Crime stories: A critical look through race, ethnicity, and gender

Abstract

This qualitative analysis of 154 life-histories with poor and working-class young adults uncovers both broad and deep concern with urban crime and violence. More powerful and unanticipated, however, the analysis reveals how profoundly race, ethnicity, and gender shape the kinds of violence experienced and feared and the kinds of remedies urban residents envision. Overall, the narratives portray urban communities traumatized by three kinds of violence, including street violence, state-initiated violence (e.g., police harassment), and domestic violence. White men speak most directly about street violence, Black and Latino men about police harassment, and women across racial and ethnic groups relate experiences of domestic violence. The article concludes with questions about this triplex of urban violence, asking why national policy, social science scholarship, and media coverage on crime fetishize street violence and yet remain typically silent on both state and domestic abuse.