Neighborhood Diversity and Hate Crime in Philadelphia, PA

• In Event: Understanding Hate Crimes from a Theoretical and Empirical Perspective

Abstract

The role of neighborhood racial diversity and demographic change are central to understanding group conflict and crime overall. Despite shifting demographics, many large cities in America remain racially segregated. While segregation has been used to explain variations in neighborhood crime, its application to contemporary racial violence has received less empirical attention. For the most part, studies are not conclusive in whether racial diversity, overall, produces positive outcomes, and arguments exist for either perspective. Competing viewpoints include the contact thesis as well as racial threat and the defended neighborhoods theory.

We assess this debate through an analysis of hate crime in Philadelphia, an important city in the context of race relations in America. Using crime data from the Philadelphia Police Department and tract-level demographics from the Census (n=261), we find racially motivated crime is higher in more racially heterogeneous communities as well as tracts with greater concentrated disadvantage; changes in neighborhoods diversity were not statistically significant. However, we find this relationship is explained by changes in neighborhood white residents in that hate crimes against nonwhites are higher in areas with a greater percentage of whites, but lower where nonwhites are more represented. Generally, our findings are supportive of a power-differential perspective.

Authors

• Jeaneé Miller, Old Dominion University

• Eaven Holder, University of Central Florida