Suchergebnisse

Studies by O'Carroll and Mercy and by Kowalski and Petee challenge the long‐held view that the South leads the nation in homicide rates. Specifically, O'Carroll and Mercy find that when killings by state are disaggregated by race, the West has the highest levels of homicide for whites, blacks, and other races. Kowalski and Petee conclude that homicide rates in the South and the West have converged. We extend their research by examining the effect, on levels of killing, of metropolitan concentration of black and white populations within states and of the percentage of the white population of Hispanic origin within SMSAs. Results of these analyses show that the homicide rate for non‐Hispanic whites remains highest in the South; no clear regional pattern exists for blacks.

Split labor market theory was originally advanced as a general approach explaining ethnic antagonism as the result of class‐based interests. In this investigation, the threat to "high‐priced" (white) labor from "cheap" (black) labor within the farm tenancy system of the postbellum South is examined as an underlying cause of the lynching of blacks by whites. Supporting this interpretation, the ratio of black to white tenants in southern counties, a measure of the level of economic threat to high‐priced labor, is shown to be a strong predictor of lynching rates in the Cotton South. Findings for the Non‐Cotton South, however, are inconsistent with theoretical expectations. We conclude that racial violence linked to economic competition between working‐class whites and blacks was limited to that part of the South dominated by the plantation system.