The Political Economy of Race and Crime in Britain and the US

• In Event: Explorations of Political Economy

Abstract

Building on recent international research about the impact of poverty on crime, the paper will chart and analyse claims that Anglo-Saxon Britain and the US are entering a post-racial, multi-ethnic future in their urban social and economic spaces. The apparent ‘normalisation’ of minority ethnic stratification in these countries so that it more resembles that of the white majority class structure of extreme inequality, suggests a lessoning importance of inequalities between ethnic groups compared to the past, when minority groups were disproportionately poor with few middle class or elite members. The paper discovers whether, as is claimed, the differences in social and economic outcomes between the more and less advantaged within each ethnic group are much greater than differences between ethnic groups. In other words, whether class has finally, irrevocably, trumped ‘race’ as the most important determinant of the social structural landscape in Britain and the US. To show this, data about the interplay of economic, cultural and social capital are used to argue that racial inequality remains important when it is understood through the lens of spatial inequality and crime.

Author

• Colin Webster, Leeds Beckett University, UK