Racial Diversity, Economic Inequalities, and Violence: Untangling the Role of Cumulative Disadvantage and Group Threat

• In Event: Critical Studies in Race and Ethnicity: Exploring Racial/Ethnic Dynamics of Group Identity, Experience, and Behavior

Abstract

Much prior research has focused on racially motivated violence, but key concepts related to cumulative disadvantage and group threat perspectives have received relatively little attention. In this study, I explore the role of ethnic composition, economic deprivation, symbolic threat, and social marginalization in the occurrence and persistence of racial violence using interview data from convicted perpetrators and victims of racially motivated attacks in North Staffordshire, England. This study extends the understanding of racial threat theory, aggression, and violent behaviors. Thematic analysis of the data suggests that industrial decline, loss of job and resultant competition for opportunities conditioned those attacks. In social contexts, many white individuals viewed the migrants/minorities as symbols of local areas’ deterioration, had their way of life adversely affected, while experiencing disrespect, shame, aversion, and distressing reminders of their struggle for a good living. The study’s findings not only explain how racial composition and supremacy translate to threatening and violent behaviors in the struggle for socioeconomic opportunities but also help to understand how structural conditions snowballing into cumulative disadvantage shapes the life-course of those individuals– criminal transition and persistence.

Author

• Ali Oladimeji Shodunke, The Pennsylvania State University