CANAC Working Group Meeting

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Title: "The Emergence of Crack Cocaine, the Nature of Violence, and Enduring Effects on Population Flight"

Abstract: Research shows that violence traps disadvantaged minorities in high-crime areas and induces white flight. This study builds on this line of research and examines the effects of the crack epidemic in the mid-1980s on population flight. The crack epidemic plays a role in shaping the racial landscape by exposing blacks to an unprecedented amount of violence, altering the nature of violence, and stereotyping of blacks. Did the epidemic trap blacks in crack-affected cities and induce white flight? Alternatively, did it induce black flight to the suburbs? The study uses decennial U.S. Census data from 1970 to 2010 and exploits both spatial and temporal variation in the emergence of crack cocaine across metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The results indicate that the emergence of crack cocaine increased black, but not white, suburbanization. Moreover, black flight is pronounced among middle-class blacks but not among working-class blacks. The study then finds that black lethal violence that involves a great level of uncertainty---violence associated with guns, strangers, and robberies---have positive effects on black flight. Lastly, crack emergence has enduring effects. MSAs that experienced the crack epidemic two decades ago have greater black suburbanization today than MSAs that did not experience it. The study suggests implications of the long-consequences of drug epidemics, race-specific exposure to different types of violence, and residential inequality between whites and blacks as well as within blacks.

Bio: Takuma Kamada is a doctoral student at the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Penn State. His research examines causes and consequences of illegal markets with a special focus on race and inequality. Other works of his have examined the effects of medical marijuana laws on Mexican drug trafficking organizations, third-party policing on the Yakuza, and ethno-racial and skin color inequality in illegal markets.