Do Blacks Speak with one Voice? Immigrants, Public Opinions, and Perceptions of Criminal Injustices

Abstract

This paper tests core tenets of the theory of African-American offending proposed by Unnever and Gabbidon. Their theory posits that African-Americans have a common worldview on matters of race that is related to their offending. However, Unnever and Gabbidon further hypothesize that immigrant blacks do not fully embrace the worldview shared by US-born blacks. Using a 2008 national Gallup poll, we examine whether US-born blacks share a common worldview and whether foreign-born blacks differ in their opinions on key issues including: criminal injustices, the state of American race relations, attitudes towards immigration and illegal immigrants, and the perception of mobility within American society. The results partially confirm their two key hypotheses; there are no entrenched differences in the public opinions of US-born blacks on race-related matters while immigrant blacks do not wholly endorse their worldview. We discuss the implications of these two findings in relation to how scholars conceptualize offending among blacks.

Keywords:

• African American offending
• immigrant blacks
• perceptions of criminal injustice
• race and crime

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Stephen Woods at Penn State for securing the data used in this study and Jessica Maldonado at USFSM for her assistance. In addition, they thank Darnell Hawkins for his insightful comments.

Notes

1. However, they note that US-born blacks are less close to African-born blacks than blacks born in the Caribbean.

2. Our contention that scholars have largely overlooked whether there are ethnic differences among blacks especially in reference to perceptions of criminal justice injustices is revealed by a summary paper on “immigrant attitudes” toward the police (Wu, 2010). It is illustrative that foreign-born blacks were not included in this discussion.

3. Because of the relatively small sample size, we report whether a factor predicts the dependent variables at the significance levels of .10, .05, .01, and, .001). We report the .10 level because of the relatively small sample size and we concur with Murphy, Myors, and Wolach’s (2012, p. 152) conclusion that researchers often report the alpha level that defines “statistical significance” based “solely on the basis of conventions in one’s field.” “The choice of stringent criteria (e.g. α = .01) is sometimes interpreted as scientifically rigorous, whereas the choice of less rigorous criteria (e.g. α = .10) is sometimes derided as “soft science.” Nothing could be further from the truth” (Murphy et al., 2012, p. 152).

4. It is highly likely that the tensions between foreign-born and US-born blacks are not unique. Scholars have clearly documented that at the turn of the twentieth century native-born whites (e.g. Protestants) negatively perceived the arrival of other whites (e.g. Italians and the Irish) and considered them as a threat (i.e. including using the criminal justice system to control their “deviant” behaviors (Gusfield, 1984; Hawkins, 1994).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James D. Unnever

James D. Unnever is professor of criminology at the University of South Florida-Sarasota Manatee. He has published extensively on race and crime, most notably in his recent A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime. His research areas also include public opinion about crime-related issues, the impact of religion on punitiveness, testing theories of crime, and school bullying. He was the 2009 recipient of the Donal A. J. MacNamara Award of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

Shaun L. Gabbidon

Shaun L. Gabbidon is distinguished professor of criminal justice at Penn State Harrisburg. He has served as a fellow at Harvard University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, and has taught at the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. The author of more than 100 scholarly publications including 60 peer-reviewed articles and 11 books, his most recent books include Race and Crime (3rd edition; 2013, SAGE) and, A Theory of African American Offending (2011; Routledge). Professor Gabbidon is the Founding Editor of the SAGE journal, Race and Justice: An International Journal.