Assessing the Race-Violence Relationship at the Macro Level: The Assumption of Racial Invariance and the Problem of Restricted Distributions

• NCJ Number: 189328
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 39 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2001 Pages: 467-490
• Author(s): Thomas L. McNulty
• Date Published: May 2001
• Length: 24 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article discusses the implications and suggests future research for macrolevel research on the race-violence relationship.

Abstract

Macrolevel research on the relationship between race and violence examined whether the effects of indicators of structural disadvantage on violence varied significantly by race. The argument implied that Black and white communities would exhibit similar rates of violence if white communities featured the high levels of disadvantage found in many Black communities. The reality in most major cities with substantial Black populations is that the communities with very high levels of disadvantage are predominantly Black. The results in this study indicated that for a large proportion of the Black neighborhoods in Atlanta, structural disadvantage was a weaker predictor of violent crime, compared with the effect evident among all of the white neighborhoods in the analysis (as well as Black neighborhoods with low levels of disadvantage). Therefore, considering the full range of data for Black and white neighborhoods, disadvantage generally had more pronounced effects on violence in white neighborhoods. The same argument could be generalized to recent city-level analysis as well. Given the very divergent social situations of Blacks and whites in most urban areas, it may be difficult to provide further insight into this aspect of the race-violence relationship with macrolevel data. Future research should assess what specifically underlies the diminishing effects of structural disadvantage on violence once levels reach the high range prevalent in many Black neighborhoods. Also, existing research has not comprehensively considered the extent to which Black and white communities significantly differ in terms of the availability of internal (or external) institutional resources, even given similar levels of structural disadvantage. 2 tables, 2 figures, 10 notes, 35 references, and appendix.