The Journal of Criminal Justice has been criticized for allegedly using predatory and unethical citation practices to inflate its impact factor.(1) But it is with a recent paper published in the JCJ(2) that its credibility has clearly and definitively been flushed down the toilet. The paper deals with the issue of race and crime in America, and does so in a blatantly political manner from the very first sentence of the abstract (try to restrain your laughter as you read this if you are in a public place): "This article examines race, poverty, and criminal behavior ignoring criminological orthodoxy adding two features that spoil the politically correct mantra that black crime results from white racism." What is the first of these features? The authors then answer this question as follows: "Adding East Asians, who surpass white Americans in almost every index of prosocial behavior despite experiencing a history of prejudice and discrimination aimed at them, casts serious doubt on that contention. To be consistent with structural arguments for black poverty and crime, proponents would have to attribute Asian successes and low crime rates to pro-Asian bias on the part of whites to their own detriment."
So what we have here is a blatant attempt to legitimize the debunked "model minority" myth underlying so much of white people's resentment toward African Americans in America. Naturally, they would turn to a journal edited by Matt DeLisi, the co-author of the book "Conservative Criminology"(3), to try to give these views a large audience.
But aren't Asian Americans a "model minority"? No, for two reasons:
1) Lumping the income of all Asian Americans together masks the fact that not all Asian Americans are successful, and some groups thereof are in fact significantly poorer than are whites.(4)(5)(6) This is partly because of significantly greater variation among Asian Americans in terms of their economic experiences.(7)
2) Arguing that because Asian Americans can be successful in spite of discrimination, African Americans can too, if they only work hard, ignores the fundamental differences in the type and magnitude of discrimination experienced by the two groups over American history. (8)
Moreover, the fact that Asian Americans' mean income is higher than that of whites and blacks is of little relevance to blacks, given the way Asian Americans generally came to America. To quote the Brookings Institution: "Asian-Americans have in fact been a uniquely hyper-selective migrant group. The share of well-educated Asian immigrants is in fact higher than the American population average. This alone is likely to influence outcomes, since there is a clear connection between parental education and the education achievement of their children."(19)
Anyway, now I'll deal with more bullshit arguments in the paper that is the subject of this post.
Later on in the same paper, the authors state:
"Asian Americans have suffered widespread prejudice and discrimination in the U.S. but not only do they commit far less crime than African Americans and enjoy higher income, they also commit less crime and enjoy higher mean household income than whites. This spoils a good politically correct criminological story."
Of course, numerous studies have shown that most differences in crime between blacks and whites are accounted for by racial differences in structural factors such as family disruption, (9)(10) racial isolation and segregation, (11) exposure to violence, (15) and racial inequality. (12) Segregation is especially important, because it results in blacks being exposed to family and neighborhood factors that increase the odds of violent crime perpetration more than whites are, by creating areas of concentrated poverty. This, in turn, increases rates of unemployment and out-of-wedlock births among blacks in these areas of cities, resulting in higher rates of violence among blacks. (16) While African Americans tend to live in, on average, highly segregated neighborhoods, Asian Americans do not. (21) The stuff about out-of-wedlock births is especially important given what the authors say about blacks having so many births out of wedlock, and how this is the real source of their problems.
But what about Asians? Why do they commit crime at relatively low rates? A recent study looking at delinquency reported that the answer to this question is "a combination of protective factors, including lower levels of strain, strong bonds to school, and less exposure to delinquent peers." (18) Moreover, Southeast Asians in America used to have high rates of welfare receipt, crime, and other social problems, and to a large extent this is still true today. (20)
And a few paragraphs later, the authors try to hand-wave away the point I made by saying,
"It would be naive to suggest that the lingering effects of slavery and racism have not had at least some effect on the behavior of blacks in America, but this does not explain why they would be so affected by their history of victimization when Asians seem not to be affected at all."
The authors also sprinkle bits of superficially plausible and inflammatory bullshit throughout their paper, arguing that perhaps the whole "institutional racism" thing is just made up by academics whose careers depend on the putative existence of widespread racism in modern America, even if it doesn't really exist. Ostensibly, this is because "those with a vested interest in keeping racism alive talk about such things as “symbolic racism” and “laissez-faire racism,” which are supposedly expressed subconsciously." The evidence that discrimination against African Americans, as well as the effects of past discrimination, is still alive and well has been summarized elsewhere, (12) (17) as has the evidence for the existence of subconscious racism. (22) It is hard to believe that absurd conspiratorial bullshit like this, on which conservative BS arguments about climate scientists wanting to profit off the climate change "gravy train" are based, got published in an ostensibly reputable peer-reviewed journal.
Contrary to the authors' statements, black culture does not promote violence; instead, their rates of violence are higher due to family disruption and other factors mentioned above. (13) (14)
In short, the authors attack a weird sort of straw man when they argue that "politically correct" criminology attributes racial differences in crime to differences in poverty. This has always been an oversimplification, when in fact, it is concentrated disadvantage that is at work--which has never been (and certainly is not now) the case for Asian Americans to nearly the extent to which it is for African Americans.
References:
1) http://retractionwatch.com/2015/09/22/self-citation-explains-crime-journals-boost-in-impact-factor-analysis/
2) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047235217300880
3) https://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Criminology-Restore-Balance-Sciences/dp/0323357016
4) http://aapidata.com/stats/national/national-poverty-aa-aj/
5) http://www.urban.org/urban-wire/model-minority-myth-hides-economic-realities-many-asian-americans
6) http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/04/19/524571669/model-minority-myth-again-used-as-a-racial-wedge-between-asians-and-blacks "Racism that Asian-Americans have experienced is not what black people have experienced," Kim said. "Sullivan is right that Asians have faced various forms of discrimination, but never the systematic dehumanization that black people have faced during slavery and continue to face today."
7) https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2016/12/20/295359/wealth-inequality-among-asian-americans-greater-than-among-whites/
8) http://www.understandingprejudice.org/readroom/articles/affirm.htm
9) https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=tV6MAQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA177
10) https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/75/2/619/2233487
11) http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088767997001003004
12) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20689680
13) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-4560.t01-1-00005/full
14) https://www.jstor.org/stable/2779588
15) http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022427898035002002
16) http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/24/2/325.full
17) http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)30569-X/fulltext
18) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15377938.2013.837854?src=recsys&journalCode=wecj20
19) https://www.brookings.edu/research/asian-american-success-and-the-pitfalls-of-generalization/
20) https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=N2pyIc8VoWcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224
21) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193596/ "... levels of segregation are highest for African Americans and lowest for Asians with Hispanics in-between. "
22) http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/019027250807100103
More stuff you can read if you want about structural factors, race, and crime:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2001.tb00934.x/full
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1999.tb00491.x/full
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1999.tb00493.x/full
A great summary of the issue of Asian Americans, crime, and the model minority myth:
http://tamaranopper.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Nopper.Asian-Americans-Deviance-Crime-and-the-Model-Minority-Myth.pdf
Addendum #1: Another blog post also debunking the same paper (this post is by University of Washington professor Callie Burt: https://calliehburt.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/this-again-a-response-to-walsh-yu-2017/)
Addendum #2: I was recently pleased to learn that Rebecca Stone, assistant professor of sociology at Suffolk College (who I had never heard of until just now), has also taken note of the giant pile of BS this paper is. She has posted a Twitter thread (that was posted last summer when this paper was first published, but which I didn't notice until just now) expressing astonishment at the absurd ad hominems and other logical fallacies in this pathetic excuse for a paper. You can read her tweets here.
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