Race and Violence

Julie A. Phillips

Race and ethnicity continue to be among the most important predictors of violent crime commission and victimization in the United States. The media have given great attention to this issue, and in the last decade of the twentieth century, social scientists also focused on it. Recent figures indicate that young African American males have eight times the homicide offending rates of their white counterparts, and for the violent crime of robbery, the arrest rate for African Americans is almost eleven times that of whites. This information, obtained from official police reports, should be interpreted with caution, because as it may be biased by certain police practices; however, independent data obtained from victimization and self-report surveys tend to confirm the pattern of higher rates of involvement in violent crime by blacks. Minorities, and in particular black Americans, are also more likely to be victims of violent crime. Despite the fact that ...

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