VELEZ Maria Violence Link

The Political Context of the PercentBlack-Neighborhood Violence Link:

A Multilevel AnalysisMarıa B. Velez, Christopher J. Lyons, and Wayne A. Santoro

University of New Mexico

A B S T R A C T

A century of urban research has established that percentage black associates positivelywith violence at the neighborhood level. We extend traditional structural explanations forthis association by drawing attention to the political contexts of cities that may influencethe race-violence link. Drawing on insights from social movement and racial politics litera-tures, we contend that the relationship between percentage black and neighborhoodviolence will be attenuated in cities with greater black political opportunities and black mo-bilization. We examine this thesis using multilevel data from the National NeighborhoodCrime Study that provide sociodemographic and violence data for census tracts nestedwithin 87 large cities. We pair these data with city-level measures of black political opportu-nities and mobilization. Multilevel analyses reveal that the relationship between percentageblack and violence varies substantially across cities, and that the average positive relation-ship often is attenuated, and reduced to statistical insignificance, in cities with favorablepolitical contexts. We propose that the substantive and symbolic benefits set in motion byfavorable political contexts lay the foundation for neighborhood organization againstviolence.

K E Y W O R D S : neighborhoods; violence; race; political opportunity structures; socialmovements.

A century of urban research documents a strong correlation between percentage black and neighbor-hood violence (Curtis 1975; Du Bois [1889] 1973; Peterson and Krivo 2005, 2010a; Pratt andCullen 2005; Sampson 2012; Sampson and Wilson 1995; Shaw and McKay 1942). This robustassociation has served as a springboard for much investigation and theorizing into the connectionsbetween racial composition and neighborhood well-being. Dominant approaches call attention tothe acute socioeconomic disadvantages that isolate black residents and their communities from im-portant resources and opportunities (McNulty and Holloway 2000; Peterson and Krivo 2010a;

The authors are grateful to Ruth Peterson and Laurie Krivo for support and data, Alma Hernandez for data assistance, Blake Boursawfor statistical advice, the editor and reviewers for helpful comments on prior drafts, and Arlene Santoro. The authors presented earlierversions of this article at the 2012 Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association and the 2011 Annual Meetings of theAmerican Society of Criminology. Direct correspondence to: Marıa B. Velez or Christopher J. Lyons, Department of Sociology,University of New Mexico, MSC05 3080, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001. E-mail: [email protected] [email protected].

VC The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.For Permissions, please email: [email protected]

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Social Problems, 2015, 62, 93–119doi: 10.1093/socpro/spu005Article

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Sampson 2012; Sampson and Wilson 1995; Wilson 1987). These prevailing structural explanationstrace racial inequality in the concentration of disadvantage to conditions that undermine organizationagainst crime and posit that adjusting for socioeconomic inequality should largely explain the associa-tion between percentage black and neighborhood violence.

The common persistent and positive association of percentage black and violence, even after ac-counting for socioeconomic inequalities (e.g., Hipp 2007; Krivo and Peterson 1996; McNulty 2001),however, has pushed scholars to look beyond the internal characteristics of neighborhoods to concep-tualize the divergent social conditions of black and white areas (Peterson and Krivo 2010a). We ex-tend traditional structural approaches by situating the neighborhood race-violence link withinpolitical dimensions of cities. In so doing, we elaborate on an embedded ecological approach, whichtakes seriously that neighborhoods are nested within cities that vary in their willingness to supportminority constituents (Lyons, Velez, and Santoro 2013). In line with public social control and politi-cal economy traditions, our embedded ecological approach also recognizes that city political environ-ments shape outcomes for minority neighborhoods in important ways (Bursik and Grasmick 1993;Logan and Molotch 1987; Squires and Kubrin 2006; Velez 2001). Building on our prior work thatunpacks the relationship between immigrant concentration and violence (Lyons et al. 2013), we in-vestigate whether political contexts influence the long-established connection between percentageblack and neighborhood violence.1 We contend that the association between percentage black andneighborhood violence depends on the degree to which cities present favorable political contexts forblacks. We conceptualize favorable political contexts along two dimensions: black political opportuni-ties and political mobilization. Political opportunities capture the extent that the city is receptive orvulnerable to black political demands, as indicated by cities with significant shares of black elected of-ficials. Political mobilization reflects the ability of blacks and their neighborhoods to organize andmake public demands for change. We argue that favorable black political contexts lessen theneighborhood-level association between percentage black and violence and potentially render thelink trivial net of common controls.

Drawing on insights from social movement and racial politics literatures and our prior work on im-migration and violence (Lyons et al. 2013), we suggest that the substantive and symbolic benefitsthat arise from black political opportunities and mobilization lay the foundation for neighborhood or-ganization against violence. Substantively, favorable political opportunities and political mobilizationcan lead to policies and resources that advance the social, economic, and political standing of blackcommunities (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984; Karnig and Welch 1980; Fainstein and Fainstein1996; Saltzstein 1989). Symbolically, favorable city political contexts can engender trust in the politi-cal system and other local institutions and guard against legal cynicism and hostility towards authori-ties that undermine civic engagement (Bobo and Gilliam 1990; Gay 2002; Rahn and Rudolph 2005;Williams 1998). We argue these substantive and symbolic benefits encourage black residents to en-gage in a host of actions that facilitate neighborhood organization against violence.

We employ unprecedented data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS), pio-neered by Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo (2010b). The NNCS supplies multilevel demographicand violent crime data for 8,931 census tracts embedded within a representative sample of 87 largecities circa 2000. We pair these data with measures of city characteristics that reflect political dimen-sions relevant to black residents. Our study makes two contributions. First, our focus on the politicalrealm of cities takes seriously scholarship from urban sociology, political economy, and public socialcontrol traditions that have long highlighted the forces beyond neighborhood borders that shape the

1 Although we adopt the same multilevel modeling strategy and core theoretical premise as Lyons and colleagues (2013), we pushthe conceptualization of the political context further to appreciate resources that facilitate black mobilization. Rather than askingsolely how actors and structures in the larger political environment (political opportunities) affect minorities and their neighbor-hoods, we also examine how black advocacy organizations and protest affect neighborhood processes. This approach allows us toavoid taking an overly structural view by better appreciating how black agency—the proactive actions of black residents—shapesin part the fate of their neighborhoods.

94 � Velez/Lyons/Santoro

fate of local areas (Bursik and Grasmick 1993; Logan and Molotch 1987; Squires and Kubrin 2006;Velez 2001). Despite the apparent relevance of extraneighborhood political contexts for understand-ing neighborhood processes, sociologists have been slow to incorporate these insights into their mod-els of neighborhood violence. Second, embedding the neighborhood race-violence link acrossmultiple cities with varying political contexts allows us to shed light on divergent findings in previousresearch. Whereas a few studies that examine neighborhoods within single cities are able to “explainaway” the percent black and violent crime relationship by adjusting for internal socioeconomic char-acteristics (e.g., Messner and Tardiff 1986; Shihadeh and Shrum 2004), many others still find positiveassociations net of controls (e.g., Hipp 2007; Krivo and Peterson 1996; McNulty 2001). We suggestthat heterogeneity across cities—especially in black political opportunities and mobilization—partlyexplain these divergent findings. By attributing variation to both neighborhood and city levels withrare multilevel data, we are in a unique position to examine the contingency of the neighborhood re-lationship between percentage black and violence across political contexts.

P E R C E N T B L A C K A N D N E I G H B O R H O O D V I O L E N C ESocial scientists have long documented positive associations between violent crime and black racialcomposition at the neighborhood level (Du Bois [1889] 1973; Hipp 2007; Peterson and Krivo 2005,2010a; Pratt and Cullen 2005; Sampson 2012; Sampson and Wilson 1995; Shaw and McKay 1942).An influential body of criminological work has in turn developed to explain this well-established rela-tionship. Predominant racial invariance explanations focus on inequality in criminogenic conditionswithin neighborhoods (Shaw and McKay 1942, 1949). Neighborhood racial composition correlateswith a variety of deleterious conditions, including poverty, male joblessness, and population loss thatconcentrate to produce distinct structural milieus conducive to crime. These conditions are prevalentespecially in neighborhoods with relatively high percentages of blacks (Krivo and Peterson 1996;McNulty 1999; McNulty and Holloway 2000; Peterson and Krivo 2010a; Sampson and Wilson1995; Shaw and McKay 1942; Shihadeh and Shrum 2004).

William Julius Wilson (1987, 1996) contends that these disadvantaged conditions have increasedthe social isolation and marginalization of inner-city black neighborhoods, whereby residents rou-tinely are deprived of resources, conventional role models and institutions, and cultural learning frommainstream social networks that facilitate social and economic advancement (Sampson and Wilson1995). Socially isolated and marginalized contexts hamper social organization including mechanismsof social control, such as collective efficacy, that discourage criminal involvement (Bellair 1997;Peterson and Krivo 2010a; Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997; Wilson 1996). Such contexts alsoencourage violence by legitimating codes of legal cynicism and violence in light of limited economicopportunities (Anderson 1999; Sampson and Bartusch 1998).

Using data on neighborhoods within a single or small number of cities, many studies test theabove theoretical logic by examining how socioeconomic disadvantage within neighborhoods explainsthe race-violence link. Generally, studies find that accounting for internal indicators of disadvantageexplains a portion of the relationship between percentage black and neighborhood violence. In a fewcases, researchers are able to account for the positive association between percentage black and vio-lence with controls for neighborhoods within a single city (e.g., Messner and Tardiff 1986; Shihadehand Shrum 2004). More typically, however, studies report a residual association even after accountingfor key neighborhood variation in the concentration of socioeconomic disadvantages (e.g., Hipp2007; Krivo and Peterson 1996; McNulty 2001). Scholars often attribute this persistent and positiveassociation of percentage black and violence to the imperfect measurement of structural disadvantageand social isolation. More recently, researchers have begun to look beyond the internal characteristicsof neighborhoods to define the divergent social conditions of black and white neighborhoods.Peterson and Krivo (2010a), for instance, point to spatial inequalities whereby black neighborhoodsare disproportionately embedded in areas with high levels of disadvantage and other crime producing

Political Context of the Percent Black-Neighborhood Violence Link � 95

conditions. Likewise, Thomas McNulty and Steven Holloway (2000) examine proximity of publichousing as extralocal factors that contribute to the race-crime link.

We subscribe to the call to move beyond the internal characteristics of neighborhoods and pro-pose that city contexts are a strategic site for elucidating the relationship between percentage blackand neighborhood violence. As previous research demonstrates (Jargowsky 1997; Krivo, Peterson,and Kuhl 2009; Massey 1996; Massey and Eggers 1990; Peterson and Krivo 2010a; Wilson 1987,1996), cities vary greatly in the conditions that set the stage for neighborhood crime. We extend thisresearch by emphasizing the political contexts of cities that underlie the marginalization versus em-powerment of blacks and their neighborhoods.

B E Y O N D N E I G H B O R H O O D B O U N D A R I E S : C I T Y P O L I T I C A L C O N T E X TWhile also acknowledging the importance of internal neighborhood processes, proponents of politicaleconomy and public social control traditions emphasize how larger political contexts, particularly atthe city level, facilitate or impede neighborhood viability (Logan and Molotch 1987; Smith, Caris,and Wyly 2001; Squires and Kubrin 2006). Numerous scholars argue that city political contexts influ-ence the socioeconomic realities of minority and poor neighborhoods especially. A prime example ofthis is the active hand city governments played in concentrating poverty in black neighborhoods bybuilding large-scale public housing in already impoverished areas (Farley, Danziger, and Holzer 2002;Hirsch 1998; Massey and Denton 1993; Sampson and Wilson 1995). Actions like these contributedto greater levels of violence and related social problems in minority neighborhoods (Bursik 1989;McNulty and Holloway 2000). Increasingly scholarship highlights the political forces that undergirdsocial organization against crime (Bursik and Grasmick 1993; Carr 2005; Silver and Miller 2004;Velez 2001; Velez and Richardson 2012).

We argue that cities with favorable black political contexts will attenuate and possibly nullify thepositive neighborhood-level association between percentage black and violence. In contrast, politi-cally unfavorable cities should exacerbate the percentage black-neighborhood violence nexus. Thismeans that percentage black may heighten neighborhood violence only in cities where blacks experi-ence a hostile political context. We now elaborate on two key dimensions of favorable black politicalcontexts.

Black Political OpportunitiesPolitical process theory, the dominant approach among contemporary social movement scholars, ar-gues that the political opportunity structure profoundly shapes the fate of movement constituencies(Meyer 2004). The political opportunity structure refers to the receptivity or vulnerability of the po-litical system to organized protest by a given challenging group (McAdam 1982). Politically “open”regimes are receptive or vulnerable to constituency issues, evident in part by regime willingness to lis-ten to their concerns or grant concessions to their demands. In contrast, “closed” regimes are unre-sponsive to challengers and may in fact repress them. Common conceptualizations of open politicalopportunities include the receptivity of politicians to constituent demands (Costain 1992), bureau-cratic incorporation of constituents into civil service positions (Eisinger 1973), preexisting policies al-lowing for constituent input into political decisions (Kitschelt 1986), and the amenability of theaudience to constituent issues (Santoro 2008). Grounded in this literature, we offer the concept“black political opportunities” to capture the extent that cities are receptive or vulnerable to the griev-ances of blacks and their neighborhoods (cf. Lyons et al. 2013).

We conceptualize black political opportunities in four ways. First, in line with Peter Eisinger’s(1973) original articulation, open regimes have significant shares of black elected representation be-cause such municipalities often enact or facilitate substantive improvements for black communities.For instance, black politicians have increased black representation on city commissions, led to greaterblack public-sector employment, allowed citizens more control over the police department, and more


equitably distributed city contracts to black businesses (Betancur and Gills 2004; Browning et al.1984; Mladenka 1989; Saltzstein 1989). Research also demonstrates that cities with black politicianshave fewer police killings of blacks and lower rates of interracial violence (Jacobs and Carmichael2002; Jacobs and Wood 1999; Kent 2010). Second, the bureaucratic incorporation of blacks into civilservice positions, such as in the police department, reflects black political opportunities as bureau-cratic actors can institutionalize minority friendly procedures and lead to amicable interactions withblack residents (Marrow 2009; Theobald and Haider-Markel 2008). Third, regimes with preexistingpolicies favorable to the input of residents indicate a degree of regime vulnerability to black concerns.We focus on the presence of civilian police review boards whose purpose is to provide mechanismsfor residents to investigate police misconduct and push for police reforms. Such review boards haveperformed well in some cities but poorly in others where they can be underfunded and reluctant tohold police accountable for misconduct (Harris 2005). Nonetheless, even underfunded review boardsindicate that the regime is open (if only symbolically) to citizen input. In fact, Ronnie Dunn (2010)finds that black residents in Cleveland are willing to use the complaint system despite knowing that itis ineffective because it provides a forum to voice their grievances. Finally, cities with liberal votersshould be more likely to elect politicians willing to respond favorably to black demands (Browninget al. 1984).

Black Political MobilizationRegardless of the predispositions or vulnerabilities of local regimes, marginalized communities oftenmust politically mobilize to have their voices heard. Black political mobilization reflects the ability ofblacks and their neighborhoods to organize and make public demands for change. Existing data allowus to examine two forms of political mobilization. First, we look to citywide levels of minority advo-cacy organizations. Social movement scholars highlight the ability of indigenous organizations to facili-tate political mobilization by developing local leadership, marshaling community resources,engendering solidarity among participants, and coordinating strategies for social change (Ganz 2000;Hirsch 1990; Morris 1984). Indeed, a major theoretical advancement in the study of social move-ments occurred when scholars recognized the centrality of organizations to explain the ability of mar-ginalized constituencies to mobilize and press for gains (Gamson 1975; McCarthy and Zald 1977;Tilly 1978). Black organizations in the sixties played a key role in generating protest that pushed localand federal officials to pass legislation beneficial to the black community (Andrews 1997; Button1989; McAdam 1982; Morris 1993; Santoro 2002, 2008). More recently, minority rights’ organiza-tions have negotiated with local governments to bring about beneficial municipal policies. WayneSantoro (1995) finds that cities with advocacy organizations like local chapters of the NAACP weremore likely to adopt affirmative action policies related to public-sector employment. Sandra Bass(2000) documents that minority advocacy organizations in Seattle and Oakland helped secure im-provements in police accountability by lobbying city council members, conducting studies on howpolice handled complaints, and educating citizens on effective interactions with police officers.Dennis Keating, Norman Krumholz, and Philip Star (1996) discuss examples in Boston, Chicago,Minneapolis, and Los Angeles where politically active neighborhood organizations worked with re-ceptive political regimes to promote city service delivery, upgrade housing stock, and halt physicaldecline.

Second, we look to prior levels of black insurgency in the form of riots and nonviolent protests.Black communities vary considerably in the degree to which they have been able to generate publicdemonstrations, especially in the post-civil rights movement era. We contend that cities with signifi-cant levels of black insurgency provide incentives for elites to take seriously the contemporary politi-cal demands of black constituents. Policymakers tend to be more willing to listen to the politicaldemands of constituencies who have demonstrated their ability to generate public protest (Gamson1975; Lipsky 1968; Morris 1993; Santoro 2002). Moreover, prior insurgency may have led to changes


in the permeability of city governance that continue to facilitate resident engagement with and trustof public institutions. Take, for instance, the connection between riots and policing. L. W. Sherman(1983) and Jack Greene (2000) note that the riots of the sixties and seventies were instrumental incompelling police departments to take more community-centered approaches to improve relation-ships with black communities. Others link the 1992 Los Angeles riots to reforms in the local policedepartment, including community policing, increased foot patrol, and neighborhood watch programs(Chung 2001; Friedman 1992).

T H E M O D E R A T I N G R O L E O F P O L I T I C A L C O N T E X TWhile testing specific causal processes for the wide range of neighborhoods and cities is beyond ourdata repository, we turn now to a discussion of why favorable political contexts should attenuate theneighborhood-level association between percentage black and violence. Here, we expand on Lyonsand colleagues (2013) who find that the inverse or protective association between immigration andneighborhood violence is stronger in cities supportive of immigrant concerns. We propose that favor-able political contexts create conditions at the neighborhood level that bolster social organization.Neighborhood social organization refers to the ability of local areas to realize common goals such assafety (Bursik 1988). Models of social organization highlight the complex network of social relation-ships, ranging from friendship and kinship ties to more wide ranging associations with external actorsand institutions, which set the stage for crime control. Robert Sampson (2012; see also Sampsonet al. 1997) conceptualizes collective efficacy, defined as the linkage of cohesion and mutual trustamong residents with shared expectations for intervening in support of neighborhood social control,as a key component of social organization. To develop our discussion of mechanisms, we emphasizethe substantive and symbolic benefits that emanate from favorable political contexts, which we arguefortify and encourage community social organization against violence.

Substantive BenefitsPolitical regimes favorable to blacks face structural constraints that can limit their ability to redressthe grievances of black residents (Eisinger 1980; Mladenka 1989; Patillo 2007; Peterson 1981; Reed1988). These barriers include budget shortfalls and the need to maintain coalitions with whites. Evenso, an impressive array of racial politics scholarship indicates that cities with favorable political oppor-tunities and/or high levels of black political mobilization can yield a variety of substantive improve-ments for blacks and their communities (Betancur and Gills 2004; Browning et al. 1984; Jacobs andCarmichael 2002; Karnig and Welch 1980; Kent 2010; Lewis and Ramikrishan 2007; Saltzstein 1989;Santoro 1995; Sass and Mehay 2003). Local regimes favorable to black demands can stimulate neigh-borhood organization against crime (a process criminologists term public social control; Velez 2001)by reallocating municipal funds in ways that benefit minority communities, initiating policies that im-prove the day-to-day interactions between black residents and city officials, and implementing de-mocratizing policies that enable greater voice for black communities. Harold Washington, Chicago’sfirst black mayor, illustrates how favorable regimes can lead to substantive benefits (Betancur andGills 2004). Washington mandated that private firms hire blacks if they were to receive governmentalassistance, set aside 25 percent of public contracts and purchases for black and other minority firms,and financed neighborhood-based projects. Washington opened up the political process to includeblacks as partners in law enforcement and school policy making, and pushed to redraw city districtsthat eventually produced four new minority-controlled wards. Moreover, to improve relationships be-tween the police and black youth and their communities, he implemented a community policing pro-gram, juvenile restoration boards, and a people’s court. Actions like these led to greater resources forneighborhoods and better neighborhood relations with city service providers. Increased resourcescontributed to lower levels of marginalization and isolation in neighborhoods with relatively largenumbers of blacks. Insofar as favorable regimes lead to substantive benefits for blacks, they lay a


foundation for the willingness and ability of communities to organize against crime (Shaw andMcKay 1942; Silver and Miller 2004).

Symbolic BenefitsFavorable political contexts also can have symbolic benefits for black residents. We emphasize stimu-lation of trust in local government as a key social-psychological benefit of favorable political contexts.Numerous studies link political opportunities to greater trust among black residents in the civic pro-cess. This research documents that trust leads to greater legitimacy accorded to local government, en-courages blacks to be more knowledgeable of and satisfied with government actions, and heightensperceptions of personal efficacy in political and social affairs (Bobo and Gilliam 1990; Gay 2002;Marschall and Ruhil 2007; Mansbridge 1999; Rahn and Rudolph 2005; Tate 1993; Theobald andHaider-Markel 2008; Williams 1998). Melissa Marschall and Anirudh Ruhil (2007), for example, findthat blacks who live in cities with greater black political representation on the city council, schoolboard, and police department are more satisfied with their neighborhood, their schools, and the po-lice. Similarly, bureaucratic incorporation into the police force may guard against hostility betweenthe police and black residents, as blacks are more likely to view interactions with minority police offi-cers as legitimate and justified (Theobald and Haider-Markel 2008). Lawrence Bobo and FranklinGilliam (1990) show that black elected representation creates more trust among blacks toward localpolitics, increases knowledge of political issues, and enhances the perception that individual actionscan influence political and social causes (see also Rahn and Rudolph 2005; Tate 1993). Likewise,Melissa Williams (1998) and Claudine Gay (2002) argue that black political representation generatesa spiral of trust that improves communication between officials and blacks and generates greatersystem-level trust in government on the part of black constituents.2

Consistent with criminological research on the importance of trust for collective efficacy againstcrime (Sampson et al. 1997), these social-psychological factors should facilitate subsequent levels ofblack participation in political and civic affairs, attachment to and ownership of their neighborhoods,and further mobilization on behalf of neighborhood concerns (Bobo and Gilliam 1990; Tate 1993;Williams 1998). Bobo and Gilliam (1990), for instance, demonstrate that the social-psychologicalbenefits of black empowerment lead to greater social and political participation among blacks, includ-ing voting, campaigning, and membership in groups and community organizations. By enhancingneighborhood social organization, cities with favorable political contexts may guard against isolationand marginalization, and consequent legal cynicism and political disaffection, faced by neighborhoodswith relatively large black populations, and instead improve the ability of these neighborhoods to or-ganize residents and local institutions to control crime.

D A T A A N D M E T H O D STo test our multilevel and conditional thesis, we utilize data from the NNCS (Peterson and Krivo2010b), the first national data set to contain violence and sociodemographic information for tractsembedded within a representative sample of U.S. cities. The complete NNCS provides informationfor 91 cities (with populations of more than 100,000 in the year 2000) and 9,593 census tracts.Missing data on key variables (including spatial lags of violence) reduces our sample to 8,931 tractsnested in 87 cities. The sample of NNCS cities generalizes to most large urban places regarding crimelevels, racial/ethnic composition, segregation, and economic disadvantage (Krivo et al. 2009;Peterson and Krivo 2010a). We merge these data with city-level indicators of black political opportu-nities and mobilization collected from a variety of secondary sources.

2 Whereas this research focuses mostly on how black political opportunities translate into symbolic benefits for blacks, we suggestsimilar benefits may derive from black political mobilization as well, though the association with improved trust may operate indi-rectly through the substantive benefits secured by the mobilization of black constituents.


Dependent VariableFollowing previous research on race and crime using the NNCS (Kubrin and Ishizawa 2012;Peterson and Krivo 2010a), we examine violent crime as the sum of the number of homicides androbberies between 1999 and 2001 at the tract level.3 We use multiyear counts to minimize the impactof annual fluctuations, especially for smaller units (Peterson and Krivo 2010a). Homicide is the mostaccurately reported violent crime and robbery is the most reliably reported form of nonlethal violence(Arnio, Baumer, and Wolff 2012; Baumer 2002; Baumer and Lauritsen 2010).4

Tract-Level CovariatesAt the tract level, we measure a number of well-established predictors of violence from the 2000 U.S.Census. Our central measure of interest is the percentage of non-Latino blacks at the tract level. Thisoperationalization is consistent with most research on neighborhood violence, which has conceptual-ized black racial composition as the percentage of blacks in a given neighborhood. A small number ofmore recent studies, however, compare mostly black areas with other neighborhood types with a se-ries of indicator variables (e.g., Peterson and Krivo 2010a). We focus on the percentage of blacks in aneighborhood to be consistent with the lion’s share of prior work. This approach also allows us tocapture the experience of a more diverse range of neighborhoods where blacks live. In the NNCS, infact, only 17 percent of tracts are predominantly black and about half of the black population lives innonmajority black tracts. Nonetheless, we discuss the robustness of our findings to alternative opera-tionalizations of racial composition (see additional analyses section). We control for other types ofracial/ethnic composition with the percentage of residents who are Latino, foreign born, and Asian.

We include a variety of additional predictors of neighborhood violence. Concentrated disadvantage isan index (average z-scores) of the poverty rate, extent of joblessness (percentage of persons aged 16 to64 who are unemployed or out of the labor force), low-wage jobs (percentage of workers in the six occu-pations with the lowest average incomes), professional jobs (percentage of employed civilian populationage 16 years and older in management, professional, and related occupations [reverse coded]), highschool graduates (percentage of adults age 25 years and older with at least a high school degree), andthe percentage of households that are single-mother families (a¼ .91). We create an index of residentialinstability by standardizing and averaging the percentage of renter-occupied units and the percentage ofresidents aged five or older who lived in a different dwelling in 1995 (a¼ .69). We capture the crime-prone population with the percentage of the population that is male and between ages 15 and 34.

Finally, we calculate a spatial lag for our dependent variable of violent crime to adjust for spatialautocorrelation in violence. The spatial lag stands for the average of the violent crime count for cen-sus tracts that are adjacent geographically to the immediate tract. They are constructed by multiplyingtract characteristic values by a row-standardized, first-order spatial contiguity matrix that utilizes aqueen criterion (see Peterson and Krivo 2009, 2010a).

City-Level CovariatesWe measure black political opportunities in five ways. We gauge black elected representation with2000 data from the National Roster of Black Elected Officials published by the Joint Center for

3 Some cities report homicide and robbery for only one or two of the years between 1999 and 2001. In these instances, the three-year count is an estimate compiled from available data. According to Peterson and Krivo (2010b), “(w)hen two years of crimecounts were provided, the estimate was calculated by multiplying the two year count by 1.5. When only a single year’s crimecount was available, the estimate was calculated by multiplying the single year count by 3” (p. 8).

4 We find similar findings to those reported below with respect to key cross-level interactions when we examine a broader measureof violence that includes rape and assault along with robbery and homicide, though missing data for rape and assault reduce thenumber of level-two units considerably. We also find similar patterns if we limit our analysis to homicide, although interactionsare less robust (in terms of statistical significance) for homicide than for other forms of violence. We employ a combined homi-cide and robbery measure of violence to be consistent with the majority of research on percent black and neighborhood violenceand to maximize the number of cities in our analysis.


Political and Economic Studies (2011). We first measure the presence of a black mayor, arguably in-dicating the greatest degree of local black political incorporation. Second, we tally the total numberof blacks elected to other municipal offices excluding the mayor, such as members of the city council.We divide this total count by the total number of blacks in the city, and then multiply by a constantto represent the rate of elected officials per 1,000 blacks (Stults and Baumer 2007). Third, we capturebureaucratic incorporation with black representation in the police force in 2000. We construct a ratioof the percentage of the police force (sworn officers) that is black and the percentage of the city pop-ulation that is black, where values below one indicate underrepresentation of the police force relativeto the city population. Fourth, we measure whether cities have a civilian police review board to reflectthe possibility for citizen oversight of local law enforcement. Data on police representation and civil-ian review boards come from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics in2000. Fifth, we measure audience receptivity to black issues with liberal voting records by calculatingthe proportion of votes cast for the Democratic presidential candidate (Gore) in 2000. Data for thismeasure come from the 2000 County and City Data Book published by the U.S. Census Bureau(2001).5

Three variables measure black political mobilization. Using data on all registered nonprofits at thecounty level provided by the National Center for Charitable Statistics (2000) at the Urban Institute,we count the number of minority advocacy organizations that registered with the Internal RevenueService (in the May 2000 file). Drawing on the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities, we enumer-ate organizations listed under the categories civil rights, minority rights, intergroup and race relations,and civil rights, social action, and advocacy.6 We divide this number by the black population for eachcity and multiply by 1,000. Our measure thus captures all organizations that support the passage andenforcement of policy outputs that promote the rights and interests of racial/ethnic minorities.

We examine post-sixties levels of two forms of black insurgency with data collected by SusanOlzak and Elizabeth West (1995) from the archives of The New York Times. We sum the total num-ber of black (nonviolent) protest events, such as boycotts and mass marches, from 1970 to 1992 andthe total number of violent black protest-events, or riots, from 1970 to 1992. We transform thesecounts into the rate of protests or riots per 1,000 blacks in the city in 2000. We begin counting pro-tests and riots in 1970 to postdate the civil rights movement, a period where distinctive and often na-tional-level events affected city-level mobilization processes. We find substantively similar results tothose reported below if we restrict riots and protests to events occurring post 1980. Although ideallyour data would extend to 2000, Olzak and West (1995) did not collect data beyond 1992. Westrongly suspect, however, that levels of black insurgency across the 23 years we observe would behighly related to insurgency for the remaining eight years.

Using 2000 Census data (U.S. Census Bureau 2001), we control for several city-level characteris-tics associated with differential levels of neighborhood violence: the city-level disadvantage index,measured in a parallel fashion to the neighborhood indicator; manufacturing jobs (the percentage ofemployed civilian population aged 16 and over working in a manufacturing industry); residential mo-bility (percentage of the population age five and over who lived in a different residence in 1995); per-centage non-Latino black; percentage non-Latino Asian; percentage Latino; the percentage of thetotal city population that is foreign born; and the percentage of young males ages 15 to 34. We alsocontrol for South and West regions, with cities in other regions as the referent. Finally, we take intoaccount white-black residential segregation with an index of dissimilarity across census tracts within acity (Krivo et al. 2009). Table 1 lists means, standard deviations, and minimum and maximum valuesfor all city- and tract-level variables.

5 Most cities in the NNCS are part of a single county, and so integrating county and city-level data is unproblematic. However,four cities in our sample are located in counties that encompass multiple cities. In these instances, we adjusted the percentage ofDemocratic votes by the portion of the city population that is located in each county.

6 This classification system captures an array of minority rights organizations, but does not allow us to isolate organizations thatserve only blacks.


A N A L Y T I C S T R A T E G YWe estimate a series of hierarchical generalized linear models that account for the nonindependenceof observations, with 8,931 tracts (level-one units) clustered within 87 cities (level-two units). Wegrand-mean center all continuous variables. As we analyze relatively rare events within small units, wefit Poisson models with violence counts as the outcome. The variance in our measure of violence isconsiderably larger than its mean, indicating significant overdispersion. We account for overdisper-sion in the level-one variance. In multilevel models, a Poisson model with overdispersion is analogousto a negative binomial model. We specify that these counts have variable exposure by tract populationand thereby transform the outcome to violent crimes per capita rates (Osgood 2000). By estimatingrandom intercepts for the dependent variable, multilevel models also help address measurement errorin homicides and robberies (Snijders and Bosker 1999).

We investigate whether the association between percentage black and violence varies significantlyacross cities by testing for random variation in the slope of percentage black. Variance componentswithin a multilevel framework allow us to gauge the statistical and substantive significance of random

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of Dependent and Independent Variables

Mean SD Min Max

Tract level (N¼ 8,931)Violent crimes 46.32 50.94 .00 1011.00Spatial lag of violence 48.80 38.30 .00 354.00Disadvantage �.01 .87 �1.67 3.71Residential instability .03 .87 �2.13 2.74Black (%) 25.79 32.70 .00 100.00Asian (%) 4.49 7.36 .00 92.89Hispanic (%) 20.03 25.10 .00 99.35Foreign born (%) 16.32 16.43 .00 83.78Young males (%) 15.87 5.75 .00 55.92

City level (N¼ 87)Disadvantage .01 .88 �2.02 2.43Manufacturing jobs 12.46 4.86 1.53 25.86Residential mobility 52.74 5.89 31.93 66.52Black (%) 18.83 16.58 .53 81.02Asian (%) 4.48 4.58 .24 31.43Hispanic (%) 19.04 18.56 1.09 90.46Foreign born (%) 15.52 12.36 1.58 72.11Young males (%) 16.00 2.42 11.24 24.09South .36 .48 .00 1.00West .28 .45 .00 1.00White/black segregation 47.55 18.22 14.28 85.19Black mayor .17 .38 .00 1.00Black elected officials (per 1,000 blacks) .03 .06 .00 .30Black police representation .91 1.08 .00 9.28Civilian police review board .41 .50 .00 1.00Proportion votes Democrat .52 .10 .27 .85Minority advocacy organizations (per 1,000 blacks) 1.12 2.81 .00 19.78Black protests 1970–92 (per 1,000 blacks) .03 .16 .00 .94Black riots 1970–92 (per 1,000 blacks) .02 .10 .00 .66


slope variation for percentage black, net of common controls. Insofar as random slope variation ex-ists, we assess whether the relationship between percentage black and violence is always positiveacross cities. We then account for any random variation in the estimate of percentage black on violentcrime with cross-level interactions that test the moderating potential of city-level politicalcharacteristics.7

R E S U L T STable 2 presents baseline multilevel models of the association between percentage black and violentcrime. Model 1 estimates a reduced-form model without controls for tract disadvantage and the spa-tial lag of violence, key variables proposed to mediate some of the relationship between percentageblack and violence (Peterson and Krivo 2010a). In this reduced-form model, the coefficient for per-centage black is substantially positive and significant, consistent with expectations of previous re-search.8 This represents the average relationship between percentage black and violence for 8,931tracts across 87 large cities. However, we find that the slope for percentage black varies substantiallyacross cities, as evidenced by the significant variance components (bottom panel of Table 2).

In Model 2, we introduce controls for disadvantage and the spatial lag of violence. As expected byprevailing structural frameworks, the introduction of these additional controls reduces the estimatefor tract-level percentage black substantially (from .025 in Model 1 to .005 in Model 2). Yet the aver-age estimate remains positive and statistically significant. Furthermore, even in this more fully speci-fied model, the relatively large standard deviation of the random slope for percentage black (.016)indicates substantial variation in the association between percentage black and violence across cities.Specifically, the estimated association between percentage black and violence ranges above and belowzero for 95 percent of cities in our sample (calculated by .005þ /� [2* .016]; see Snidjers and Bosker1999). To our knowledge, these results provide the first evidence across a large sample of cities thatthe relationship between percentage black and violence is geographically variant net of controls.

Table 3 investigates the extent to which black political opportunities and mobilization moderatethe percentage black-neighborhood violence relationship. To do so, we test for cross-level interac-tions between tract-level percentage black and each of the eight city-level measures.

Models 1 and 2 indicate support for our thesis that cities with greater black elected representationnot only attenuate the race-violence link, but also nullify it. Model 1 shows a negative product termbetween black mayor and percentage black, and Model 2 reveals a similar significant interaction withthe number of other black municipal officials. We display these interactions graphically with predictedvalues. Figure 1 illustrates that in cities without a black mayor, the predicted relationship betweenpercentage black and neighborhood violence is positive. In contrast, cities with black mayors (17 per-cent of our sample) reveal a slightly inverse but nonsignificant association. Net of controls, this indi-cates that percentage black plays no role in predicting neighborhood violence in cities with blackmayors. Figure 2 shows similar patterns via the interaction with black incorporation in other munici-pal offices. The figure separates cities into those with no black elected officials (38 percent of thesample), average representation, and high representation (1.5 standard deviations above the mean).In cities with significant black political incorporation, the predicted values reveal a negative slope forpercentage black. Additional tests indicate that the negative slope for cities with above average

7 Following Peterson and Krivo (Krivo et al. 2009; Peterson and Krivo 2010a), we also let the slope of concentrated disadvantagevary randomly in all models. With minor exceptions, results are similar to those reported below if we do not allow tract disadvan-tage to vary randomly across cities. The exceptions are that, without a random slope for disadvantage, the cross-level interactionbetween percentage black and the rate of black elected officials is no longer significant, whereas cross-level interactions with pro-portion votes Democrat and the presence of a civilian review board become more efficient (p< .05).

8 In supplementary models, we find some evidence of nonlinearity in the association between percentage black and violence with asignificant and negative coefficient for percentage black squared. The estimate for the quadratic term, however, is substantivelysmall and at no point in the distribution is the slope for percentage black less than zero. Cross-level interactions between city-level contexts and linear terms for percentage black mirror those reported below with the addition of the quadratic term.


representation is not significantly different from zero; that is, percentage black is unrelated to violentcrime in these cities. In contrast, the positive slopes for cities with no or average black representationare significant at traditional levels.

In terms of black bureaucratic incorporation into the police force, although the product term inModel 3 is negative it is not significant statistically. In contrast, Model 4 indicates that in cities thathave a civilian police review board, the relationship between percentage black and violence crime isnull; only in cities without this policy is the slope positive and significant. Similarly in Model 5, theproduct term for the interaction between the percentage of votes cast for Gore in 2000 and tract-levelpercentage black indicates that cities with liberal voting patterns undercut the positive relationshipbetween percentage black and violence. Cities with high levels of Democratic Party voting (1.5 stan-dard deviations above the mean) render the association between percent black and violent crime notsignificant. In contrast, in cities with limited Democratic Party voting (1.5 standard deviations belowthe mean), the relationship is positive and significant. In sum, these findings suggest that percentage

Table 2. Multilevel Poisson Models (with variable exposure) of Neighborhood Violence,National Neighborhood Crime Study 2000

Model 1 Model 2

b SE b SE

Tract level (N¼ 8,931)Disadvantage .693*** .037Residential instability .335*** .010 .239*** .011Black (%) .025*** .002 .005** .002Asian (%) .005** .002 .001 .002Hispanic (%) .013*** .002 .000 .001Foreign born (%) �.002 .002 �.011*** .002Young males (%) .003 .002 .008*** .002Spatial lag of violence .005*** .001

City level (N¼ 87)Disadvantage .263** .089 �.037 .068Manufacturing jobs �.017* .009 �.021** .008Residential mobility .003 .010 �.007 .010Black (%) �.004 .003 .012** .004Asian (%) .009 .012 .012 .011Hispanic (%) .000 .006 .007* .004Foreign born (%) �.018** .008 .000 .005Young males (%) �.007 .021 �.007 .019South �.173 .106 �.160* .087West .142 .124 .072 .118White/black segregation .020*** .003 .013*** .003

Intercept �4.766*** .090 �4.764*** .075Variance components (SD)

Intercept .472 .386Black (%) .018 .016Tract disadvantage .397

Notes: SE¼ robust standard errors; tract population as variable exposure.* p< .1; ** p< .01; *** p< .001 (two-tailed tests)


Tab

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black increases neighborhood violence only in cities with limited black political opportunities; in citieswith extensive black political opportunities the effect of percentage black on neighborhood levels ofviolence is nullified.

The final three models assess the moderating potential of black political mobilization. Model 6 re-veals that the cross-level interaction between percentage black and minority advocacy organizationsin a city is negative and substantial. Figure 3 illustrates this conditional relationship. Here, “none” rep-resents cities with no minority advocacy organizations (about 20 percent of the sample) and “high”captures cities with organizational density 1.5 standard deviations above the mean. Figure 3 showsthat the positive association between percentage black and violence is limited to cities that do nothave organizations that advocate on behalf of minority populations. In contrast, the predicted slopesfor percentage black and violence do not statistically differ from zero in cities with average and highlevels of organizational density.

Whereas we find no evidence that the rate of protest interacts with percentage black (Model 7),the product term between the rate of black riots and tract percentage black is significant and negative(Model 8). In cities with histories of rioting, the criminogenic consequences of percentage black for

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

0 20 40 60 80 100

Percent Black

Vio

lent

Cri

mes

per

10,

000

Black Mayor Nonblack Mayor

Figure 1. Cross-Level Interaction between Black Mayor (city) and Percentage Black (tract)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

0 20 40 60 80 100

Percent Black

Vio

lent

Cri

mes

per

10,

000

None Average High

Figure 2. Cross-Level Interaction between Black Elected Officials (city) and Percentage Black (tract)


neighborhoods is muted substantially. We illustrate this relationship in Figure 4, where high repre-sents rates of black riots 1.5 standard deviations above the mean, and no riots indicates those cities(74 cities in our sample) that had no black riots. Figure 4 shows that the slope for percentage black ispositive and significant in cities with average or below rates of black riots. In contrast, in cities withhigh levels of prior black riots (8 cities in our sample), Figure 4 shows a nonsignificant association be-tween percentage black and violence.

In sum, we demonstrate that the relationship between percentage black and neighborhood vio-lence does vary randomly, and often substantially, across cities. Consistent with our thesis, city-levelpolitical contexts typically help explain this variation: six of our eight measures of black political op-portunities and mobilization at relatively high levels render insignificant the association between per-centage black and neighborhood violence.

Additional AnalysesTo explore the robustness of our findings, we conduct three sets of additional analyses. First, we ac-knowledge potential alternative explanations for the relationship between percentage black,

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

0 20 40 60 80 100

Percent Black

Vio

lent

Cri

mes

per

10,

000

None Average High

Figure 3. Cross-Level Interaction between Minority Advocacy Organizations (city) and Percentage Black (tract)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

0 20 40 60 80 100

Percent Black

Vio

lent

Cri

mes

per

10,

000

High Black Riots Average Black Riots No Black Riots

Figure 4. Cross-Level Interaction between Black Riots 1970–1992 (city) and Percentage Black (tract)


neighborhood violence, and political contexts. Endogeneity and temporal ordering concerns compli-cate the interpretation of cross-level interactions with black political opportunities and mobilization.Consider that the contemporary association between percentage black and violence may be a productof the influence of past levels of violence on residential mobility and changes in the racial composi-tion of neighborhoods (Liska and Bellair 1995; Morenoff and Sampson 1997). Although residentialattainment literatures generally indicate that whites are better able than blacks to move out of highcrime neighborhoods into safer areas (Logan and Stults 1999; South and Crowder 1997, 1998), thepotential simultaneous relationships over time between violence and racial composition may suggestalternative accounts for the cross-level associations we posit. As one example, the percentage black-violence link might be weakened in cities where blacks are better able to escape high violence neigh-borhoods—such as in cities where blacks enjoy greater political empowerment and face fewer barriersto mobility. Nonetheless, as we describe in the Appendix, auxiliary instrumental variable analyses(Ebbes, Bockenholt, and Wedel 2004; Wooldridge 2002) suggest that endogeneity poses little threatto the interpretation of the findings we report (see Table A2). For the main cross-level interactions,instrumental variable analyses reveal similar findings in terms of the potential of black political oppor-tunities and mobilization to reduce the association between percentage black and violent crime.Although we caution in the conclusion that causal inference is often best suited for longitudinal data,we see our instrumental variable approach as a reasonable strategy to deal with endogeneity withinthe limits of a cross-sectional framework.

Second, we test whether the moderating relationships we report in Table 3 differ across the distri-bution of percentage black. Of substantive interest is whether black political opportunities and mobi-lization matter only or mostly in majority black neighborhoods. We test cross-level interactions withalternative measures that distribute neighborhoods into a series of indicator variables representingvarious ethno-racial compositions.9 We generally find that the moderating potential of black politicalopportunities and mobilization is neither limited to nor enhanced in majority black tracts. The excep-tions are voting for Gore and the presence of a civilian police review board, which both appear tomoderate the race-violence link most strongly in majority black tracts. On balance, however, these ad-ditional analyses suggest that black political opportunities and mobilization are equally beneficialacross the range of percentage black in our sample of neighborhoods.

Third, to address the possibility that other city-level factors shape the conditioning relationshipswe report, we explore whether the cross-level interactions observed in Table 3 are robust when we in-clude additional predictors for the slope of percentage black. Specifically, we add to our models inter-actions between tract-level percentage black and city-level economic conditions (percentagemanufacturing jobs, concentrated disadvantage), residential mobility, racial segregation, percentblack, and white-black socioeconomic inequality.10 In all but two cases,11 the parameter estimates forcross-level interactions mirror those presented in Table 3 (in direction, size, and significance) in thepresence of additional interactions. By and large, these additional analyses suggest that the patterns

9 Specifically, we follow Peterson and Krivo (2010a) and measure racial/ethnic composition of neighborhoods with a set of indi-cator variables that contrast predominately white (reference group) tracts with black, Latino, minority (black and Latino), or in-tegrated tracts. We classify predominately white, black, or Latino tracts as those where the respective group comprises 70percent or more of the tract population in 2000. Minority tracts represent areas where blacks and Latinos combine for 70 per-cent or more of the population, but neither group alone is more than 70 percent. All other tracts indicate integrated areas, ortracts with more balanced population compositions. We test product terms that interact our city-level political variables witheach dummy variable.

10 This measure of white-black socioeconomic inequality captures the average standardized scores of three variables indicatingwhite-black inequality in (1) household income, (2) high school graduates, and (3) joblessness.

11 The interactions between percentage black and votes for Gore, as well as for riots, fail to reach statistical significance in the pres-ence of additional cross-level interactions. Specifically, the interaction with votes for Gore is sensitive to the inclusion of city-level percent black as a predictor of the slope of tract-level percent black, and the interaction with riots is sensitive to the inclu-sion of white-black socioeconomic inequality.


we report are robust to additional cross-level interactions with percentage black and are not an arti-fact of the misspecification of our multilevel models.

D I S C U S S I O N A N D C O N C L U S I O N SOver a century of scholarship documents the positive association between percentage black andneighborhood violence. Social scientists largely consider the relationship an established consequenceof vast inequality in the socioeconomic isolation and marginalization of black neighborhoods (Krivoand Peterson 1996; Peterson and Krivo 2005, 2010a; Pratt and Cullen 2005). We extend this line ofinquiry to appreciate the political dimensions that undergird the social and economic standing ofblacks. Heeding insights from research on social movements, racial politics, and neighborhood socialorganization, we move beyond the internal socioeconomic conditions of neighborhoods by situatingthe race-neighborhood violence link within the political context of cities. In particular, we highlightregime receptivity to the grievances of black residents as well as black political mobilization.

Using data on neighborhoods nested within 87 U.S. cities, we find that the relationship betweenpercentage black and violence at the neighborhood level varies substantially between cities, net ofcontrols for socioeconomic disadvantage and spatial embeddedness. The association is positive on av-erage but nonetheless ranges above and below zero. This is the first study to document substantialgeographical variation in the percentage black-violence link at the neighborhood level, underscoringthe need for analyses across multiple cities and the importance of city context to explain neighbor-hood-level processes. We also find that the political context of cities plays an important role inthe percentage black and violent crime relationship at the neighborhood level. Cities with favorablepolitical environments typically nullify the effect of percentage black on violent crime at the neighbor-hood level. These results suggest that some of the divergent findings across neighborhood studies,such as the varying ability to account for the association between racial composition and violencewith internal neighborhood characteristics, are partly due to the unexamined political characteristicsof cities.

We find that percentage black plays no detectable role, net of controls, in predicting violent crimein cities with a black mayor, significant black elected representation, a civilian police review board,high percentages of a Democratic voting electorate, high rates of minority advocacy organizations,and post-civil rights histories of rioting. These results challenge pervasive cultural stereotypes thattrace black neighborhoods inevitably to violence. Stereotypes have pernicious effects on the well-be-ing of blacks and their communities, and can lead to misperceptions of the severity of neighborhoodcrime problems (Quillian and Pager 2001), the hypercriminalization and differential treatment ofblack youth (Bridges and Steen 1998; Rios 2011; Vera Sanchez and Adams 2011), and heightenedsocial control in minority areas (Eitle, D’Alessio, and Stolzenberg 2002; Kent and Jacobs 2005; Stultsand Baumer 2007). Our findings accentuate the need to investigate and theorize contexts underwhich percentage black represents an empowering resource that counteracts criminogenic conditions.

To elucidate the moderating role of favorable political contexts, we highlight the substantive andsymbolic benefits that favorable contexts can engender. Black political opportunities and mobilizationcan lead to policies that improve the social, economic, and political standing of blacks as well as stim-ulate trust in and commitment to the political system. These well-documented benefits can lay thefoundation of community social organization, facilitate civic engagement, provide an impetus for ad-ditional mobilization, guard against legal cynicism, and promote neighborhood attachment (Boboand Gilliam 1990; Williams 1998). We speculate that black political opportunities and mobilizationhelp reduce or offset the effects of disadvantages that neighborhoods with greater percentages ofblacks often otherwise face.

Despite important advantages and the unmatched scope of the data we employ, NNCS data havelimitations as well. As discussed previously, the cross-sectional nature of the data renders investigatingtemporal sequencing difficult. Our conceptual model specifies many over-time linkages beyond which


we can demonstrate empirically, including the assumption that black political opportunities andmobilization lead to favorable policy climates that facilitate the ability of blacks to organize againstneighborhood violence. However, with the exceptions of black protests and riots, we measure politi-cal opportunities and mobilization contemporaneously with tract-level percent black and violentcrime. We do not assume that contemporaneous measures of black political opportunities and mobili-zation influence the race-violence link instantaneously; instead, the processes we suggest likely unfoldover time. Although we note that our cross-sectional indicators likely represent the culmination oflonger-term processes that lead to advancements in black political opportunities and mobilization, weacknowledge that demonstrating temporal processes necessitates longitudinal data beyond those weemploy. In supplemental analyses, we also note that results are robust to an attempt to account forendogeneity via multilevel instrumental variable models, suggesting that the associations we observeare not an artifact of reciprocal relationships between neighborhood violence, percentage black, andcity-level political structures. Nonetheless, we concede potentially complicated and dependent rela-tionships among our city-level political opportunity and mobilization measures that longitudinal datamay address more appropriately.

Moreover, we are unable to observe directly the mechanisms by which city political characteristicsmoderate the race-violence link. We emphasize trust in and ties to civic leaders and institutions, civic-engagement, and collective efficacy as symbolic benefits of black political opportunities and mobiliza-tion that buttress neighborhood social organization against crime. Measures of these interveningmechanisms, however, are not available for the range of cities and neighborhoods in the NNCS. Aswe cannot easily observe the benefits emanating from favorable political contexts, we also cannot di-rectly address the doubt among some scholars as to the substantive advantages of black empower-ment in light of structural constraints that limit the ability of black-led regimes to address issuesrelevant to blacks and their neighborhoods (Patillo 2007; Reed 1988). Black-led cities disproportion-ately face fiscal hardships and population losses that obstruct efforts to eradicate structural disadvan-tages. Economic concerns may even lead to counterproductive policies, as regimes with black leadersare encouraged to work closely with white capitalists to “devise policies and undertake projects thatdisempower and disadvantage poor and working class African Americans” (Pattillo 2007:108).Despite these well-founded concerns, we demonstrate the importance of black elected representationfor undercutting risk factors related to violence in neighborhoods with relatively large shares of blackresidents. Even if empowering regimes are unable to alter substantially the structural reality of blackcommunities, the symbolic benefits of black elected representation may nonetheless facilitate neigh-borhood crime control.

Our study raises two issues with implications for the investigation of neighborhood crime pro-cesses related to race. First, our findings make clear the importance of multiple levels of urban ecolo-gies that shape neighborhood outcomes. The bulk of research and theory on neighborhood violenceposits that the divergent, and largely internal, social worlds of minority communities underlie theconnection between racial composition and violence. We shift attention to forces beyond neighbor-hood boundaries and see the higher levels of crime in minority neighborhoods as at least partially aby-product of city level forces that create and maintain racialized urban inequality. Although reducingsocioeconomic inequality between black and white neighborhoods remains a key policy implicationof this inquiry, our findings demonstrate that focusing on the internal conditions alone is insufficientto unravel the race-violence link.

Second, our results help reconsider the role of governments in neighborhood well-being. We spot-light the ability of regimes politically vulnerable or receptive to blacks to empower, rather than isolate,blacks and their communities. Favorable contexts can partly counter the marginalization beset uponneighborhoods with relatively large shares of minority residents. Yet in recognizing the helpful actionsthat governments can play in ameliorating criminogenic conditions, one must balance this positionby acknowledging the deleterious heavy hand that governments have played in exacerbating the so-cioeconomic inequality faced by black neighborhoods (Bruce, Roscigno, and McCall 1998; Logan


and Molotch 1987). City political forces can make or break minority neighborhoods and determinetheir vulnerability to violence.

A P P E N D I X : S U P P L E M E N T A R Y I N S T R U M E N T A L V A R I A B L E A N A L Y S I SInstrumental variable analysis requires finding a theoretically justified instrument that is strongly cor-related with percentage black, yet not correlated with the disturbance term from our percentageblack-violent crime models. We follow recent work on racial/ethnic composition and crime (Lyonset al. 2013; MacDonald, Hipp, and Gill 2013) and use prior levels of percentage black in 1990 as aninstrumental variable for percentage black in 2000. We suggest that percentage black in 1990 meetsboth strength and exogeneity requirements for assessing the adequacy of instrumental variables. Interms of strength, across 8,931 census tracts the bivariate correlation between the 1990 and 2000measures is strong and positive (.881). Furthermore, percentage black in 1990 significantly predictspercentage black in 2000 net of the covariates used in our violence models (see Table A1). Assessingthe exogeneity of an instrument is quite difficult empirically, as this requires gauging correlation withan unobserved construct (i.e., the disturbance term; see Wooldridge 2002). However, given that per-centage black 1990 is measured a decade prior to our measures of violence, it is a predetermined vari-able that is exogenous by construction. Furthermore, percentage black 1990 does not significantly

Table A1. First Stage Model of Percentage Black 2000, NNCS

Model 1

b SE

Tract level (N¼ 8,931)Black 1990 (%) .477*** .088Disadvantage 14.112*** 3.232Residential instability �.128 .396Asian (%) �.139 .090Hispanic (%) �.431*** .113Foreign born (%) �.202** .067Young males (%) �.210** .069Spatial lag of violence .067*** .015

City level (N¼ 87)Disadvantage �5.747*** 1.476Manufacturing jobs .114** .050Residential mobility .100* .052Black (%) .467*** .078Asian (%) .111 .099Hispanic (%) .344** .104Foreign born (%) .146* .082Young males (%) �.023 .100South �.409 .521West �1.265** .507White/black segregation �.061*** .016Intercept 25.162*** .363

Variance components (S.D.)Intercept .791***

Notes: SE refers to robust standard errors; tract population 2000 as variable exposure.* p< .1 ** p< .01 *** p< .001 (two-tailed tests)


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correlate with the residuals of our base violent crime models (r¼ .028), providing further justificationfor its appropriateness as an instrument.

We account for endogeneity via a two-stage residual inclusion (2SRI) process (Terza, Basu, andRathouz 2008) in which residuals from a first-stage equation are included with the endogenous pre-dictor in second-stage models. For the nonlinear Poisson models we estimate, Terza and colleagues(2008) demonstrate the superior consistency of 2SRI compared to traditional two-stage predictorsubstitution (2SPS), where predicted values from the first-stage equation replace the endogenous var-iable in second-stage models. In the first-stage multilevel models (see Table A1), percentage black in1990 significantly predicts percentage black in 2000, along with other tract- and city-level covariates.In the second stage (see Table A2), we follow Terza and colleagues (2008) and include the level-oneresiduals from the first stage along with the measure of percentage black in 2000. Including residualsin these models adjusts the coefficient of percentage black (purging endogeneity) and provides aHausman-style test of the significance of the endogeneity.

Despite the significance of the residuals (indicating endogeneity) in all instrumental variable mod-els, the coefficient and random slope for percentage black remain positive and significant.Furthermore, the cross-level interactions we test (see Table A2) are substantively identical to thosewe report in Table 3. In sum, although we caution that accounting for endogeneity in cross-sectionalresearch is difficult, these additional analyses suggest that the moderating influence of black politicalopportunities and black mobilization is robust.

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