Immigration, Race, and Riot: The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising

We test the hypothesis that the 1992 Los Angeles race riot represents backlash violence in response to recent Latino and Asian immigration into African American neighborhoods. We propose a variant of ethnic competition theory that links residential ethnic succession with propensities for riot violence. We depart from previous research on riots by comparing census tracts rather than cities and we find that controlling for economic conditions and racial/ethnic composition there is a significant association between ethnic succession in neighborhoods (Latino and Asian in-migration and black out-migration) and riot violence. (EXCERPT)