Interracial Conflict and Interracial Homicide: Do Political and Economic Rivalries Explain White Killings of Blacks or Black Killings of Whites?

A New Twist on an Old Approach: A Random-Interaction Approach for Estimating Rates of Inter-Group Interaction

“…Given the interest in testing whether the racial composition of a community affects the rate of intergroup crime, this is a serious failing. As a consequence, some of the results of prior research testing the effect of certain community characteristics on rates of inter-group crime may need to be revisited (Jacobs and Wood 1999;Parker and McCall 1999;Wadsworth and Kubrin 2004). Our examples using a dataset of crime events in block groups in one area of the city of Los Angeles dramatized these effects.…”

“…For example, one study tested structural theories emphasizing that racial competition, racial segregation, racial composition, and economic and labor market opportunity would increase levels of intra-and inter-group homicides in large U.S. cities (Parker and McCall 1999). Another study focusing on structural characteristics asked whether different forms of social control-both economic and politicalaffected the level of inter-group homicides in large U.S. cities beyond the effects of the racial composition and minority group threat (Jacobs and Wood 1999). Essentially, a baseline model constructed using the size of the offender's group assumes a constant number (a quota) of crime events committed by group A members against members of group B.…”

“…An early body of scholarship focused on the question of the relative rates of inter-and intra-group crime (O'Brien 1987;Sampson 1984;South and Messner 1986); these studies focused on testing whether inter-group crime events occurred more frequently than expected by chance. A more recent body of scholarship has asked what structural determinants lead to higher rates of inter-or intra-group crime (Jacobs and Wood 1999;Messner and South 1992;Parker and McCall 1999;Wadsworth and Kubrin 2004). These more recent studies have adopted a strategy of computing rates of inter-group crime, and then testing whether certain characteristics of (usually) large cities or metropolitan areas are associated with such higher rates.…”

“…A key challenge when computing these rates is the need to use an appropriate denominator. Some research has proceeded by including the population of the offender's or victim's group in the denominator (Jacobs and Wood 1999;Parker and McCall 1999), whereas other research has included the total population (Wadsworth and Kubrin 2004). As we will analytically illustrate below, these strategies do not assume a baseline rate of inter-group crime that would be of theoretical interest, and in fact create built-in relationships with the racial/ethnic composition of the unit of analysis.…”

The Transmission of Historical Racial Violence

“…Racial contact and competition/threat perspectives are most common in interracial homicide research (Jacobs & Wood, 1999). Racial contact theory expects interracial homicide rates to reflect opportunities for interaction, such that areas with a small Black population or low levels of intergroup contact are expected to have lower rates of interracial homicide (Blau, 1977).…”