Does Racial Segregation Make Community-Based Organizations More Territorial? Evidence from Newark, Nj, and Jersey City, Nj

ABSTRACT:

This article contributes to research on urban nonprofit community-based organizations (CBOs) by exploring how high racial/ethnic segregation within a city creates a context wherein CBOs become territorial. CBOs have long been recognized for their role in providing services to the urban disadvantaged. Organizations with a strong sense of territoriality typically have robust ties with their base neighborhoods, very thorough in supporting residents in those places. After interviewing 40 CBO staffers in Newark, NJ, and Jersey City, NJ, I identify three paths through which the condition of high segregation in a city leads to territorial CBOs: (1) demographically, organizations become associated with bounded, racially segregated neighborhoods; (2) politically, racially motivated political contention compels organizations to identify more closely with their base neighborhoods; and (3) financially, disadvantage concentrated along racial/ethnic lines contributes to concentrated funding efforts for the city’s nonprofit sector, which in turn places greater scrutiny on where organizations situate.

Notes

Past literature on organizational fields, especially the New Institutionalism approach, characterized fields as having high levels of conformity around institutional norms (DiMaggio & Powell, ). The version used here reflects a more relational approach to fields, viewing the relations within fields to be more a matter of consensus (Fligstein & McAdam, ).

End of year assets is the typical way to identify this (Garrow, ).

Response rate on interviews was 76.9% in Newark and 83.3% in Jersey City.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Jersey City’s population was 247,597, whereas Newark’s was 277,140.

The information theory index measures how evenly groups are distributed across neighborhoods, regardless of the size of each group. The scores vary between 0 (total integration) and 1 (total segregation) (Iceland, ).

Even with Newark’s high segregation score, many neighborhoods within the city are racially mixed. For example, there are numerous neighborhoods that are mixed black and Hispanic. Past research has found that predominantly nonwhite communities with a high share of blacks experience the isolating characteristics of segregation (Frey, 2011; Friedman, ; Iceland, ; Logan & Stults, ; Rosenbaum & Friedman, ).

A census tract is the Office of Management and Budget’s measure of a neighborhood. It presents a reasonable approximation of a CBO’s immediate surroundings.

For example, a staff member at the Jersey City Employment and Training program provided a 5-minute explanation as to how Journal Square and the Heights were distinct places after I mistakenly identified them as “basically the same area.”

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Notes on contributors

Joseph Gibbons

Joseph Gibbons is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Colgate University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University at Albany and his master’s degree in Sociology at the New School for Social Research.