Prompted by the 2005 urban riots in France, this article asks why, with very few exceptions, American cities have not experienced widespread civil disorders since the late 1970s, especially when many of the conditions underlying the earlier disorders persist or have worsened. The answer lies in three factors: the changing ecology of power, techniques for managing marginalization, and distinctive U.S. approaches to the incorporation and control of immigrants.
Luther Carpenter , “Job Redistribution à la Française,” Dissent (Spring 2006), 28.
2.
The Los Angeles violence spilled over into Las Vegas.
3.
In the summer of 2006, an upsurge in this form of violence made headlines in Boston and Philadelphia. See, for instance, Larry Eichel, “In the City, any day can be a killing day,”Philadelphia Inquirer, July 16, 2006; Barbara Boyer, “An uphill fight to stem violence,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 18, 2006.
4.
Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press , 2003), 3.
5.
Tilly labels them “opportunistic violence.” Ibid., 130-50.
6.
Ira Katznelson, City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United States ( New York: Pantheon, 1981), 208-09.
7.
The Kerner Report: the 1968 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Pantheon , 1988), 9.
8.
Ibid., 1.
9.
Thomas J. Sugrue and Andrew P. Goodman, “Plainfield Burning: Black Rebellion in the Suburban North,” Journal of Urban History33:4 (May 2007), 568-601.
10.
Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 164, 185, 211. Italics in original.
11.
Robert Gottlieb , Mark Vallianatos, Regina M. Freer, and Peter Dreier, The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 126.
12.
Michael B. Katz and Mark J. Stern , One NationDivisible: What America Was and What It Is Becoming (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), 66.
13.
Ibid., 88.
14.
Ibid., 88-9.
15.
On police professionalization, see Robert Fogelson, Big City Police (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 219-42.
16.
Paul Jargowsky , “Stunning Progress, Hidden Problems: The Dramatic Decline of Concentrated Poverty in the 1990s,” in Alan Berube, Bruce Katz, and Robert E. Lang, eds., Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Evidence From Census 2000, v. 3, ( Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2005), 138.
17.
Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton , American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 74, 85-7.
18.
Katz and Stern, One Nation Divisible, 104. For a good overview of immigration trends in American history, see Mary M. Kritz and Douglas T. Gurak, Immigration and a Changing America (New York and Washington, DC: Russell Sage Foundation and Population Reference Bureau, 2004).
19.
Michael B. Katz , In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America, Tenth Anniversary Edition (New York : Basic Books, 1986), 106, 318, 297.
20.
Sandra Ball-Rokeach and James F. Short, Jr., “Collective Violence: The Redress of Grievance and Public Policy” in Lynn A. Curtis, ed., American Violence and Public Policy: An Update of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 165.
21.
Wicker, “Introduction ” in Kerner Report, xiii.
22.
Charles Tilly , Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties (Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), 147. See also, Tilly, Politics of Collective Violence , 75.
23.
Tilly, Identities, 8-9.
24.
Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York: Henry Holt, 2004); Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
25.
Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung.Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origins, 1970 to 1990, For Large Cities and Other Urban Place in the United States. U.S. Census Bureau. Population Division. Working Paper no. 76. February 2005 .
26.
Josh Sides, L.A.City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press, 2003), 2, 44.
27.
Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Thomas J. Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
28.
Gerald Gamm, Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); J. Anthony Lukas, ”Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York: Knopf, 1985); Lillian B. Rubin, Busing and Backlash: White Against White in a California School District ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); Ronald P. Formisano, Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
29.
Ball-Rokeach and Short, “Collective Violence,” 161.
30.
“Tracking Change: a Look At the Growth of Black Elected Officials in the United States, Based on Reports by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies”. Chart. New York Times. March 29, 2006.
31.
W. Marvin Dulaney, Black Police in America (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 121-22.
32.
Ball-Rokeach and Short, “ Collective Violence,” 163.
33.
H. Paul Friesema, “Black Control of Central Cities: The Hollow Prize,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners (March 1969), 75.
34.
Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London and New York: Verso, 2006), 37, 111, 114.
35.
Davis, Planet of Slums , 119.
36.
I recall some stores in West Philadelphia, where I live, boarding up their windows in anticipation of rioting, which did not occur.
37.
I use mechanisms in Charles Tilly's definition as a “form of delimited class of events that change relations among specified sets of elements in identical or closely similar ways over a variety of situations” and processes as “frequently occurring combinations or sequences of mechanisms.” Charles Tilly, Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties (Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), 28.
38.
Ball-Rokeach and Short, “ Collective Violence,” 162. On African American public employment, see also Roger Waldinger, Still the Promised City? African-Americans and New Immigrants in Post-IndustrialNew York (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1996 ).
39.
For the concept of limited ladders of mobility, I am indebted to John Foster, “ Nineteenth Century Towns: A Class Dimension,” in H. J. Dyos, The Study of Urban History ( London: St. Martin's, 1968), 281-399.
40.
Katz and Stern, One Nation Divisible, 92.
41.
Sides, L.A.City Limits, 88, 91.
42.
Ball-Rokeach and Short, “ Collective Violence,” 160.
43.
For the idea of mimetic reform, I am indebted to Katznelson, City Trenches, 177, 187.
44.
Katznelson, City Trenches , 179, 187.
45.
Julia Rabig, “ Broken Deal: Devolution, Development, and Civil Society in Newark, New Jersey: 1960-1990,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania , 2007, ch. 2.
46.
The idea of indirect rule applied to African American ghettos was developed as part of the theory of internal colonialism advanced by black writers in the late 1960s. See, for example, Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York : Random House, 1967).
47.
Gerald E. Frug, City Making: Building Communities Without Building Walls (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
48.
The term is from Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003).
49.
Robert E. Weems , Jr., Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumption in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 71, tables 4.1, 75.
50.
Weems, Desegregating the Dollar, 107; The 1993/94 report on the Buying Power of Black America (Target Market News Group, Inc.: Chicago , 1993), 22; Household Spending: Who Spends How Much on What (New Strategies and Publications: Ithaca, NY, 2005 ), 125-26.
51.
Cohen, Consumers' Republic , 7.
52.
In his history of youth in post-war West Philadelphia, Carl Nightingale claims that, rather than being disaffected from the American mainstream, in their frustrated aspirations as consumers young African-Americans are the most American of Americans. Carl Husemoller Nightingale, On the Edge: A History of Poor Black Children and Their American Dreams ( New York: Basic Books, 1993).
53.
Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 203-54.
54.
Felicia Kornbluh , “To Fulfill Their `Rightly Needs': Consumerism and the National Welfare Rights Movement,” Radical History Review69 (Fall 199), 76-112.
55.
Cohen, Consumers' Republic , 7, 88-89, 90.
56.
Weems, Desegregating the Dollar, 90, 100.
57.
Elizabeth Chin, Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture ( Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 168-69.
58.
Tamara Dracut et al., The Plastic Safety Net: Findings from a National Survey of Credit Card Debt Among Low- and Middle-Income Households (Demos and Center for Responsible Lending, 2005), 8; Jennifer Wheary, The Future of the Middle Class: African Americans, Latinos, and Economic Opportunity (Demos: New York, 2006), 22.
59.
The way inequality structures consumption is a major theme of Chin in Purchasing Power.
60.
Chin, Purchasing Power , 1-26, 88, 115.
61.
Alan R. Gordon and Norval Morris, “ Presidential Commissions and the Law Enforcement Administration” in Lynn A. Curtis ed., American Violence and Public Policy: An Update of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 117.
62.
Kenneth O'Reilly , “The FBI and the Politics of Riots, 1964-1968 ,” Journal of American History, 75:1 (June 1988), 91-114; Suri, Power and Protest, 182-212.
63.
Ibid, 113.
64.
Fogelson, Big City Police , 220.
65.
Gordon and Morris, “Presidential Commissions,” 125.
66.
Lynn A. Curtis, “Introduction,” in Curtis, American Violence, 7-8.
67.
Robert A. Diegeleman, “Federal Financial Assistance for Crime Control,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology , 73:3 (Autumn 1982), 1001.
68.
Richard Sutch , “Criminal Justice Expenditures, by Level of Government: 1902-1996 in S. Carter, S.S. Gartner et al., Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition Online ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006 [http://husu/Cambridge.org]), Table Ec1159-1178.
69.
Fogelson, Big City Police , 220.
70.
Elliott Currie , “Crimes of Violence and Public Policy: Changing Directions,” in Curtis, American Violence, 44.
71.
Sutch, “Criminal Justice Expenditures.”
72.
Congressional Budget Office, “ Federal Law Enforcement Assistance: Alternative Approaches,” April 1978, xii. See also, Malcolm M. Feeley and Austin D. Surat, The Policy Dilemma: Federal Crime Policy and the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, 1968-1978 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980).
73.
Currie, “Crimes of Violence,” 45.
74.
“Estimated rates of crime known to police, by type of offense, 1960-1997,” Historical Statistics, Series Ec11-20.
75.
Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles ( Vintage: New York, 1992), 297-300.
76.
Davis, City of Quartz, 298.
77.
HayaEl Nasser and Jonathan T. Lovitt, “Frustration Makes Gang Truce More Tenuous,” USA Today, August 6, 1992, 9A.
78.
Op. cit.
79.
Gottlieb et al., The Next Los Angeles, 126.
80.
Gottlieb et al., Next Los Angeles, 126-27.
81.
Nasser and Lovitt, “Frustration.”
82.
Gottlieb et al., Next Los Angeles, 178-83.
83.
Don Terry , “Guardian America: Youth Power Hits the Streets,” The Guardian (London), October 28, 1993, 16.
84.
Paul Shepard , “Gang Peace Leaders Need Jackson's Pull, Most Say, Want Policy-Makers to Provide Job Training, Employment,” Plain Dealer (Cleveland), October 25, 1993, 5A. See also: Seth Mydans, “Gangs Go Public in New Fight For Respect,” New York Times , May 2, 1993. Section 1, 1; Peter Leyden, “Gang Chiefs End Summit,” Star Tribune ( Minneapolis), July 19, 1993, 1A; Don Terry, “Chicago Group, Extends Turf, Turns to Politics,” New York Times, October 25, 1993, Section A, 12; Dennis R. Roddy and Lamont Jones Junior, “Gang Summit: An Invitation to Hope or Disaster?” and “Gang Summit Opens Despite Cold Shoulder,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 6, 1994, A1 and May 27, 1994, A1.
85.
The Sentencing Project, “Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States” [http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/1046.pdf . Accessed November 16, 2006].
86.
For this point, as well as for directing me toward the impact of felony disenfranchisement, my thanks to Alice Goffman.
87.
Matthew J. Countryman, Up South : Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 328-30.
88.
Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 240-44.
89.
Suri, Power and Protest , 215.
90.
See the interesting article, Lisa Y. Sullivan, “The Demise of Black Civil Society: Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored Meets the Hip-Hop Generation,” Social Policy (Winter 1996 : 27, 2): 6-10.
91.
Two good brief overviews of immigration to France are: Emmanul Peignard, “ Immigration in France.” Embassy of France in the United States. July 2001 and Kimberly Hamilton and Patrick Simon, “The Challenge of French Diversity,” Migration Policy Institute , November 2004.
92.
P.J. Huffington , “The May Day Marches: Cities' Immigrants Spoke One Language This Time,” Los Angeles Times, May 2, 2006, Part A, 10; Anna Gorman, Marjorie Miller, and Michelle Landsberg , “The May Day Marches: Marchers Fill L.A. Streets,” Los Angeles Times, May 2, 2006, Part A, 1.
93.
Katznelson and Weir, Schooling for All.
94.
John R. Bowen, “France's Revolt. Can the Republic Live Up to Its Ideals?” http://bostonreview.net/BR31.1/bowen.html [published in the January/February 2006 , Boston Review]; James R. McDonald, “Labor Migration in France 1946-1965,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 59, 1:1996, 116-34.
95.
Mark Leon Goldberg, “Continental Drift”, The American Prospect, May 2006, 16.
96.
John Lichfield , “France toughens immigration controls after riots,” The Independent ( London), November 30, 2005. I am indebted to Cathy Schneider for this reference. See her important and chilling article, “ Police Power and Race Riots,” Politics and Society, vol. 35, no. 4 (December 2007), forthcoming.
97.
Among the large literature on the history of immigration policy, two recent outstanding books are Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Marie Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004).
98.
For a trenchant discussion of the issues surrounding multiculturalism, see David A. Hollinger , Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
99.
Victor Zuniga and Ruben Hernandez-Leon, eds., New Destinations: Mexican Immigrants in the United States (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005).
100.
Jean Louis Rallu , “Access to Citizenship and Integration of Immigrants: Lessons from the French Case,” paper presented at Australian Population Association, 12th Biennial Conference , September 15-17, 2004. Canberra, Australia.
101.
Tichenor, Dividing Lines, is especially sharp on the contradictory elements in the politics of immigration.
