Strange interludes? A sociological history of American race rioting, 1900 to 1996.

Race riots have been a consistence presence in modern America. However, their sporadic and sudden nature has caused many popular commentators to treat these phenomena as inexplicable aberrations from normal life. Drawing on a rich tradition of social science scholarship on race riots that is today too often forgotten, this dissertation illustrates how race riots are consistent with, draw meaning from, and help to shape everyday experiences of race---in other words, how race riots have been an integral part of American racial history since the turn of the century. Based on archival information from newspapers, government reports, and decennial censuses, the primary data set covers a variety of characteristics of the entire population of recorded American race riots from 1900 to 1996. Personal interviews with riot participants and personal records from persons involved in past race riots are also used as supplementary information. Analyses indicate that (1) race riots are pointedly politically meaningful with rioters as a whole displaying keen awareness, via riot violence, of the specific themes and issues that sparked the event, (2) previous attempts to create explanatory models of race riot incidence using ecological variables have somewhat underestimated their explanatory power due to limitations in research design, and (3) mass looting and other elements of fun that are often associated with race riots in fact share little in common with race riot violence and seem to be parasitic phenomena. These findings together paint a picture of race rioting as being quite meaningful and predictable. A final analytic chapter briefly examines the impact of race riots on urban social systems. Some connections between race rioting and racial migration patterns are found. More dramatically, relations between police and the communities they service are shown to have undergone significant change due to race riots. Two opposite trends of police outreach to communities and militarization of the police are shown to be direct outcomes of race rioting. The dissertation concludes with an assessment of the likelihood of a near-future race riot in the 25 largest MSAs. Miami and Atlanta are deemed to be at greatest risk of a major racial conflagration in the near future.PhDEthnic studiesSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132308/2/9963745.pd