The Residential Process and the Ecological Concentration of Race, Poverty and Violent Crime in New York City

Drawing on Sampson and Wilson's (1995) theory of urban inequality and related research, I test the hypothesis that the relationship between race and neighborhood exposure to violent crime reflects a residential process in which African Americans are at a substantial disadvantage. Using 1990 crime and census data for New York City, individual-level regression models show sharp racial/ethnic disparities in residential exposure to violent crime, regardless of individual characteristics. Expanded models including contextual variables show that these disparities are explained by the concentration of minorities in poor, minority neighborhoods, with correspondingly higher rates of violence. Findings thus lend substantial support for a community-level, contextual interpretation of racial differences in exposure to violent crime.