Homicide

African American Communities

At its core, the discrepancy may be attributable to the fact that substantial segments of the Black population live in socioeconomic contexts that are considerably more disadvantaged than those for even the poorest Whites. The problems of social dislocation experienced by many urban Black populations have been well documented by social scientists for several decades now, and the alarmingly high rates of poverty, family distress and breakdown, unemployment, and violence are well known. The literature on urban Black violence has revealed, with a high degree of consistency, that the overlap of these social problems, coupled with the residential segregation of Blacks from Whites, more advantaged groups, and mainstream institutions of social mobility, has a robust association with the urban Black homicide rate.

Much of this empirical research relies conceptually on William Julius Wilson's research on the most disadvantaged segments of the urban Black population and two important concepts he coined: social isolation and concentration effects. The disadvantaged urban Black population in the United States emerged from the throes of industrial restructuring during the 1960s and 1970s, which also enhanced the movement of more prosperous middle-class Blacks out of central-city neighborhoods and into peripheral areas of urban [Page 645]ghettos and into suburban enclaves. The evaporation of high-quality, low-skilled jobs and the growth of service sectors of the economy ravaged the employment prospects of significant segments of the urban Black population. This created a “spatial mismatch” between the supply of low-skilled workers and the demand for high-paying, low-skilled factory work, ultimately elevating poverty and unemployment. In addition, much of the stable Black middle class moved out of central cities. Credited with sustaining local businesses, providing a network connection for displaced workers, and serving as the leaders of civic affairs, this out-migration initiated a decline in local noneconomic civic and social institutions. Those left behind constituted the socially isolated casualties of industrial restructuring who lacked contact with both members of middle-class society and the institutions of social mobility that make middle-class attainment a reality. Over time, the high rates of poverty, unemployment, family breakdown, welfare dependence, and the like led to concentration effects—subtle adaptations to an extremely alienating existence that involve the partial inversion of mainstream middle-class norms and values to more realistically reflect the day-to-day existence of the socially isolated. The intensive concentration of structural disadvantage may also compromise the level of collective efficacy within social units or their ability to activate social networks to address social problems collectively. One pernicious by-product of this whole process is high levels of violence.

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