Study: Whites perceive more crime when blacks live nearby

Perceptions of crime in a particular neighborhood may be due to the presence of young African-American men, according to a new study by two UW–Madison researchers.

The study, by sociology assistant professor Lincoln Quillian and graduate student Devah Pager, found residents in Chicago, Baltimore and Seattle to be influenced strongly by the racial composition of their neighborhood in judging its level of crime.

The study indicates that even in neighborhoods with low crime rates, residents perceive crime to be a big problem when young black men live in the area.

In fact, the percentage of young black men in a neighborhood more closely matched perceptions of crime than the actual neighborhood crime rates as reported in police department and victimization surveys. The authors found that the higher the percentage of young black men in a neighborhood, the greater the residents’ perceptions of crime.

“These results demonstrate the strong stereotypes people have about blacks and crime. People automatically assume that if there are young black men around, they must be engaged in crime. It’s just not true,” Pager says.

In the study, residents were asked to rate the level of crime in their neighborhoods. These ratings were then matched with neighborhood census data and police reports.

“The significance of this study is that it is the first study to show that white perceptions associating black neighbors with higher crime do not merely reflect actual crime but result from an overestimation of the association between race and crime,” Quillian says.

Other studies have measured associations between race and perceptions of crime without measures of actual neighborhood crime or other objective neighborhood conditions, including building deterioration and social disorder.

The authors say their conclusions have implications for the process of residential segregation: Whites claim to move out of integrated or black neighborhoods not because of race but because these neighborhoods are perceived to have more problems (crime, housing deterioration, etc.).

In showing that the perceptions themselves are racially influenced, the authors question whether neighborhood integration can be achieved with anything short of a significant weakening of stereotypes associating blacks with crime.

“We believe that media images associating blacks with crime perpetuates distorted images,” Pager says. “Unless we recognize that black criminals represent only a small proportion of the overall black population, whites will continue to feel threatened by black neighbors, and they will continue to flee from integrated neighborhoods.”

The study will appear Monday, April 29, in the American Journal of Sociology.