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ABSTRACT
As the minority group frequently at the centre of public fear in the post-9/11 era, Arab Americans’ own sentiment toward, and concerns with, crime, has eluded scholarly attention. This study investigated their fear of crime net of five empirically validated fear of crime theoretical models. Face-to-face interviews with a random sample of Arab and non-Arab households in Metro-Detroit, Michigan indicated that net of all controls, Arab Americans experienced significantly higher levels of fear concerning both general and bias crimes than non-Arab Americans. The greater fear among Arab Americans calls for policy and practice change, and moving from perceiving Arab Americans as a major “source” of fear, to “carriers” of fear who are in need of more attention, care, and assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Fear of crime can affect economic development in various ways: it may negatively affect business, tourism, property value, and labour-force participation (Detotto and Otranto Citation2010).
2. Arab Americans are often considered as racial and ethnic minorities by academics and activists (Ashabranner Citation1991). In the early 1900s Arab Americans fought for the racial classification of “white”, and were eventually defined as white by law in 1944. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, many Arab Americans began to fight for changing identity markers. As Kayyali (Citation2013, 1299) observed, “the rise of multiculturalism and ethnic pride, combined with influxes of new, more diverse immigrants, has created large segments of Arab Americans who do not feel ‘white’ and who perceive themselves as persons of color”. Recognizing this trend of identity shift, the US Bureau of the Census has proposed a standalone “Middle Eastern or North African” (“MENA”) box for the 2020 census. This change, if implemented, offers Arab Americans the opportunity to identify as MENA, and non-white (Beydoun Citation2015).
3. People who have high levels of fear of crime tend to restrict their behavior to places and times considered to be safe and/or avoid activities perceived as dangerous, such as taking public transportation, walking on certain streets, and attending social activities (Liska, Sanchirico, and Reed Citation1988; Pantazis Citation2000). Such behavior can limit people’s freedom of movement and increases their distrust for others (Wilson-Doenges Citation2000).
4. These models should not be viewed as mutually exclusive, as there might be considerable overlap between some of the models depending on the focus of each model.
5. The cooperation rate represents “the proportion of all cases interviewed of all eligible units ever contacted” (AAPOR Citation2008, 36). AAPOR provides several formulas for determining cooperation rates depending on criteria for eligibility. The listed cooperation rate is based on the following formula: where I = interviewed, P = partial, R = refused, and O = other. The response rate listed is based on AAPOR’s formula for
(NC = no contact; all else same).
6. Factor analysis was conducted to assess the underlying constructs shared by all fifteen items. Results indicated the items loaded onto two factors, with five items (i.e. physical attack because of ethnicity, home attack because of ethnicity, murder by someone known, attack by someone known, and murder by a stranger) loaded onto one factor, and the remaining ten items loaded onto another. We divided these items into two groups to conceptually tap into ordinary crime and bias crime.