The Determinants of the Number of White Supremacist Groups

What social and political conditions help explain the number of white supremacist groups? This study uses pooled time-series cross-sectional methods to assess the explanatory power of three racial threat accounts. First, since lynchings indicated intense animosity against blacks that may persist, anti-black hate groups should be especially numerous where lynching rates were substantial in the distant past. Second, where or when white political and cultural dominance is threatened by large or growing black populations, additional white supremacist groups should be present. And third, these anti-black movements often recruit by emphasizing the links between race and violent street crime. Since the public mistakenly believes that most violent crimes are committed by blacks who victimize whites, larger numbers of hate groups should be present where murder rates are most substantial. With other theoretically plausible determinants such as unemployment and college completion rates held constant, the results confirm these three threat theory predictions.