Male Role Models, and African-American

¶ … Male Role Models, and African-American Juvenile Violence, Karen F. Parker and Amy Reckdenwald build upon current research regarding African-Americans, especially those in urban situations, to find that traditional male roll models decrease at-risk African-American youth's probability of becoming involved in juvenile violence. Drawing primarily upon the work of Elijah Anderson -- Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner-City, Parker and Reckdenwald were motivated to conduct the test in order to test the "generality of Anderson's claims more broadly and explore the potential connection between his work and the macrolevel research on urban violence" (711). Thus, the purpose of this study was not only to test the applicability of Anderson's theory, but also to determine how black, male role models affect the "concentration of urban disadvantage" and the likely hood to become involved in violence among juveniles in the inner city. Thus, the author's research question can be summarized by the following statement: Are Anderson's findings that the presence of male role models decreases violence among African-American juveniles applicable to a general host of inner-city youth?

Parker and Reckdenwald begin to answer this question with a review of literature that does not simply contain Anderson. Instead, the literature review discusses poverty concentration and urban poverty, racism and racial segregation, and social structures that maintained the cycle of disadvantage among African-Americans (713). Beyond the literature review, the authors go on to define what a role model is, concluding with Anderson's assessment of families in two categories, as "street" and "decent," and that a role model is an African-American male with such characteristics as "employment, community responsibility, and responsibilities as fathers and husbands" (715-716). Expounding on further research and accepting this definition, the authors go on to construct their study, which occurred in United States cities with a population over 100,000 in 2000. The study used a sample method to collect data from a variety of cities, using the Uniform Crime Report, the 2000 Census of Population and Housing, and the Census of State and Federal Adult Correction Facilities for sources (717). In this study, the dependent variable was African-American juvenile arrests "for murder, rape, robber, and aggravated assaults," which are commonly known as violent crimes (717). The independent variables, on the other hand, include "poverty," "interracial income inequality," "single parent homes," and "racial residential segregation" (718). In addition, the authors measured male role models in three different ways, controlling for marriage and job status, or simply calculating the total population of those over 15 (718). The control variables include a percentage of the population who was Hispanic, a differentiation between the southern urban areas and other urban areas, and "residential mobility" (718).