The decline of Black institutions and the rise of violent crime in urban Black America post-integration

Much scholarly debate over the past twenty years in the field of race relations in the United States has included the issue of race and crime. Considering the disproportionate number of Blacks under the umbrella of the Criminal Justice system and the unparalleled tripling of the Black murder rate, a study of the root causes of crime in urban Black America is warranted. The Black experience in the United States suggests that there are unique factors that help explain the disproportionate amount of violent crime in urban Black communities. The present investigation looks at the role that the out-migration of the Black middle class from urban Black America played in the decline of Black institutions and the subsequent increase in violent crime. Baltimore, Maryland, will be used as a case study. Prior to integration an analysis of Blacks as a homogeneous group may have had "some" merit. The research indicates that legal "segregation" may have served an unintended positive purpose; it allowed for ample mentoring amongst professional and non-professional Blacks and their children and created what Emile Durkheim identified as a collective conscience. Post-integration studies on Black America indicate a different structure. Studies that continue to describe Blacks as a homogeneous group that has been effected uniformly by economic and social changes in America add to the conceptual confusion. The present dissertation indicates that certain social, economic and political trends over the past thirty years have resulted in a growing differential in opportunity and achievement for two segments of the Black population. A new Black middle class has emerged. This group has been privy to a greater socioeconomic status and has attempted to assimilate into "White America.". The physical and philosophical migration of middle class Blacks out of urban America has mitigated the significance of the institutions in which the necessary collective conscience had been rooted the Black Church, Black Civil Rights Organizations and Leadership, Black Economics and the Black Family. The decline of these institutions has left urban lower class Blacks in a state of anomie and alienation, which has contributed to the present increase in violent crime.