Roots of African American violence : ethnocentrism, cultural diversity, and racism /

The authors attempt a theorization of "group divergence" in crime as a product of "ethnocentrism" in group identities and "socio-emotional affinities." They identify discriminatory law enforcement as a major cause of lack of trust by African Americans regarding the criminal justice system, resulting in a supposed preference for violent means of settling disputes. By using Uniform Crime Reporting rates of arrest to measure the rates of offending, the authors contradict themselves on the relevance of discriminatory law enforcement. Consistently misspelling the name Du Bois, the authors apparently misunderstood his emphasis that African Americans are not more violent than others, even though they are arrested more often. Their own statistics show that the vast majority of homicides involve European Americans as arrested suspects and victims. Ignoring the Black Lives Matter movement, the authors also neglect the war on drugs, which may be fueling the violence in urban areas. They also ignore the blowback effects of US foreign wars and the retention of the death penalty, which may explain the consistently higher rates of homicide in the US compared to abolitionist, less-warlike industrialized countries. "Black ethnocentrism" sounds like a pathological perspective that blames the victimized. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. --Biko Agozino, Virginia Tech