The Racial Invariance Thesis and Neighborhood Crime

• Author: Christopher J. Lyons,María B. Vélez,Alma A. Hernandez
• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/2153368716669986
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Racial Invariance

Thesis and Neighborhood

Crime: Beyond the

Black–White Divide

Alma A. Hernandez

1

, Marı

´aB.Ve

´lez

1

and Christopher J. Lyons

1

Abstract

Social scientists have long known that crime is higher in minority versus White

neighborhoods. Predominant accounts of this pattern invoke a racial invariance thesis,

which posits that (1) accounting for inequalities in structural disadvantages substan-

tially diminishes ethno-racial gaps in neighborhood crime and (2) key predictors

operate uniformly across neighborhoods of different ethno-racial types. Unfortu-

nately, little work examines the second assertion of racial invariance, leaving con-

clusions about the thesis tentative. We address this omission with unique data from

the National Neighborhood Crime Study that includes information on neighborhood

levels of property and violent crime for majority White, Black, Latino, minority, and

integrated neighborhoods nested within a representative sample of 87 large cities.

Findings show notable similarity in the influence of key predictors of both violent and

property crime across the five ethno-racial neighborhoods. When differences are

detected, they are due generally to magnitude and not direction. On the whole our

work provides healthy support for a perspective that traces ethno-racial disparity in

crime across neighborhoods to the structural underpinnings of urban inequality.

Keywords

racial invariance, social disorganization, inequality, structural disadvantage,

neighborhoods

1

Department of Sociology, Center for Health Policy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

Corresponding Author:

Alma A. Hernandez, Department of Sociology, Center for Health Policy, University of New Mexico, MSC05

3080, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.

Email: aahernan@unm.edu

Race and Justice

2018, Vol. 8(3) 216-243

ªThe Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/2153368716669986

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Racial invariance is a core principle of the major framework for understanding the

spatial patterning of crime: social disorganization theory. Shaw and McKay (1949)

originally articulated a racial invariance thesis to explain higher levels of crime in

Black versus White neighborhoods in Chicago. We can separate Shaw and McKay’s

arguments into two prongs. First, they anticipated that variation in levels of socio-

economic disadvantage was the primary reason for racial disparities in neighborhood

crime. Second, they expected that the processes that led to crime were similar for all

neighborhoods regardless of their racial and ethnic composition. Together, their

arguments challenged popular cultural explanations and laid the foundation for a

structural perspective of crime. A large body of work has assessed the first prong of

the racial invariance thesis and generally finds that accounting for mean differences in

ecological conditions substantially reduces or completely eliminates racial/ethnic

gaps in crime (Hipp, 2007; Krivo & Peterson, 1996; McNulty, 2001; Messner &

Tardiff, 1986; Shihadeh & Shrum, 2004; Ve´lez, Lyons, & Santoro, 2015).

However, less than a handful of studies have assessed the second prong of the racial

invariance thesis at the neighborhood level—that the processes leading to crime are

invariant across neighborhoods of differing ethno-racial compositions (Krivo &

Peterson, 1996; McNulty, 2001; Peterson & Krivo, 2010b).

1

As a consequence,

conclusions about the thesis remain tentative. To make conclusions about the second

part of the thesis more robust, Steffensmeier, Ulmer, Feldmeyer, and Harris (2010)

suggest that researchers adopt strict tests by (1) including a broader constellation of

structural determinants and (2) assessing whether such determinants are similar in

direction and size for a wide variety of race/ethnic groups, neighborhoods, and

offenses. Given extensive racial and ethnic urban inequality, we add that assessing the

second prong of racial invariance also requires larger samples, ideally drawn from

multiple cities and neighborhoods, to ensure adequate numbers of similarly

(dis)advantaged Black, other minority, and White neighborhoods.

Heeding Steffensmeier et al.’s (2010) recommendations, we capitalize on unique

data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS) to apply a strict test of the

second prong of the racial invariance thesis. First, we have access to a broad set of

community-level factors known to contribute to the ethno-racial patterning of crime

including criminogenic conditions within (i.e., residential instability, immigration,

and home mortgage lending) and nearby (i.e., spatial proximity to violence and dis-

advantage) neighborhoods. Second, we assess the extent to which the structural

determinants of crime are similar in direction and size. Third, the national scope of the

NNCS permits us to go beyond the Black–White divide and integrate a larger array of

ethno-racial types of neighborhoods that characterize the new demographic landscape

of the United States into tests of racial invariance. Specifically, we examine crime

across five ethno-racial neighborhood types—majority White, majority Black,

majority Latino, integrated, and majority–minority neighborhoods. Fourth, we extend

the scope of the racial invariance thesis by examining both violent and property crime

for 8,931 census tracts across a representative sample of 87 large cities (Peterson &

Krivo, 2010a). Our strict test (Steffensmeier, Ulmer, Feldmeyer, & Harris, 2010) of

the oft-overlooked second part of the racial invariance thesis evaluates and advances

Hernandez et al. 217