"Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial Divide"

by Ruth D. Peterson and Lauren J. Krivo with a Foreword by John Hagan

"Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial Divide" highlights the continued pattern of structural inequality and residential racial segregation by illustrating how place and race are linked empirically as well as in the minds of the American public. Distinguished scholars Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo assert that there is a racial hierarchy structured in American society that serves to maintain white privilege and African-American oppression. Within this racialized social structure is a pattern of social and racial segregation that results in unequal access to resources, opportunities and exposure to crime that they coin the "racial-spatial divide." 

In their analyses, Peterson and Krivo use national, neighborhood crime data to offer a more nuanced approach to studying the social conditions that give rise to crime patterns across nearly 9,000 neighborhoods in 87 cities.  Overall, their findings reveal that neighborhoods are still primarily structured along racial lines among unequal groups and such residential disparities reproduce existing levels of privilege or disadvantage. Thus, there is an increased likelihood of crime in impoverished non-white areas where there are fewer opportunities and resources for residents.

Their results show that 60% of whites, 51% of blacks, and 33% of Latinos live in communities where the vast majority of their neighbors are of the same race or ethnicity.
On average, African-American communities experience violent crime at a rate five times higher than whites.  Violence rates for Latino and integrated areas generally fall between black and white rates and range on average between two and a half to three and a half times those of white communities. 

Peterson and Krivo's results also illustrate that racialized disadvantage accounts for variations in property crime among neighborhoods of distinct colors. In fact, rates of property offending are similar for neighborhoods when differences in city and local areas are controlled for.  Furthermore, they find that racialized circumstances are critical to understanding differences in violent crime rates. Specifically, residential instability, disadvantage and the percentage of whites residing in adjacent communities contribute to levels of neighborhood violence, although only disadvantage and white neighborhood composition account for the observed inequality of violent crime rates. 

More than 90% of white neighborhoods have a low poverty rate, but only 25% of blacks and Latinos live in similar areas. Moreover, most white neighborhoods are surrounded by neighborhoods that are on average 77% white while most non-white neighborhoods are near areas with less than 20% of whites nearby. 

Peterson and Krivo offer the following policy recommendations:
•    Change the deeply rooted social structure that overwhelmingly benefits whites and harms non-whites.
•    Address structural inequities in community conditions across neighborhoods of distinct colors.
•    Stimulate the economy of disadvantaged neighborhoods by increasing access to residential loans.
•    Consider a national system of reparations to build more equitable residential environments for areas of all colors.

The book is available at: http://www.russellsage.org/publications/100106.320118

 

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