Violence among African Americans: Contextualizing the Cultural Factor

• In Event: Race, Crime & Criminal Justice

Abstract

This paper seeks to deconstruct the various ways in which culture (e.g. both macro and micro culture) and cultural practices contribute to the occurrence and patterning of disproportionate rates of interpersonal violence involving African Americans as offenders and victims. A central assumption of the argument advanced in this paper is that intergenerational exposure to entrenched forms of structural and cultural racism has provided a community, cultural, and situational context contributing to problematic individual and cultural adaptations associated with disproportionate rates of interpersonal violence among African Americans.

Author

• William Oliver, Indiana University