The Cost Of Racial Inequality Revisited

• In Event: Toward a Black Criminology

Abstract

Approximately thirty-five years ago, Judith and Peter Blau published their seminal article in the American Sociological Review entitled “The Cost of Inequality: Metropolitan Structure and Violent Crime.” The distinctive feature of their research was not the proposition that inequality might have criminogenic consequences, a notion that had long been considered by scholars in the field. Rather, the Blaus’ original contribution was to direct attention to inequality rooted in ascribed characteristics, and more specifically, to racial inequality. In this paper, we revisit the pioneering research by the Blaus. We place their work in intellectual context, review the theoretical and empirical controversies directly stimulated by it, and discuss selected aspects of the evolution of criminological research on the cost of racial inequality over the following decades, with a particular focus on the racialized hierarchy of place in American society.

Authors

• Steven Messner, University at Albany, SUNY

• Brian Stults, Florida State University