Where Violence Dwells Summary

Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer David Zucchino's "Where Violence Dwells: The Place Factor In Philadelphia And Its Suburbs, The Homicide Rate Closely Parallels The Poverty Rate" argues that high rates of violence are not associated with race, but with the socio-economic conditions of a place.
Zucchion analyzes the data of the number of murders ''in 31 of 60 biggest Philadelphia suburbs in Pennsylvania," which all together do not have even a single murder, and "Philadelphia, a city of 1.5 million,'' with four hundred murders. Given this statistic, Zucchino notices that most of the crimes happened in the inner-city, where most of the population is black African-American. On the other hand, the suburbs are safer and they are populated by a white middle-class people.
Zucchino defends the arguments given by liberal sociologists, who believe that violence has nothing to do with intelligence or IQ (intelligence quotient) scores, but is about whether black African-Americans have easy
access to two major factors: jobs and education. He also claims with many sociologists that the isolation of black African-Americans in a certain area with higher population densities than suburbs, a minimum condition of living, and where poverty is at a high level pushes black African-Americans (even whites) to commit violent crime.
Zucchino believes that people who live in the suburbs, white or black middle-class, are less exposed to the problem of violence. Most of them have a permanent job, and those families have a high-income household compared to the families downtown (with an income household below the low level of poverty). Another reason is in the suburbs there is a strong community between populations willing to assist each other.
Zucchino claims and explains how the separation of people according to race and class has created a violent society. In those areas concentrated poverty affected families after many manufacturing industries closed down, leaving thousands without a job. Many families broke down as they couldn't keep up with the daily expenses, which also has a huge effect on the future of their children (most black African-American couldn't send their children to the school due to their economic situation).
Zucchino states, "Less than one-tenth of 1 percent of black males commit 45 percent of American's violent crimes." High murder rank is obviously the result of gathering all black African-American people in a specific zone (like a reservation camp of the native Americans) where they live in a poor condition. The two factors of segregation and poverty push the black African-American homicide rate to the top record. It is definitely below the average in the white population who live in the suburbs, with a perfect condition to raise their family and children (low unemployment and poverty rates). However, he claims that even middle-class black African-Americans who live in the suburbs are victims of segregation, especially when it comes to buying a house in a majority white neighborhood.
Zucchino states that even white immigrants experienced a high violence rate during the period of World War One.
Nevertheless, with many manufacturing jobs available, they became less violent, built a neighborhood with a good behavior and values, and insured a better future for their children. Zucchino believes that immigrants can integrate in the new American life, and even be less violent than American-born residents. He explains the reason for the violent behavior of immigrants during the 1930s, which has to do with segregation and discrimination, as a major cause of pushing them to commit crimes. He also declares that the presidential crime commission's report ''The Problem of Crime and the Foreign Born'' came up with a perfect effect of isolating and limiting opportunity of success to the people ''the vast majority of those who come are honest and mean well, but economic pressure often drives them from a fair degree of comfort to beggary, and it is but a step from beggary to
crime.''