Table of Contents
Race does not singularly impact any one person specific actions, however the stigmas and stereotypes put on to them through society can lead to certain mindsets to be fulfilled. People of color are put into a bubble where we can see violent victimization occurring within our lives. For the purpose of this essay and consistency the terminology for types of races will be the types of race our own law system recognizes, there are 5 listed options for “race”, the five are white, black, american indian, eskimo or aleut, asian, native hawaiian, and pacific islander. There are also ethnic categories which an encompasses hispanic or latino.
Background
The ideology that lead to the race-crime relationship argument can be found as a subtopic within the social problems perspective. Which is a theory that asserts how crimes are committed due to matters beyond the control of the criminal. People might commit crimes because of poverty, racism, social status and other constructs that hold the criminal down. I’m going to be looking in depth about the root causes of how race can be tied into crime statistics and predictions. The importance of this analysis is that by further investigating certain areas in which crimes are being commited you can narrow down what’s going wrong within our society to help And help to lower the chance of these issues occurring in the future. An important thing to keep in mind is the disproportionate percentage of races within our country, the diagram displayed in the appendix can be looked upon at any time to help visualize this disparity.
Family Socialization
Some think that everything that happens in our life can be traced back to be a reflection of how we grew up, how we were raised. In this case, that idea can be true. Family socialization can show a big impact into the lives that you will be leading later into the future. According to the American Psychological Association 90% of people within the United States end up marrying by the time they are fifty, however roughly 40-50% of those marriages will end in divorce. Keeping this information in mind, according to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, one of the biggest correlations between child delinquency, and delinquent behavior later in life is divorce, or separation within families. Now this arises the question of how divorce and delinquency has a relationship with race and criminality.
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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is a trend around 45% percent of first marriages that ended in divorce. Now they further break that down by race. The race that they can see with a slightly higher percentage of divorce is black being 48.4%, and non-black, non-hispanic at 44.2%. There is a slight difference between races, not enough to have divorce being a solid explanation, but it can be contributing factor that can lead to child delinquency. It’s not always the divorce that alone can lead children down a darker path, but it’s the stress factors and instability that can alter their ability to feel normal, and safe within their life. Children that are raised in single parent families are more likely to be exposed to criminological factors that will be affecting them later in life, by the lack of a stable father figure in their life, and the freedom that children can inevitably get by having a single parent working alone to pay the bills, and support the child’s needs. This can be seen in a study conducted by Matsueda and Heimer (1987:836)“…by attenuating parental supervision, which in turn increases delinquent companions, prodelinquent definitions, and, ultimately, delinquent behavior.” (McCord, 76)
Another factor that may greatly increase the chance of a child engaging in criminal behavior in their life is abuse, “child maltreatment roughly doubles the probability that an individual engages in many types of crime.” (Pickler). Studies have shown that the neglection of a child can lead to antisocial behavior, which on a case by case basis, can turn into a future of violence, and/or criminality as an adult. Behavior that forms due to this kind of neglect, is amplified in further relationships, among the time that children begin to reach puberty. They search for friends and romantic partners whom they feel most comfortable with, and who in turn will typically have the same social behavior that they have grown to accept as their own. This will further impact their judgment through creating more negative and harmful ideas, and ways of life.
This affects children differently, especially when you divide them by genders. Women are much more likely to internalize these negative and bad childhoods which can lead them to mental problems, such as depression, anxiety, and withdrawal. Men in turn show the complete opposite, they are more likely to show aggressive behaviors, and hostility towards others and themselves in their life due to the abuse experience as a child. These two greatly varying Motives change the type of Crimes people will commit. Women are more likely to be charged with crimes involving drug possession, theft, or fraud. While men are more likely to commit violent crimes such as murder, rape, or sexual assault.
This is important because people of color are more likely to experience some sort of abuse throughout their life, which is why an increase in criminal activity can be seen through statistical research. The reasons why people of color are statistically the leading offenders in violent crimes is largely due to the more violent lives that they have to live through. As we live the only life we know, this can lead to a cycle of abuse and neglect, passing on unintentionally the abusive and neglectful tendencies our own parents brought on to us.
Violent Subculture
One of the main reasons race can be tied into crime rates is the subculture of violence associated with races. This theory was first deeply looked into by Marvin Wolfgang in 1967. Wolfgang builds his theory in his work, ‘Subculture of Violence’ (1967) off the appeared “machismo” which can be defined as a strong or aggressive masculine pride, that can be found within certain groups. Subcultural groups basis their life around shared values, these traits that have showed to build this life style are such things as achieving status, having an exciting life, and protecting honor either for themselves, or their family. These sets of shared values will more or less forever determine their chosen actions and behavior throughout their life. Machismo can characteristically be tied into sexuality as well, however not typically intimacy as stereotypically intimacy is a much more femininely described feeling. When it comes to sex most machismo men base their value off numbers not their spiritual connection.
Now the question is why does machismo impact the way people of different ethnicity commit crimes. With the explained characteristics above in mind, I’m going to break down some statistics that have been further separated by a crime than by race. In 2013 a study conducted by the US Department of Justice found that 51.3% of murder crimes were conducted by black, 33.5% were by whites, and 12.8% were committed by hispanics. This can be tied into machismo, as violence is a way to prove your masculinity within groups, to show your status as a man with other men and with other women. Which using the information from the NCBI links the concept of masculinity to ethnicity, and this can explain a portion of why blacks are frequently the leading race in violent crimes such as murder or nonnegligent manslaughter. As when you take into account the masculine culture that black people are especially raised in, this makes sense with the idea of being in a culture that can cause them to perform more obscene behaviors to prove the masculinity them hope to achieve.
Whereas rape tells a completely different story. Usuing the Federal Bureua of Invetigation in 2016 the breakdown for rape by race was 67.6% white, 29.1% black. This shows the statistically speaking whites are more frequently committing rape charges, however referring back to the diagram in the background information you can see the vast gap of the amount of white people within the US, for blacks to still be committing 29.1% is a great amount, due to the fact that there are much less black people within the US than whites. This idea fits into the machismo complex as described earlier, as the act of dominating someone in a brutal sexual way, can make the accuser feel a sense of entitlement and help their masculinity to grow.
Now let’s switch gears to a crime that is not based off power, or self achievement. In the same 2016 survey as in the prior paragraph for driving under the influence the statistics by race were 82.2% white, and 13.6% black. Now even taking into account the big difference within size of races within the US, this would be something that whites would be leading in nonetheless. Which can make sense when following the theory of machismo to create a violent subculture, as this type of crime does not raise the bar for your masculinity, as you are not proving anything to others by completing this action.
However the prior crime was not an act that was being committed against someone or something, so it makes sense that it did not follow the theory thats been being worked on, in order to maintain similarity let’s look into another act that is occurring between two people and has whites being the number one offender. Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) has the numbers being 71.6% offenders are white, and 24.7% are black. This is an offense that you would think would follow the idea of machismo, with the race that would have the highest rate. However out of offenses involving an unsub (unknown subject of investigation) and a victim, this was the crime with the greatest gap between whites and blacks. Now why this is, is up for debate. It could be explained that the severity of this crime is not as great as all the others, or that as most crimes are committed within the same or similar race of those committing, which would explain a part as women of color have one of the lowest standings within our society hierarchy and therefore aren’t listened to, or just the fact that sexually based offenses are the least reported crimes among them all, and therefore there are much less people that can prove someone’s guilt, and standing in the society has a play in that.
To wrap up the theory of violence within subculture, and how that can be explained by the machismo with in groups, we’ve seen the statistics that have been trying to focus our attention on the fact that people of color are more likely to be arrested for commiting crimes, but there might be a reason behind why that is occuring. It’s not that people of color are commiting crimes on a significantly larger level, it can be that white people are on typically a different level within the economic status of all the people in our country.
