Inequality Seminar - "You Can't Live Free"
The Inequality Seminar is a seminar and speaker series that provides a forum on campus for faculty and graduate students who are interested in inequality broadly defined. It is an opportunity for faculty and graduate students to present their research and to hear about other inequality-related work from researchers on and off-campus. This week's topic is “You can't live free”: African Americans’ Strategies for Managing Underpolicing and High Crime Rates in Detroit.
Over the past several decades Detroit, MI has come to epitomize post-industrial decline and in 2013 it became the largest city in U.S. history to file for municipal bankruptcy. The decline has led to the collapse of the public infrastructure, and respondents often have limited access to taken for granted public serves such as functioning public schools, policing, and emergency medical services. Drawing upon 70 in-depth interviews with African Americans living in Detroit, I explore how residents deal specifically with limited police protection and high crime rates. I demonstrate that respondents must combat daily threats to personal safety with limited public resources that are often taken-for-granted in other cities. These threats exist regardless of gender, socioeconomic status, occupation, or neighborhood of residence. As a result, for the respondents in this study, developing strategies to manage high crime rates is a significant part of daily life. Specifically, I find that respondents have developed protective strategies that are designed to shield themselves and their family members from crime and violence. Protective strategies range from developing daily routines that are designed to avoid situations and people that are perceived to be unsafe to carrying weapons. Findings a part of a larger study of the experiences of African Americans in Detroit.
Jessica Welburn is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at The University of Iowa. Her research interests include race and ethnicity, social mobility, urban inequality, cultural sociology and qualitative research methods. Her work has focused on the experiences of African Americans in the post-Civil Rights era, including how they conceptualize their social mobility prospects and their strategies for navigating persistent racism and discrimination.
The Inequality Seminar meets Thursdays from 12:00-1:30 p.m., in W113 Seashore Hall. The schedule of talks can be found here.
If you have any questions about the Inequality Seminar, please contact Sarah Bruch at sarah-bruch@uiowa.edu.