Southern culture and homicide: Examining the cracker culture/black rednecks thesis
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2010
Abstract
Recent scholarship traces the roots of southern violence to the Scots-Irish, who brought a relatively violent "cracker culture" with them to the United States in the eighteenth century. The tolerance for violence inherent in cracker culture was believed to be transmitted throughout the south to other whites and was maintained, in part, through evangelical Christian doctrine. Moreover, Thomas Sowell (2005) recently argued that some southern blacks were also influenced by "cracker culture," leading to the emergence of a "black redneck" phenomenon influencing homicide among blacks. Using county-level data circa 2000, this study empirically evaluates the merit of the cracker culture/black redneck thesis. Negative binomial regression analyses for a full sample of counties suggest that a measure of southern cracker/black redneck culture is an important factor affecting contemporary rates of argument homicide among both whites and blacks. When counties are divided into south and non-south sub-samples, the results are also consistent: a cracker/black redneck culture effect is evident for both racial groups in the south, and is also apparent outside of the southern region. We interpret these latter findings as possible support for the thesis that southern cracker/black redneck culture has been transported through migration to non-southern localities. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Publication Source (Journal or Book title)
Deviant Behavior
First Page
60
Last Page
96
Recommended Citation
Lee, M., Thomas, S., & Ousey, G. (2010). Southern culture and homicide: Examining the cracker culture/black rednecks thesis. Deviant Behavior, 31 (1), 60-96. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639620902854761