Poverty, segregation, and race riots: 1960 to 1993

POVERTY, SEGREGATION, AND RACE RIOTS: 1960 TO 1993*

We test arguments that residential segregation incites racial unrest using event-histories of 154 race riots in 1960 to 1993 in 55 of the largest SMSAs in the United States. We argue that, although racial deprivation and residential segregation may reinforce identification with racial boundaries and awareness of racial grievances, these problems do not alone spark racial conflict. Instead, we find that a combination of high levels of racial segregation followed by interracial contact generates racial competition, which in turn increases the rate of ethnic and racial unrest. Our results show that in SMSAs where residential contact between African Americans and Whites increases, the rate of race riots increases significantly. A prior history of racial turmoil increases the likelihood of another race riot; the results suggest that the rate of race riots in a metropolitan area depends nonmonotonically on the number of previous riots in that region. These effects remain potent in models controlling for population size, income disparity, ethnic diversity, Black poverty rate, unemployment, and minority composition.

Deprivation theories of racial unrest offer dramatic and compelling explanations for race riots in the United States instigated by African Americans. For decades, sociologists have suggested that persistent poverty, segregation, and isolation in minority communities causes racial minorities to riot.1 In this view, collective violence by Blacks is driven by the persistence of racial disparities in income, education, housing, and other economic opportunities (Grimshaw 1960, 1969; Blauner 1971; Jeffries, Turner, and Morris 1971; Morgan and Clark 1973; Boskin 1976; and Harris 1988). The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968) concluded:

In the riot cities we surveyed, we found that Negroes are severely disadvantaged, especially as compared with whites; that local government is often unresponsive to this fact; that federal programs have not yet reached a significantly large proportion of those in need; and that the result is a reservoir of unredressed grievances and frustration in the ghetto. (P. 136)

Racial deprivation as an explanation for racial unrest has reemerged following several large-scale race riots in the United States. For

1 We focus only on race riots instigated predominantly by African Americans (Spilerman 1970a:630) because historical evidence indicates that attacks instigated by (and on) immigrant Whites, Black, and Asians have...