Inequality, Interactional Complexity, and Violent Delinquency: An Exploration of Structural, Family, and Individual Considerations

Over three decades have passed since the defeat of Jim Crow, yet the United States continues to be a dangerous place to live for many poor and racial/ethnic minority citizens. Unlike the brutality witnessed and endured by subordinate racial groups during the majority of this country’s existence, participants in violent encounters often come from the same age, gender, class, and race groupings. To make sense of these patterns, I do two things. First, I offer a critical examination of previous work and present a conceptual frame that is more specific with regard to racial stratification and its relationship with violent delinquency. Second, I analyze data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to highlight the interactional complexity of the relationship between stratification and violence. The results from robust regression analysis show violence to be the product of a complex process whereby social-environment factors combine to influence individual behavior in raceand gender-specific ways. These findings raise questions about the theoretical underpinnings of research in this area, and encourage us to think differently about linkages between race and violence. Inequality Interactional Complexity, and Violent Delinquency: An Exploration of Structural, Family, and Individual Considerations Over three decades have passed since the defeat of Jim Crow, yet the United States continues to be a dangerous place to live for many poor and racial/ethnic minority citizens. Unlike the brutality witnessed and endured by subordinate racial groups during the majority of this country’s existence, participants in violent encounters often come from the same age, gender, class, and race groupings (see Hawkins 1986; Rose and McClain 1990). The most alarming statistics arguably involve young AfricanAmerican males. Recent estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1994) indicate that African-American males have a 1-in-21 chance of being murdered before they reach their twenty-fifth birthday. Homicide is the leading cause of death among this group. Research examining these patterns has generated some important ideas about race and its influence on behavior. However, making sense of disproportionate levels of violent behavior among African Americans continues to be a considerable challenge for researchers. Recent criminological work has pointed out that this line of research has been hindered considerably by the absence of quality data and use of inappropriate statistical techniques (Land, McCall and Cohen 1990; Messner and Golden 1992) as well as theoretical limitations (Bruce 2000a; Bruce, Roscigno, and McCall 1998; Sampson and Wilson 1995). A new wave of research examining the race-violence connection attempts to resolve these issues by finding new sources of data, employing cutting-edge statistical techniques, and constructing conceptual and empirical frameworks showing violence to be linked to macrostructural, normative, familial, and peer factors that are often sensitive to the social environment in which many African Americans exist. Empirical efforts in this regard have proven fruitful as Bruce (2000b) and Bellair and Roscigno (2000) present evidence showing violence to be a consequence of factors at the macro and micro level. These studies are important because they move past some of the problems associated with much of the early work in this area. This research is also important because it encourages theorists to probe more deeply into the relationship between race and violence. What impact, if any, do structural2 level factors have on violent behavior in the presence of family and individual mechanisms? Do factors influencing violence among blacks have the same impact on the violent behavior of their white counterparts? To address these questions, I do two things. First, I offer a critical examination of previous work and present a conceptual frame that is more specific with regard to racial stratification and its relationship with violent delinquency. Second, I analyze data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to highlight the interactional complexity of the relationship between race and violence. Specifically, the results from robust regression analysis show violence to be the product of a complex process whereby social-environment factors combine to influence individual behavior in race-and genderspecific ways. Such findings raise questions about the theoretical underpinnings of research in this area, and encourage us to think differently about linkages between race and violence.