention of violence and, 216, 218, 220, 221; race and, 91, 94n6, 111, 182, 191; retention of African culture and, 153, 155; violence and, 90, 91, 102, 113, 116n12, 139, 145, 216; whites and, 99, 121, 126, 127 Africa, 119, 127; 185; cultural groups in, 153–154; rates of homicide in, 37; as source of black American culture, 69–74, 96, 153–157 Africanisms/African cultural retentions, 69–74, 153–157 Ahonen, L., 104 Aiken, Charles S, 162–163, 169, 187n7 Alabama, 142, 144, 153, 168, 175, 177

Alexander, Michelle, 19, 159 Amalgamation, 124; in Black America, 157–159, 165, 185; in White America, 129–132. See also Americanization; Assimilation/assimilationist American exceptionalism: in rates of deadly violence, 136–140 American Indians, 25, 156, 287n3. See also Native Americans Americanization, 57, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 130, 155, 165. See also Amalgamation; Assimilation/assimilationist American South, 123, 128, 141, 146, 151, 163–173, 189, 190, 210 Anderson, Elijah, 7, 8, 151, 160, 189, 191, 213 Andreescu, Vivian, 143 Apartheid, 28, 50, 76n5, 106, 159, 160, 161, 163, 173, 178, 184, 185, 192, 208, 212, 216; propositions on, 91–92, 102–103 Appalachia, 96n9, 124, 128, 141, 142, 144, 148nn1, 168 Arab Americans, 133 Arkansas, 142, 174, 177 Armer, J. Michael, 62 Armstrong, Ken, 192 Asian Americans, 25, 50, 67, 126, 134, 135, 223

255

256

Index

Assimilation/assimilationist, 10, 67, 72, 76n9, 107, 119, 121, 123, 124; and blacks, 133, 165, 171, 225; as a social narrative, 64–66; and whites, 123–124, 129, 130, 131, 133. See also Amalgamation; Americanization Bailey, Amy K., 170, 172 Baller, Robert, 24, 34, 143, 145 Baltimore, 162, 174, 176, 223 Banks, Marcus, 80–81 Barger, Ken, 79 Barry, John M., 210 Barth, Fredrik, 82 Bartkowski, John P., 144 Bates, Robert, 81 Bean, Lydia, 23 Beck, E. M., 170, 172 Becker, Howard S., 26 Benedict, Ruth, 61 Berg, Mark T., 8 Berlin, Ira, 12, 116n11, 127, 148n2, 148, 149, 152, 153, 154–156, 158, 162, 163, 164, 171, 183, 186, 187nn 2,5 Bernard, Thomas J., 14 Bienen, Leigh, 48–54 Billet, Bret L., 63 Black America: cultural diversity in, 10–12, 69–74, 149–186; violence in, 2, 26–34, 37–54, 101–117, 199– 213 Black, Donald, 26, 93n2, 94n9, 138, 139, 140 Blackmon, Douglas A., 159, 168, 172 Blackness, 134; as panethnic group identity, 83, 179–180 Blalock, Hubert. M., 60, 94n8 Blanch, Adrea K., 105 Blassingame, John W., 70, 153, 155 Blau, Peter, 45–47, 49, 52, 92, 94n8, 107, 130, 131 Blau. Judith, 52 Blauner, Robert, 37, 72, 73, 76n10, 91, 94n7, 152, 153 Blum, T., 130, 131 Boas, Franz, 83

Bobo, Lawrence D., 17 Bohannan, Paul J., 37, 96 Bohm, Robert, 1 Bonacich, Edna., 82 Bonger, Willem A., 98 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, 17 Boston, 123, 176, 222 Bourne, Jenny, 167 Boykin, W. A., 11, 107 Breault, Kevin D., 42 Burgess, Ernest W., 40, 43, 55n2, 64 Bursik, Robert. J., 22, 44 Burt, Callie H., 219 Caldell, A. Toy Colbert, 11 Campbell, Mary E., 111 Caribbean: slaves to United States from, 157–158, 185; twentiethcentury immigration to United States from, 183 Carter-Tellison, 181 Cassella, William N., Jr., 198 Cayton, Horace, 60, 65, 151, 178, 189, 190, 196, 204, 214n1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 217 Chamberlin, G., 33 Chambliss, William J., 26, 94n9 Charleston, 162 Chavez, Vivian, 225 Cheek, Neil H., Jr., 111 Chehimi, Sana, 225 Chu, Rebekah, 143 Chicago, 7, 43, 48, 123, 173, 222; ethnic segregation in, 131; as a Great Migration destination, 168, 175–176, 177, 189–214; homicide in, 50–51, 136, 199–213; population in, 193–199; racial segregation in, 178–179; and the zone of transition, 40, 131 Chicago School of Sociology, 38, 65, 76n8; and urban social disorganization, 38–41, 43, 65, 104, 166 Chicago Police Department, 50 Chinese Americans, 76n10, 122, 125 Cincinnati, 168, 174

Index

Civil Rights Movement, 18, 63, 180– 192 Civil War, 49, 66–67, 68, 137, 141, 148nn 4, 5, 166, 168, 169, 175 Cleveland, 168, 176, 178 Cobb, James C., 171 Cobbs, Price M., 114n1 Cohen, Dov, 141, 142, 143 Cohen, Lawrence E., 42 Cohn, Robert A., 198 Collective violence, 85, 89, 134, 136, 146 Colonialism, 63, 75n2, 90–91, 99, 115n5 Color line, 58–61, 67, 71, 148n6, 179, 180, 186, 228; among whites, 132– 135 Competitive acquisitiveness, 106–107, 115 Concentrated poverty, 24, 104, 115, 160, 208. See also Economic deprivation; Poverty Conflict theory, 94n9 Conflictive ethnocentrism. See Ethnocentrism Cook, James M., 111 Cooke, Sam, 189 Cooper, Alexia, 30–32 Cottrell, Leonard S., 41 Covington, Jeanette, 19 Cox, Oliver, 12 Cultural assimilation, 124, 130. See also Assimilation Cultural churn, 88, 102, 157–159, 183–185 Cultural conflict, 68, 139, 141, 147 Cultural criminology, 9 Cultural heterogeneity/diversity, 12, 96, 191. See also Ethnic heterogeneity Cultural melting pot thesis, 121–132. See also Assimilation; Amalgamation Cultural relativism, 10, 44, 75n3 Culture, 7, 10, 14, 26; African, retention of, 69–70; of African Americans, 11, 24, 67, 71–75, 75n6, 107, 149–186;

257

anthropological conceptions of, 60– 61, 71, 82; and crime 8–9, 48, 108, 138; dominant/mainstream, 68–70, 108, 135, 155; of honor, 41–145, 148n11; and language, 81; meanings of, 9–10, 76n5, 82, 213; and narratives on race and crime, 61, 67, 68, 79, 114, 121; of poverty, 69, 70; and regions of United States, 121–123, 129, 142; southern, 140– 142; of violence, 120, 130–147; and whites, 76n5, 121– 148. See also Subculture Currier, Cora, 138 Curtis, Lynn., 8 Davies, Garth, 34 Deane, Glenn, 170, 172 Decker, Scott H., 207 DeGre, Gerard, 4 Delaware, 142 Denton, Nancy A., 44, 160, 178 Denver, 176 Detroit, 175, 176, 178, 214n1 Desistance, and violence prevention, 217, 221–223 Developmental perspectives/theories, 21, 22, 104, 213 Downey, Dennis J., 44 Drake, Sinclair, 60, 65, 151, 178, 189, 190, 196, 204, 214n1 DuBois, W. E. B., 36n1, 37, 40, 59, 60, 65, 71–72, 76n4, 95, 133, 170, 179, 191, 224, 228 Dudley-Grant, G. Rita, 11 Durkheim, Emile, 62 Dykstra, Robert R., 139 Earls, Felton, 22, 42, 113 Eckberg, Douglas L., 26 Economic deprivation, 6, 76n9, 92, 99, 105, 145, 151, 185, 211, 217. See also Concentrated poverty; Poverty Edwards, Korie, 181 Eggers, Mitchell L., 160 Eisner, Manuel, 137 Elias, Norbert, 137, 138 Epp, Charles R., 106

258

Index

Ethiopian Americans, 183, 184 Ethnic/racial enclaves, 90, 102, 104, 131, 157, 178–179 Ethnic heterogeneity, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 52, 57–58, 75, 79, 84– 86, 102, 105, 120, 121, 130, 150, 167, 177, 211, 186; and conflictive ethnocentrism, 85, 89, 90, 91, 100, 101, 102, 185, 210; and social structure, 46, 48; and suburbanization, 131, 135, 210; in Black America, 149–186; in White America, 42–54, 120–132 Ethnic spatial compression, 91–93 104, 100; 116, 134, 148n3, 228; and risk immersion, 114, 115, 224, 226; and zone of transition, 100, 103; in Black America, 105, 109, 111, 134, 173, 175, 178,184, 190–193, 195, 208, 223–224, 226; in White America, 197, 211, 212 Ethnic spatial dispersion, 91–93, 184; in Black America, 208–211; in White America, 100–101, 135, 195, 208–211 Ethnicity/ethnic goups, 14–16, 18, 44, 47, 48, 59, 80, 108, 115n5, 119, 123, 124, 134, 192; and black Americans, 72, 76n10, 83–85, 97, 152–159, 177; and crime and violence, 1–11, 27, 83, 108, 134, 139, 149; and crime statistics, 27, 35, 51; and language, 81, 152; and role of 137, meanings of, 75, 79, 81–83, 86, 94n7; as neo-ethnicity, 123, 132, 156; as nascent ethnicity 123 Ethnocentrism, 10, 18, 20, 33, 38, 41, 79,100, 109, 115, 164, 215, 218; affinitive, 48, 84–92, 97, 100, 103, 105, 106, 109, 129, 146, 155, 157– 159, 169, 171, 173, 182, 184; and African Americans, 76n10, 102, 163, 181, 228; and ethnic heterogeneity, 92, 101; and ethnic spatial compression, 92–93, 104, 111, 195; and ethnicity, 80, 123; and gangs, 106, 108, 113; and

immigration, 128–129, 134, 184; and intergroup relations, propositions about 99–109; and migration, 164–165, 170–173, 175, 177, 184, 208, 210; and race, 93n4, 94n7, 212; and social structure, 98, 99–105; and violence, 85, 98, 99– 109, 114, 139; and whites/whiteness 132, 135–136, 140–148; conflictive, 48, 84–92, 100, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107, 110, 113, 123, 128, 129, 134, 135, 136, 139, 155, 146, 147, 164–165, 169, 175, 184, 208, 210, 227; defined, 76n10, 79– 94; hypotheses, 109–113; universality of, 79–80, 87, 120 Ethnocultural differences/identities/diversity, 120, 127, 130, 132. See also Ethnocentrism Ethnography, 7–9, 13 Europe, 154, 185; rates of interpersonal violence in, 137–138; zones of transition in, 99–100 Fanon, Frantz, 180 Farley, Reynolds, 131, 160, 197 Farrington, David P., 9, 22 Feagin, Joe R., 132 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 26–27 Fenton, Steve, 81–82 Feracutti, Franco, 8 Florida, 174 Fogel, Robert William, 158, 167 Franklin, Benjamin, 119, 132, 133 Franklin, John Hope, 153 Frazier, E. Franklin, 72, 151, 155, 180 Frey, William H., 199 Fried, Morton H., 81 Gabbidon, Shaun L., 2, 24, 25, 26, 35, 76n4, 92, 98, 220 Gangs, 82, 105, 107–109,139, 177, 221–223 Gannon-Rowley, Thomas, 22 Gans, Herbert, 66 Gastil, Raymond D., 141 Geiss, Imanuel, 179

Index

Gender, 26, 30, 98, 104, 105, 111 Geographic and spatial isolation, 87, 125, 127, 134–135, 160, 161 Georgia, 142, 144, 153, 174, 177 German Americans, 51–52, 122, 147 Getahun, Solomon A., 183, 184 Ghetto(es), 151 Gibbons, Frederick X., 219 Glazer, Nathan, 67, 73, 121, 124, 126 Gotham, Kevin F., 43 Gottlieb, Peter, 175, 176 Grasmick, Harold. G., 22 Great Migration, 103, 112, 116n11, 134, 160, 163, 164, 166, 173–179, 186n6, 207, 210; and black cultural diversity, 173–175; in Chicago and St. Louis, 188–199. See also Immigration; Migration Greek Americans, 122, 134 Grier, William, 114n1 Griffiths, Elizabeth, 2, 24, 34 Groves, W. B., 39, 41, 42 Gullickson, Aaron, 182 Gurr, Ted R., 100, 137 Hacker, Andrew, 132 Hackney, Sheldon, 141 Hagan, John, 4 Haider-Markel, Donald, 106 Haitian Americans, 184 Hajnal, Zoltan L., 199 Haley, Alex, 154 Hall, Ronald F., 181 Harrison, Beatrice M., 42 Hausa, 187n2 Hawk, Sheila R., 110, 111 Hawkins, Darnell F., 2, 18, 20, 23, 26, 36n1, 72, 92, 140, 148n4, 215 Hayward, Keith J., 9 Henderson-Daniel, Jessica, 11 Herding hypothesis, 142–143. See also Subculture of violence Herring, Cedric, 181 Herskovits, Melville, 69, 71, 73, 76n8, 153 Hertel, Bradley R., 181 Hertig, Jerald R., 24

259

Heterogeneity. See Ethnic heterogeneity Hidden cultural diversity: and collective efficacy, 113; in Black America, 10–12, 80, 85, 104, 106, 110, 113, 121, 139, 152–158, 164– 186, 191, 213, 220; in White America, 121–132, 139 Higginbotham, A. Leon, 156, 159– 162 Himes, Chester, 180, 183 Hine, Darlene Clark, 174 Hinterlands, 90, 99, 131, 135. See also Rural areas Hirschi, Travis, 2, 148n8 Hirschman, Charles, 12, 66, 68 Hispanic Americans, 68, 134, 194, 196. See also Latinos Hochschild, Jennifer, 83, 181, 187n4 Hoffman, Joan S., 217 Holloway, Joseph E., 153, 154 Holli, Melvin. G., 131 Homicide, 1, 25– 27, 57, 58, 75, 84, 85, 98, 120, 130, 166, 177, 215; in Africa, 95–96; in the American South, 124, 129, 134, 141–145; argument-based, 143, 145, 147; bias in reporting, 27–28; in Chicago, 48–54, 190, 199–213; and ethnocentrism, 84, 98, 121, 129; and hypersegregation, 212–213; hypotheses, 110–113; intraracial nature of, 32, 35n2, 50–51, 116n7, 204–208; and legitimacy, 139–140; and migration, 112, 175, 208–211; New York City, 48–54; as a public health problem, 216–217; prevention of, 215–229; and race, 29–34; racial disparity in rates, 18, 26–44, 50, 86, 208–211; rates in the United States, 26–34; and risk immersion, 192; and role of place, 32–34, 121, 177; in Saint Louis, 199–213; as social control, 138– 139; victimization, correlates of, 30–33; in Western Europe, 136– 138; in White America, 99–102, 119–148, 130, 136–147, 211

260

Index

Hommogamy/homophily, 85, 87, 97, 103,111 Horton, Hayward Derrick, 181 Hunter, Saundra M., 111 Hwang, Jackelyn, 17 Hypersegregation, 91–92, 115, 160, 163, 178, 197, 199, 212. See also Segregation Ibo, 187n2 Identity formation: and affinity groups, 85–93, 97, 107–109; as social group label, 80–84 Illinois, 142, 174, 176, 189 Immigration/immigrants, 18, 27, 28, 37, 40, 43, 57, 59, 64, 65–69, 70, 72, 79, 120, 121, 123, 129, 132, 133–136, 146, 148 n. 4, 154, 164, 177, 191, 196, 225; of Africans and Africa disapora, 37, 164, 183–184; and conflict with African Americans, 49–50; and crime/violence, 37, 41, 65, 135– 136, 184; and melting pot, 122–125, 126–129, 131–132; and US regional cultures, 122–125; and whiteness, 132–135; and the zone of transition, 40–41, 43, 99–100, 103, 129. See also Migration; Assimilation/amalgamation Indentured servants, 159–161 Interethnic violence, 51, 86; in White America, 122 Intergroup relations, 3, 19, 39, 86, 120, 128, 134, 147, 157, 183 Intermarriage, 130–131. See also Miscegenation and racial intermixing Internal colonialism, 37, 91 Interracial violence, 45, 47, 49–52, 93n4, 124–125, 134, 172, 173, 189, 192. See also Lynching(s) Intersectionality and the etiology of violence, 92, 96, 113, 216 Irish Americans, 51–52, 122, 123, 132, 134 Italian Americans, 51, 76n10, 122, 123, 134

Jackson, Pamela I., 151 Jagers, Robert J., 11, 107, 219 Jargowsky, Paul A., 11, 160 Jenkins, William, 127 Jesilow, Paul, 1, 26, 27, 29 Jewish Americans, 76n10, 81, 122, 127, 134 Jim Crow, 19, 103, 134, 135, 162, 171, 173, 178 Johnson, Charles S., 65, 70, 72 d’A Jones, Peter, 131 Kang, W., 33 Kania, J., 226 Kansas, 172–173 Kardiner, Abram, 114n1 Katsillis, John, 62 Keith, Verna, 181 Kennedy, Albert J., 225 Kennedy, David M., 222, 229n1 Kentucky, 174, 176 King, Desmond, 66, 67, 68 Klein, Malcolm W., 82 Kluegel, James R., 17 Kposowa, Augustine J., 42 Kornhauser, Ruth R., 9, 60, 68, 75– 76n3, 135, 213 Kramer, M., 226 Krivo, Lauren, 24, 149, 150, 160, 167, 227, 228 Kubrin, Charis E., 2, 9, 24, 47 LaFree, Gary D., 2, 29, 30 Laird, Jennifer D., 170, 172 Land, Kenneth, 42 Lane, Roger, 55n4, 144 Language, 62, 81, 152, 153, 158 Latinos, 7, 18, 25, 47, 99, 126, 133, 135, 149, 223 Lauritsen, Janet. L., 2 Lee, Matthew R., 24, 141, 142, 143, 145, 147 Levi, Jennifer, 66 Lewis, Earl, 174 Lewis, Oscar, 7, 69 Leyton, Stacey, 223 Loeber, Rolf, 9, 22, 104 Loewen, James. W., 163, 173

Index

Loftin, Colin, 143 Los Angeles, 7, 176 Lott, B., 11 Louisiana, 142, 144, 153, 157, 173, 174, 177, 182 Louisville, 162 Lynching(s), 134, 170, 172 Martinez, Ramiro Jr., 18, 184 Massachusetts, 162 Massey, Douglas S., 44, 160, 178, 199 Matsuda, Kristi N., 8 Mattis, Jacqueline, 11, 107, 219 Mazumder, Bhashkar, 169 McCall, Patricia I., 42 McClain, Paula D., 22, 24 McDowall, David, 143 McKay, Henry D., 38–49, 52, 54, 55n2, 57, 60, 74, 98, 105, 113, 128, 137, 224 McKee, James B., 70 McPherson, Miller, 111 McNulty, Thomas L., 23 Mead, Margaret, 61 Melting pot thesis, 66–69, 121–126, 131. See also Amalgamation; Assimilation/assimilationist Merton, Joe, 66 Merton, Robert K., 140, 160 Messner, Steven F., 24, 34, 106, 140, 143, 145 Mexican Americans, 43, 65, 67, 73 Mexicans, 69 Meyers, Arthur C., 207 Miami, 184 Michigan, 176 Migration, 42, 69, 89, 120, 126–127, 128, 136, 147, 189; and conflict, 136, 154; in Black America, 69, 86, 102, 111–112, 115n5, 134, 135, 148n2, 154, 158, 163, 164–166, 166–186, 172, 174, 175, 190–199; to Chicago and St. Louis, 193–199; pathways, 112, 129, 166, 168, 173– 175, 176–179; reverse, 116n11, 212; and segregation, 43, 160, 190; staged, 174; into urban areas, 64, 65; in White America, 125, 126,

261

128–129, 136, 142, 147, 148n2, 210, 212; and zone of transition, 40–41. See also Great Migration; Immigration Miller, Jody, 213 Milwaukee, 176, 214n1 Miscegenation 133, 156, 157, 159, 180. See Racial intermixing Mississippi, 142, 144, 173, 174, 175, 177; Delta region, 69, 156, 167, 174 Missouri, 177, 189 Mixed-race, 156, 159, 161, 162, 194, 196 Modernity, 72, 74, 155; and ethnocentism, 88–89, 129–130; narratives of, 62–64, 131 Moffitt, Terrie A., 22 Monkkonen, Eric, 48–54, 137 Montagu, Ashley, 83 Morenoff, Jeffrey D., 22, 34, 113 Morris, Aldon, 76n4, 179 Morrison, Toni, 169, 183 Moss, Alfred A., Jr., 153 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 72, 73, 121, 124, 126 Muhammad, Khalil Gibran, 19, 151 Mulako-Wangato, 27 Myrdal, Gunnar, 19, 59, 73 Narratives: assimilationist, 123; counter, 125; popular, 121, 130. See also Social narratives National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, 148n4 National identity, 48, 51, 86, 66–69, 71, 121, 124, 126, 127, 146. See also Americanization Nationality, 40, 43, 59, 83, 154, 187n2; and urban homicide in the United States, 48–55, 120, 136; as a crude indicator of culture, 51, 123, 126– 129 Native Americans, 67, 99, 126, 132, 161, 182, 187n3 Neo-affinitive ethnocentrism, 157, 169. See also Ethnocentrism Neo-ethniicity/nascent ethnicity: in

262

Index

Black America, 102, 152–159; in White America, 122–124 New Orleans, 123, 162, 172, 176 New York City, 48, 123, 128, 127, 136, 164, 165, 175, 178, 223; homicide in, 50–51 Nisbett, Richard E., 134, 142, 143 Nobles, Melissa, 187n4 North Carolina, 142, 162, 174, 177 Novack, Michael, 66 O’Brien, Robert W., 47 Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 22 O’Flannery, Ethna, 65 Ohio, 142, 176 Oklahoma, 142; Oklahoma City, 63 Olzak, Susan, 124–125, 134, 136 Oregon, 63, 148n7 Ousey, Graham C., 23, 24, 141, 142, 143, 147 Ovesey, Lionel, 114n1 Painter, Nell I., 66, 67, 132, 133, 144, 148n10, 172–173 Pan-ethnic racial identities, 88, 146; among African Americans, 179– 180; among European Americans, 132–135. See also Whiteness Papachristos, Andrew, 33 Park, Robert E., 40, 43, 55n2, 64 Parker, Karen. F., 8 Parsons, Talcott, 62 Patillo-McCoy, Mary, 17, 151 Pennsylvania, 119, 162, 176 Pepinsky, Harold E., 1, 26, 27, 29 Peterson, Ruth D., 24, 149, 150, 160, 167, 227, 228 Philadelphia, 40, 71, 147, 170, 175, 191 Piccato, Pablo, 148n1 Pickett, Justin T., 17 Pinker, Steven, 138, 139 Pittsburgh, 168, 176 Place of origin, 60; and cultural identities, 60, 67, 102, 112, 113, 116n10, 127, 129, 152, 154, 158, 169, 171, 177, 182, 184, 185, 195

Pleck, Elizabeth H., 175, 176 Poland, 127, 128 Policing, 135, 163, 223, 228 Polish Americans, 65, 69, 135 Popular culture, 68, 76n6 Poverty, 8, 36, 45, 76n9, 95, 98, 99, 104, 106, 140, 145, 160, 174, 212, 217, 221, 224, 227, culture/ subculture of, 8, 69, 70. See also Concentrated poverty; Economic deprivation Poussaint, Alvin F., 114n1 Power imbalances: and ethnocentrism, 88, 89–90, 136 Prevention Institute, 225 Prothrow-Stith, Deborah, 215, 217 Provenzo, Eugene F., 169 Provine, Dorris M., 228 Public housing, 112–113, 178, 198– 199, 212, 227 Puerto Ricans, 37, 69 Purnell, Jason Q., 224 Puzzanchera, C., 33 Quantitative studies of ethnicity, race, and crime, 2, 5–7, 23–24, Quinlan,Lincoln, 111 Quinney, Richard, 94n9 Rabinowitz, Howard N., 162, 168, 170, 172, 174 Race, ix, 4, 6, 7–9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 35, 36n1, 38, 44, 49, 52, 54, 55n2, 57, 58, 61, 63, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76nn4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 87, 88, 91, 93n4, 94n7, 95, 97, 98, 101, 102, 103, 107, 108, 110, 111, 115n4, 121, 124, 125, 132, 133, 136, 139, 148n1, 149, 150, 156, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 177, 178, 186, 191, 192, 218, 219, 220, 221; and culture of honor, 144, 145; and ethnic heterogeneity, 47–48, 51; and immigration, 182–183, 184; and homicide, 26–34; 49–52, 83–84, 96, 200, 204–207, 212; as a master social status, 48, 58–61, 63, 67, 83–

Index

84; meaning of, 48, 83–84, 91; and popular narratives, 61–71; and social disorganization theory, 40– 42, 43, 44, 45, 115; and theories of crime, 2–3, 16–17, 18, 20–23, 33, 39; versus ethnicity, 80–81. See also Race invariance/invariant thesis and theory Racial discrimination, 22, 25, 189, 190; and violence prevention, 219, 220. See also Racism Racial intermixing,133; and cultural diversity in Black America, 77n10, 155–157, 159, 185; and social control in Black America, 160–163. See also Miscegenation; Intermarriage Race invariance/invariant thesis and theory, 13–16, 21, 23, 24, 36 n. 1, 41, 54, 58, 92, 120, 145, 210, 212, 220 Racial-spatial divide, 24, 114, 150, 151 Racism, 69, 79, 218; and the etiology of crime and violence, 22, 25, 28; institutional, structural and systemic forms of, 26, 48, 59, 100, 190, 216. See also Racial discrimination Radzinowicz, Leon, 14 Raudenbush, Stephen, 22, 42 Reckdenwald, A., 8 Reconstruction, 67, 14, 141, 162, 169, 171 Redlining, and ethnic spatial compression, 135, 178, 193 Regional cultures: in Black America, 152–186; in White America, 121– 126, 128, 129, 132, 140 Reiss, Albert J., 2 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 59 Resiliency, and violence prevention, 217, 220–221 Restrictive covenants, 173 Rios, Victor, 7 Risk immersion, 104, 105–107, 109, 192, 224, 226 Rivera, Craig, 143 Robinson, Zandria F., 11, 171

263

Rohrs, Richard C. 162 Rokaw, W. M., 27 Rose, Harold M., 22, 24 Rosenfeld, Richard, 106, 139 Roth, Jefferey A., 2 Roth, Randolph, 138, 139, 141, 143, 144 Rountree, Pamela Wilcox, 111 Rudisill, David, 2 Rural areas/people, 65, 67,135, 151, 173, 174, 178, 190, 227. See also Hinterland Russell, Kathy, 181 Rusell-Brown, Katheryn, 17, 19 Saint Louis, 176, 189–214; population and migration flows in, 193–199; racial segregation in, 178, 190; rates of homicide in, 199–213 Sampson, Robert J., 2, 14, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 9, 41, 42, 44, 45–47, 52, 57, 107, 113 Savannah, 162 Schwartz, J., 130, 131 Schwerhoff, Gerd, 138 Scots-Irish, 142, 147 Scott, Joseph W., 183, 184 Scull, Andrew, 93n2 Seattle, 164, 183, 184 Seattle Social Development Project, 218 Segregation/segregated, 24, 34, 43, 50, 54, 131, 146, 162–163, 169–171, 178, 190, 199, 211, 212, 221. See also Hypersegregation Seidman, Robert B., 26, 94n9 Sellin, Thorsten, 36n1, 60, 68, 72, 139 Selke, William L., 27 Shanahan, Suzanne, 124, 125, 134 Shaw, Clifford, 38–49, 52, 54, 55n2, 57, 60, 74–75, 98, 105, 113, 128, 137, 224 Shedd, Carla, 221 Shern, David L., 105 Shihadeh, Edward S., 141, 145 Short, James F., Jr., 2, 12, 120, 137, 138 Shrum, Wesley, 111

264

Index

Shuffelton, Frank, 148n1 Silberman, Charles, 37, 73, 96, 128, 187n8 Simons, Ronald. L, 8, 219 Skin tone/skin color, 11; and African Americans, 77n10, 180–183; and white Americans, 66, 119, 133–135. See also Whiteness Skogan, Wesley G., 222 Slavery/slaves, 63, 67, 69, 71, 132, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 148n10, 172; and African American cultural diversity, 73, 76n10, 101, 152–159, 167, 186 Smith, David A., 44 Smith, Erica L., 30–32 Smith, J. C., 27 Smith, Ryan A., 17 Social class/socioeconomic status/inequality, 11, 16, 18, 59, 92, 102, 131, 139, 151, 180, 191, 217 Social control/surveillance/policing: and Black America, 25, 87, 114, 115, 134, 151, 158, 159–164, 166, 186; and the etiology of criminal violence, 20–21, 26, 103–115, 223, 228; of free blacks in colonial era, 160–164 Social disorganization, 24, 52, 60, 79, 160, 191; and urban crime and violence, 38–48, 57–58, 97, 98, 104, 109, 114–115; and the zone of transition, 40–41 Social narratives: of ethnicity, race, and culture, 61–75, 121. See also Narratives Social structure, and violence, 46, 84, 99–105 Sociology of knowledge/science: and the study of race and crime, 3–5, 58–71 Sorensen, Arthur P., 81 South Carolina, 142, 144, 153, 174, 182 Sowell, Thomas, 2, 24, 145 Spear, Allan H., 175, 178–179, 195, 214n1 Spierenburg, Pieter, 138

St. Jean, Peter K. B., 160 Stack, Carol, 112 Steinberg, Stephen, 66, 119, 124, 126, 129, 131, 132 Stereotypes, 1, 18, 150–152, 155, 167, 168, 184, 186n1, 191, 228 Structural racism. See Racism Systemic racism. See Racism Steverman, Sarah M., 105 Stewart, Eric A., 8 Subculture, 11; and theories of ethnic and racial disparity, 7, 23, 68, 151; of violence, 8–9, 58, 108, 138, 151, 210 Suburbanization, 135; and black ethnic spatial disperison, 208; in Chicago and Saint Louis, 208, 211 Sundquist, Eric J., 179 Sutherland, Edwin H., 36n1, 68 Suttles, Gerald D., 7 Swartz, Kristin, 110, 111 Taeuber, Kate, 160 Takaki, Ronald, 57 Taylor, P. S., 65 Tennessee, 142, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177 Texas, 142, 173, 174 Theories of crime causation, 1–12; and ethnic and racial disparity, 1–11, 21–26; and the rise of modern criminology, 14–16 Thomas, Shaun A., 24, 142, 147 Thomas, William I., 65 Thome, Helmut, 137, 148n8 Thrasher, Frederick, 116n9 Tolnay, Stewart E., 170, 172 Tough, Paul, 226, 227 Tribe/tribal, 57, 72, 74, 82 Tyler, Tom., 140 Underclass, 15, 160, 208, 227 Uniform Crime Reports, 26–27, 29–34 United States Census Bureau, 194–196 United States Department of Health and Human Services, 217 United States Immigration Commission, 148n4, 184

Index

Unnever, James D., 2, 24, 25, 35, 92, 220 Urbanization: among African Americans, 70, 168–179, 189–214; and crime and violence, 38–44, 137; and ethnic spatial compression; in Europe, 137; narratives of , 64–66; and social disorganization, 38–44, 64–66 Vankatesh, Sudhir, 7 Violence prevention, 215–229; and ethnocentrism, 218–224; public health approaches to, 21, 216–218 Virginia, 142, 162, 174, 176, 177 Vito, Gennaro F., 143 Vold, George. B., 14 Volokh, Eugene, 138 Wacker, R. Fred, 65, 66 Wadsworth, Tim, 47 Walker, Jeffrey T., 1 Walker, Katrina, 1, 107, 219 Ward, Geoff, 27 Warner, Barbara D., 110, 111 Washington, DC, 174 Waters, Mary, 66 Weiss, Billie, 226 Weissman, M., 217 Weitzer, Ronald, 2, 24 White America, 120; cultural diversity in, 63, 121–135; violence in, 26–34, 48–52, 135–147 White ethnics, 7, 18, 70, 133 Whiteness, 119, 146, 179–180, 182; as a panethnic group identity, 83, 132– 136. See also Skin tone/skin color

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White privilege/supremacy, 67, 77n10, 119, 132–136, 179–180. See also Whiteness White, Norman, 104 Whyte, William Foote, 7 Wilbanks, William, 45 Wilkinson, Deanna L., 34 Wildeman, Christopher, 33 Wilson, Midge I., 181 Wilson, William J., 1, 14, 18, 23, 41, 44, 63–64, 151, 160, 208, 210, 227 Wo, James, 9 Wogan, J. B., 212 Wolfgang, Marvin E., 8, 14 Woodard, Colin, 63, 66, 68, 76n5, 121–124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 132, 137, 142, 144, 147, 148n1, 148n11, 150, 155, 158, 210 Wright, Earl, II, 76n4 Yablonsky, Lewis, 82 Young, Jock, 9 Yoruba, 187n2 Zahniser, Steven S., 127 Zangwell, Israel, 57 Zeoli, April M., 34 Zevenbergen, Matthew P., 24, 34, 143, 145 Znaniecki, Florian, 65 Zone of transition, 39–42, 75; in Black America,103, 106, 135, 194–195; and homicide, 49; and urbanization 55n2; and white immigrants, 100, 128, 129, 130, 131 Zorbaugh, Frederick, 41 Zuberi, Tukufu, 5, 28

About the Book

W

hat explains the well-documented racial disparities in rates of homicide and other acts of criminal violence in the United States? Critically confronting the conventional narratives that purport to answer this question, the authors of Roots of African American Violence offer an alternative framework—one that acknowledges the often hidden cultural diversity and within-race ethnocentrism that exists in black communities. Their provocative work, drawing insights from criminology, criminal justice, anthropology, and sociology, is a seminal step in efforts to understand the intersection of race and violence. Darnell F. Hawkins is professor emeritus of criminal justice, sociology,

and African American studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Jerome B. McKean is associate professor emeritus of criminology and criminal justice at Ball State University. Norman A. White is associate

professor of criminology and criminal justice at Saint Louis University. Christine Martin is an independent scholar based in Chicago.

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