22 mars 2017

All in this together? The politics of crime and race in multiracial neighborhoods

Par Jan Doering
Crime is a sensitive issue in multiracial neighborhoods. It can unite residents from different backgrounds by giving them an opportunity to rally against a shared threat. However, it can also divide them along racial lines. Both outcomes are plausible and do indeed occur. Whether they do so depends on how activists, community organizations, and politicians frame the fight against crime in racial or race-neutral terms. The presentation introduces a conceptual framework for examining such situations and discusses them with the help of selected findings from a 3.5 year ethnography of two Chicago neighborhoods.