African-american communities and violent crime: The construction of race differences

Urban poor African-American communities typically have violent crime rates much higher than those of white communities. In explaining this race difference in crime, criminologists have gravitated toward representing high-crime African-American neighborhoods in ways that suggest their residents are different-in-kind from those living in low-crime white neighborhoods. Accounting for crime in terms of a “race difference” has become increasingly problematic because, much like gender, the meaning of the concept of nice has come in for increased scrutiny. Indeed some theorists of race are skeptical that “race” can be considered a category capable of differentiating social groups based on their tendency to engage in distinct behaviors. Yet, despite their controversial status in other subareas of sociology, the twin concepts of race and race difference remain important in the study of crime and urban communities. One criminological theory which still treats these concepts uncritically is racial inequality theory. Racial inequality theorists suggest that shared perceptions of racial deprivation have been instrumental in creating a distinct community-based collective black psychological reaction. It is this black-specific psychological reaction which, in theory, has made blacks more aggressive and thus more inclined to engage in violent behavior than whites. In this paper, I will examine how racial inequality theorists go about constructing a race difference based on a collective black psychological reaction to racial deprivation. Problems with the way race differences are constructed in racial inequality theories will also be addressed.