Racial and Ethnic Threat and Hate Crime: A Test of the Political, Economic, and Criminal Threat Hypotheses

• In Event: Community Contexts of Race, Ethnicity, Victimization, and Offending

Abstract

A small number of studies have tested the minority threat perspective by examining the relationship between racial composition and hate crime. Although these studies have significantly advanced scholarship, they have rarely distinguished between multiple dimensions of minority threat. Using city-level data drawn from National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and Census data, this study extends prior research by testing the political, economic, and criminal threat hypotheses and exploring whether they exert differential effects on anti-black and anti-Hispanic hate crime. We discuss the findings and their implications for theory, research, and policy.

Authors

• Weidi Liu, Arizona State University

• Xia Wang, Arizona State University