Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:13:52.153Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

AN ELABORATION AND CRITIQUE OF “REASSESSING ‘TOWARD A THEORY OF RACE, CRIME, AND URBAN INEQUALITY’”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2018

María B. Vélez
María B. Vélez*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico
*
*Corresponding author: María B. Vélez, Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico, 915 Roma NE Ste. 1103, Albuquerque, NM 87131. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the prior article in this volume, Robert Sampson and colleagues (2018) take theoretical and empirical stock of a framework they presented twenty years ago. They find broad empirical support for its core tenets. Differences in disadvantage explain most, if not all, observed gaps in violent crime between Black and White neighborhoods; disadvantage also operates similarly to foster crime in Black and White areas. The authors also lament the limited research on the key intervening mechanism of community social organization, particularly its cultural and political sources, that links disadvantage to crime. I have two primary goals in commenting on this article. First, in keeping with their assessment, I provide my take on their agenda for extending the framework beyond the Black-White divide, giving greater attention to the political sources of community social organization, and considering reciprocal relationships between crime, race, and disadvantage. Second, I elaborate on how my views differ from Sampson and colleagues’ regarding strategies to empirically validate the racial invariance thesis, the breadth of support for the thesis beyond its core tenets, and the role of culture. I provide these critiques to encourage further work exploring the explanatory power of Sampson and colleagues’ thesis, and, to thereby foster a better understanding of enduring inequities in violent crime between racialized minority populations and Whites. Without their ecologically-based approach, we run the risk of essentializing minorities as criminogenic, like recent work espousing cultural (devoid of structural) and biological (devoid of social) explanations for the race-crime link.

Keywords

Community Social OrganizationEthnic and Racial InequalityNeighborhoodsNeighborhood CrimeRacial Invariance Thesis
Type
Understanding Race, Crime, and Justice in The Twenty-First Century
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , Spring 2018 , pp. 35 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Hutchins Center for African and African American Research 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, Elijah (1999). Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: Norton Press.Google Scholar
Baumer, Eric P., Wolff, Kevin T., and Arnio, Ashley N. (2012). A Multicity Neighborhood Analysis of Foreclosure and Crime. Social Science Quarterly, 93(3): 577–601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellair, Paul E. (2000). Informal Surveillance and Street Crime: A Complex Relationship. Criminology, 38(1): 137–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunson, Rod K. (2007). ‘Police Don’t Like Black People’: African-American Young Men’s Accumulated Police Experiences. Criminology and Public Policy, 6(1): 71–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burch, Traci (2013). Trading Democracy for Justice: Criminal Convictions and the Decline of Neighborhood Political Participation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burchfield, Keri B., and Silver, Eric (2013). Collective Efficacy and Crime in Los Angeles Neighborhoods: Implications for the Latino Paradox. Sociological Inquiry, 83(1): 154–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clear, Todd R., Rose, Dina R., Waring, Elin, and Scully, Kristen (2003). Coercive Mobility and Crime: A Preliminary Examination of Concentrated Incarceration and Social Disorganization. Justice Quarterly, 20(1): 33–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duck, Waverly (2015). No Way Out: Precarious Living in the Shadow of Poverty and Drug Dealing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernandez, Alma, Vélez, María B., and Lyons, Christopher (2016). The Racial Invariance Thesis and Neighborhood Crime: Beyond the Black-White Divide. Race and Justice, 8(3): 216–243CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hipp, John R. (2010). A Dynamic View of Neighborhoods: The Reciprocal Relationship between Crime and Neighborhood Structural Characteristics. Social Problems, 57(2): 205–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hipp, John R. (2011). Violent Crime, Mobility Decisions, and Neighborhood Racial/Ethnic Transition. Social Problems, 58(3): 410–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Immergluck, Dan, and Smith, Geoff (2006). The Impact of Single-Family Mortgage Foreclosures on Neighborhood Crime. Housing Studies, 21(6): 851–866.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krivo, Lauren J., Vélez, María B., Lyons, Christopher J., Phillips, Jason, and Sabbath, Elizabeth (2018). Race, Crime, and the Changing Fortunes of Urban Neighborhoods, 1999–2013. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 15(1): .Google Scholar
Krupnick, Joseph C., and Winship, Christopher J. (2015). Keeping Up the Front: How Young Black Men Avoid Street Violence in the Inner City. In Patterson, Orlando and Fosse, Ethan (Eds.), The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, pp. 311–350. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Logan, John R., and Zhang, Charles (2010). Global Neighborhoods: New Pathways to Diversity and Separation. American Journal of Sociology, 115(4): 1069–1109.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lyons, Christopher J., Vélez, María B., and Santoro, Wayne A. (2013). Neighborhood Immigration, Violence, and City-Level Immigrant Political Opportunities. American Sociological, Review 78(4): 604–632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matsueda, Ross, Drakulich, Kevin, and Kubrin, Charis E. (2006). Race and Neighborhood Codes of Violence. In Peterson, Ruth, Krivo, Lauren J., and Hagan, John (Eds.), The Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race, Ethnicities and Crime in America, pp. 334–356. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
McNulty, Thomas L. (2001). Assessing the Race-Violence Relationship at the Macro Level: The Assumption of Racial Invariance and the Problem of Restricted Distributions. Criminology, 39(2): 467–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morenoff, Jeffrey D., and Sampson, Robert J. (1997). Violent Crime and the Spatial Dynamics of Neighborhood Transition: Chicago, 1970–1990. Social Forces, 76(1): 31–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, Ann, and Sampson, Robert J. (2013). Community Well-Being and the Great Recession. A Great Recession Brief, Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Patterson, Orlando (2014). Making Sense of Culture. Annual Review of Sociology, 40: 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, Ruth D., and Krivo, Lauren J. (2010). Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial Spatial Divide. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Ramey, David. M. (2013). Immigrant Revitalization and Neighborhood Violent Crime in Established and New Destination Cities. Social Forces, 92(2): 597–629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rios, Victor M. (2011). Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., and Bartusch, Dawn Jeglum (1998). Legal Cynicism and (Subcultural?) Tolerance of Deviance. Law and Society Review, 32(4): 777–804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., and Wilson, William Julius (1995). In Hagan, John and Peterson, Ruth D. (Eds.), Crime and Inequality, pp. 37–54. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., Wilson, William J., and Katz, Hanna (2018). Reassessing “Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality:” Enduring and New Challenges in 21st Century America. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 15(1): .Google Scholar
Saporu, Darlene F., Patton, Charles L., Krivo, Lauren J., and Peterson, Ruth D. (2011). Differential Benefits? Crime and Community Investments in Racially Distinct Neighborhoods. Race and Justice, 1(1): 79–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, Clifford, and McKay, Henry (1942). Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Skogan, Wesley G. (1990). Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Squires, Gregory D., and Kubrin, Charis Elizabeth (2006). Privileged Places: Race, Residence, and the Structure of Opportunity. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.Google Scholar
Vélez, María B., and Lyons, Christopher J. (2014). Making or Breaking Neighborhoods. Criminology & Public Policy, 13(2): 225–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vélez, María B., Lyons, Christopher, and Santoro, Wayne A. (2015). The Political Context of the Percent Black-Neighborhood Violence Link: A Multilevel Analysis. Social Problems, 62(1): 93–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weitzer, Ronald, and Tuch, Steven A. (2006). Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Woodstock Institute (2008). Paying More for the American Dream: The Subprime Shakeout and Its Impact on Lower-Income and Minority Communities. Chicago, IL: Woodstock Institute.Google Scholar
The Woodstock Institute (2009). Paying More for the American Dream III: Promoting Responsible Lending to Lower-Income Communities and Communities of Color. Chicago, IL: Woodstock Institute.Google Scholar