Racial Group Membership and Juvenile Delinquency

Abstract

Sixty Negro and forty white delinquent boys, interviewed while they were residents of a state training school, provided materials for a comparative analysis of relationships between racial membership and delinquency. The Negro boys tended to derive from lower-status families more than the white, and they were also more likely to have been sent to training school for having committed more serious offenses. Among the whites racial attitudes were associated with types of offenses, with more serious offenders showing more antipathy toward Negroes. Negro boys' racial attitudes varied less by offense category, but there was a strong tendency for those who committed less serious offenses to show more self-hatred than those whose offenses were more serious. These findings are interpreted in terms of social-structural theories of delinquency, notably those of Cohen and of Cloward and Ohlin.