Racial Threat Research Articles

The Political Legacy of American Slavery

We show that contemporary differences in political attitudes across counties in the American South in part trace their origins to slavery’s prevalence more than 150 years ago. Whites who currently live in Southern counties that had high shares of slaves in 1860 are more likely to identify as a Republican, oppose affirmative action, and express racial resentment and colder feelings toward blacks. We show that these results cannot be explained by existing theories, including the theory of contemporary racial threat. To explain the results, we offer evidence for a new theory involving the historical persistence of political attitudes. Following the Civil War, Southern whites faced political and economic incentives to reinforce existing racist norms and institutions to maintain control over the newly freed African American population. This amplified local differences in racially conservative political attitudes, which in turn have been passed down locally across generations.

Past Threat, Present Prejudice: The Impact of Adolescent Racial Context on White Racial Attitudes

Extensive research on racial threat suggests that white Americans living near black Americans adopt more negative racial attitudes. Theoretically, local inter-group exposure has been conceptualized as acting contemporaneously, despite political socialization research indicating that experiences in adolescence are especially influential. Here, we test the impact of adolescent racial contexts on whites' prejudice using two data sets. The first is the Youth-Parent Socialization Panel Survey, which followed one cohort from 1965 to 1997. The second is a population-based panel with novel measures of inter-group proximity conducted between 2007 and 2013. Our analyses demonstrate the enduring influence of adolescent contexts: while the racial composition of whites' current counties is not a consistent predictor of racial prejudice, the racial composition of their county during high school is. Exposure during one's formative years appears to increase racial prejudice decades later, providing new insight about the roots of racial threat and prejudice.

(Mis)Perceptions of Ethnic Group Size and Consequences for Community Expectations and Cooperation With Law Enforcement

The changing composition of race and ethnic group size has been noted for Western nations over the last 15 years. Analysis of this change has linked fear of crime and attitudes toward immigrants and prejudice. Changes in ethnic composition are associated with movement of White residents out of traditionally White communities, rising ethnic tension as the ethnic mix shifts, and a heightened sense of injustice regarding the justice system. (Mis)perceptions of ethnic groups size shape attitudes toward minority groups, as well as policy, practice, and individual behavior in the context of the community. This study seeks to understand the extent of such misperceptions in the Australian context and whether misperceptions of race and ethnic composition are associated with beliefs and attitudes toward formal and informal social control. Utilizing Blalock’s racial threat hypothesis, this study analyzes whether perceived relative ethnic group size is associated with self-reported willingness to cooperate with police as a way to minimize perceived threat. Findings suggest that respondents overestimate the size of minority populations while underestimating the majority White composition and that these misperceived distortions in ethnic group size have consequences for informal and formal social control.

Threat, Competition, and Mobilizing Structures: Motivational and Organizational Contingenies of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan

While previous studies of ethnic contention and conflict identify important structural and meso-level indicators of threat and competition, analysis of variation in the mechanisms linking these sources of potential grievance formation with mobilization remains unclear. To address this issue, this study explores the social organization of Ku Klux Klan mobilization in 1960s North Carolina. While regarded as a progressive state in the civil rights era, North Carolina exhibited a greater level of Klan mobilization than the rest of the South combined. We build on models of “mediated competition,” where ethnic competition and group threat are held as necessary, and propinquity, authority work, and legacies of previous racial violence link threat and competition with mobilization. Extending prior formulations centered on the discrete impact of individual components of competition, we employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to precisely specify the conjunctural conditions governing two modes of Klan mobilization: public rally events and the establishment of local organizational units. Our findings indicate that the mobilizing effects of threat and competition varied between rural and urban areas, and that threat/competition and organization/leadership play a dual role in translating collective grievances into mobilization.

Evolving Indian Ocean governance architecture: an Indian perspective

ABSTRACTThe vast Indian Ocean is an active oceanic body encompassing extensive sea borne trade/commerce and energy transfers. Unfortunately, it is also a region plagued with a plenitude of military, economic, religious and racial insecurities and asymmetric maritime threats. However, the common thread that binds the littorals is that most of the regional trade is sea borne and hence it forms one of the primary drivers of economy in the region. In this context, a unified approach towards sea governance for overcoming myriad maritime threats and challenges facing the littorals is a diminished factor. The reason being that is the current maritime security architecture in the region and the various fora that uphold the same are mostly listless and in dire need of impetus. Comparatively bi/multilateral naval engagements have been more successful. Multilateral exercises like the MILAN and IBSAMAR (as a maritime extension of IBSA) have ensured a degree of inter-operability and helped in the maintenance of “good order at sea”. But these naval engagements suffer from inherent lacunae and cannot be substituted for a formal forum. The issue of sea governance is far larger than bi/multilateral naval meets and requires holistic approaches that may be missing from such naval exercises. This article suggests methodologies to infuse energy into existing multilateral constructs and make them relevant towards better sea governance rather than create superfluous newer ones which are often impractical.

Structural Determinants of Municipal Police Force Size in Large Cities Across Canada

Substantial theoretical and empirical attention has been directed at isolating the structural conditions that lead to shifts in the size of metropolitan police departments in the United States. These studies rely heavily on ethnic and racial threat explanations, which imply that larger police forces will be employed in jurisdictions with larger minority populations. It is entirely unclear, though, whether such accounts are applicable outside the United States. This study fills this void in the literature by assessing the extent to which ethnic threat hypotheses can explain variations in police strength using data on 40 large Canadian cities from 1996 to 2006. Results show that the size of the minority population significantly influences the size of metropolitan police departments.

How the Legacy of Slavery and Racial Composition Shape Public School Enrollment in the American South

History is centrally involved in place development. Given the historical importance of antebellum slavery, it is little surprise that it profoundly shaped the social and economic future of the United States. What is perhaps more surprising is the link to local, county-level development as it relates to contemporary systems of black disadvantage. Through our focus on one aspect of school segregation in the American South, namely racial disparities in public school enrollment, we contribute to the literature on the legacy of slavery by examining how this local link persists. We use spatial data analysis techniques to assess the relationship between county historical slave concentration and the black-white ratio of public school attendance. Our data originally come from the 1860 Census, 2006–2010 American Community Survey, and National Center for Education Statistics Private School Universe Survey, 2007–2008. Notably, our historical slave concentration estimates incorporate spatially informed refinements to better represent contemporary counties than previously available data. Drawing from our regression analysis, we argue that slavery history shaped the local social structure in a way that facilitates contemporary white disinvestment from public school systems. We examine two potential explanations for this legacy of slavery—the number of private schools and racial threat—particularly their manifestation within the Deep South. Despite evidence of subregional differences rooted in history, neither pathway explains the initial slavery association. We argue that processes tied to the legacy of slavery are a foundational component of black disadvantage and that further examination of this foundation is necessary to stem the tide of recent resegregation.

“Whether or Not Words Were Said . . .”

This article cross-reads the 2005 trial of Chai Soua Vang, a Hmong American man who was convicted of murdering six Caucasian hunters in Wisconsin, with the 2008 film Gran Torino, a story of a Korean War veteran who mentors a Hmong American teenager. An examination of the trial transcript and journalistic coverage of the Vang case illustrates a need to establish a history of racial violence in order to explain the altercation in the woods. This need assumes that a history of racism must be identified in order for a word to be considered racist and that acts of violence can be explained only through that corresponding history. This article uses speech act theory to problematize that assumption, arguing instead that the power of hate speech rests in its ability to displace history rather than affirm it. Coverage of the case demonstrates this displacement, as Vang is positioned via multiple and contradicting contextual frames. In turn, Gran Torino, which this article reads as a response to the Vang case, illustrates how codes of conduct shift depending on who is in the position to dictate them, and how words that historically signify a racial threat can also erase the very histories that give those words meaning. Thus, the film offers an explanation for why Vang’s claim to racial victimization could not hold.

What the Demolition of Public Housing Teaches Us about the Impact of Racial Threat on Political Behavior

How does the context in which a person lives affect his or her political behavior? I exploit an event in which demographic context was exogenously changed, leading to a significant change in voters' behavior and demonstrating that voters react strongly to changes in an outgroup population. Between 2000 and 2004, the reconstruction of public housing in Chicago caused the displacement of over 25,000 African Americans, many of whom had previously lived in close proximity to white voters. After the removal of their African American neighbors, the white voters' turnout dropped by over 10 percentage points. Consistent with psychological theories of racial threat, their change in behavior was a function of the size and proximity of the outgroup population. Proximity was also related to increased voting for conservative candidates. These findings strongly suggest that racial threat occurs because of attitude change rather than selection.

Retracted: The Social Context of Latino Threat and Punitive Latino Sentiment

Prior research on the racial threat perspective and social control typically relies on aggregate-level demographic measures and focuses on racial, rather than on Latino group, composition. This predominant focus in research on racial threat and social control makes it unclear whether the assumed linkages are confined to one subordinate group or whether other groups, such as Latinos, are viewed as threatening and elicit heightened social control reactions as well. In the current study, we use data from the Punitive Attitudes Toward Hispanic (PATH) Study, a national sample of U.S. residents to investigate the influence of macro- and micro-level measures of Latino group threat on punitive Latino sentiment. More specifically, we use multilevel models to detect direct and interactive relationships between Latino presence and perceived Latino threat on punitive sentiment. The findings show that Latino population growth and perceived Latino criminal and economic threat significantly predict punitive Latino sentiment. Additionally, multiplicative models suggest that the effect of perceived criminal threat on punitive Latino sentiment is most pronounced in settings that have experienced recent growth in the size of the Latino population.

The Political Legacy of American Slavery

We show that contemporary differences in political attitudes across counties in the American South in part trace their origins to slavery’s prevalence more than 150 years ago. Whites who currently live in Southern counties that had high shares of slaves in 1860 are more likely to identify as a Republican, oppose affirmative action, and express racial resentment and colder feelings toward blacks. We show that these results cannot be explained by existing theories, including the theory of contemporary racial threat. To explain the results, we offer evidence for a new theory involving the historical persistence of political attitudes. Following the Civil War, Southern whites faced political and economic incentives to reinforce existing racist norms and institutions to maintain control over the newly freed African American population. This amplified local differences in racially conservative political attitudes, which in turn have been passed down locally across generations.

Racial, Ethnic, and Immigrant Threat

Objectives: The racial threat perspective argues that racial minorities are subjected to greater punishment in places with large or growing minority populations. However, prior research has focused largely on Black populations while devoting limited attention to potential “Latino threat” or “immigrant threat” effects. To address these gaps, this study explores the effects of racial, ethnic, and immigrant threat on sentence disposition (jail, prison, or community corrections) and sentence length. Methods: Using 2000 through 2006 data from the Florida Department of Corrections Guideline database, we use multilevel modeling techniques to explore the effects of racial, ethnic, and immigrant threat on state criminal sentencing. Results: The results provide support for racial/ethnic threat theory among Black but not Latino defendants. Black defendants are more likely to be sentenced to prison and are given longer sentences in counties with growing Black populations. In contrast, Latino sentences are not significantly influenced by Latino population growth. Results provide no support for immigrant threat positions. Conclusions: Overall, our findings offer a complex picture for racial/ethnic and immigrant threat. However, one pattern remains clear. Within Florida courts, Black defendants continue to be the prime targets for effects of racial threat and resulting disadvantages in criminal sentencing.

Explaining Dimensions of State-Level Punitiveness in the United States

The United States currently imprisons more citizens than any other Western nation. Over the last few decades, the trend across the United States has been to increase penalties for many offenses. This increase in state punitiveness has likely contributed to the existing state of mass incarceration. If there are certain factors that enhance a state’s penchant for punitiveness, identifying these factors can offer a better understanding of mass incarceration and why certain policy choices are made. Drawing from theories of social control and racial threat, we test social and economic explanations for variations in state punitiveness across several dimensions. We find the effect of the independent variables is not uniform across the dimensions, suggesting there is a difference in how criminal justice policy decisions are made depending on the policy area in question. This finding begs for further investigation into the issue of state punitiveness.

Public Ideology, Minority Threat, and Felony Collateral Sanctions

Federal and state felony collateral sanctions directly impact the opportunities and resources available to ex-felons and in turn their ability to successfully reenter society after conviction and possible incarceration. Because felony collateral sanctions vary greatly from state to state, we offer a state-level analysis of factors that produce differences in collateral sanctions levels adopted by U.S. states. Religion, political climate, and minority threat explanations have been linked to criminal penalty severity; however, no one to date has applied these explanations to felony collateral sanctions besides felony disenfranchisement at the macro level. With zero-truncated Poisson (ZTP) procedures, this study examines whether religion, political climate, and minority threat explanations result in states’ adopting greater collateral sanctions against convicted felons. Our research reveals that conservative climate, religiosity, and racial threat, but not ethnic threat or punitiveness, significantly affect state-level collateral sanctions. States with large minority and conservative populations are more likely to have more stigmatizing collateral sanction that can affect recidivism. We find that race rather than ethnicity is an important predictor of the collateral sanctions levels that states adopt; however, public ideology in the form of conservatism and religiosity has a greater effect on collateral sanctions. Policy implications are discussed.

Racial Crime Stereotypes and Offender Juvenility

Recent theoretical advancements of the racial threat model of punitiveness suggest that because youthful offending has driven crime trends in recent decades, and because racially exclusive conceptions of childhood have historically structured public opinion on juvenile justice, Black criminal stereotypes may be especially consequential for attitudes toward juvenile punishments. Building on this work, the current study uses national survey data to examine whether the strength of the relationship between Black criminal stereotypes and support for punitive policies varies according to whether punishments are targeted toward juvenile delinquents or criminals in general. We find that Black criminal stereotypes are positively associated with punitive attitudes and that the magnitude of this effect is statistically identical in the cases of youth-specific and nonyouth-specific sanctions. Thus, the results suggest that racialized support for punitive crime policies is not influenced by the juvenility of the offender.

Racial Threat Theory: Assessing the Evidence, Requesting Redesign

Racial threat theory was developed as a way to explain how population composition influences discriminatory social control practices and has become one of the most acknowledged frameworks for explaining racial disparity in criminal justice outcomes. This paper provides a thorough review of racial threat theory and empirical assessments of the theory and demonstrates that while scholars often cite inconsistent support for the theory, empirical discrepancies may be due to insufficient attention to the conceptual complexity of racial threat. I organize and present the following review around 4 forms of state-sanctioned control mechanisms: police expenditures, arrests, sentencing, and capital punishment. Arguing that the pervasiveness of racialization in state controls warrants continued inquiry, I provide suggestions for future scholarship that will help us develop enhanced understanding of how racial threat may be operating.

(When) Race Matters: The Effect of Immigrant Race and Place on Support for Anti-Immigration Laws

Does racial threat motivate support for anti-immigration laws? I answer this question by manipulating the skin-tone and geographical proximity to American citizens of a ctional undocumented Mexican immigrant. I nd that when respondents are exposed to a non-Caucasian immigrant, support for anti-immigration laws increases relative to an otherwise identical Caucasian immigrant. These reactions to the immigrant’s skin-tone are observed only when respondents believe that the immigrant resides in their city and state, suggesting that geographical proximity triggers racial threat.

Perceptions of Commonality and Latino–Black, Latino–White Relations in a Multiethnic United States

This study examines the extent that Latinos’ sense of social, economic, and political power shapes their perceptions of commonality with blacks and whites. In accordance with my theory, which builds on the racial threat and group position theories, I find that Latinos’ sense of power structures their perceptions of blacks and whites. When native-born Latinos feel economically threatened, they are less likely to perceive commonality with blacks. When native-born Latinos gain some political influence, they identify less with whites. Among Latino immigrants who perceive discrimination, residing in a high-threat economic setting is negatively related to perceiving commonality with whites.

The Persistent Significance of Racial and Economic Inequality on the Size of Municipal Police Forces in the United States, 1980–2010

Recent empirical analyses of the social factors that predict municipal police force size support racial threat theory by suggesting that the racial composition of cities leads to enhanced social control efforts; however, these studies largely ignore explanations based on social class or the influence of an ethnic threat. We examine these alternative threat hypotheses by assessing the potential influence that recent increases in economic inequality and the substantial rise in the Hispanic population in the United States may have had on efforts to control crime. Using an advanced estimation technique to isolate the determinants of police force size in a large sample of U.S. cities between 1980 and 2010, we find that racial threat and economic inequality work both independently and jointly to produce substantial shifts in the size of police forces after accounting for levels of crime as well as other important demographic and structural characteristics. Furthermore, period interactions suggest that racial threat appears to have expanded over the last several decades. Together, our study uncovers novel interactive effects and identifies shifts over time, thus refining existing theoretical assumptions.

The Spatial and Demographic Determinants of Racial Threat

ObjectiveAlthough scholars have cast doubt on Key's () racial threat hypothesis, race continues to play a central role in American politics. But does living in a racially diverse context lead to liberalization or a white backlash? We aim to test the validity of the racial threat hypothesis in the modern‐day Deep South.MethodsThe data used for this analysis span multiple federal elections from the state of Louisiana, from 2000, 2004, and 2008, in addition to census data from 2000 and 2010. We utilize ArcGIS mapping software to construct a detailed depiction of voters’ racial environments.ResultsWe find that whites who live in racially diverse precincts exhibit lower rates of turnout than whites in homogenous precincts; however, segregation within the precinct mitigates the liberalizing effects of precinct‐level diversity among whites.ConclusionThe results of our analysis provide help to clarify the previously mixed empirical findings regarding the geographic distribution of minorities and white racial conservatism.