Safe and sound? Exploring parents' perceptions of neighborhood safety at the nexus of race and socioeconomic status

Abstract

Racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps appear in early childhood, persist into adolescence, and undermine long-term well-being. Scholarship typically examines whether family socioeconomic inequality explains racial skills gaps; however, increasing research indicates that the academic returns to socioeconomic status (SES) differ for Black and White children and that the size of Black-White achievement gaps vary by SES, with the largest disparities evident among the highest-SES students. The processes underlying the development of within-SES racial gaps remain unclear, though growing evidence suggests that racial disparities in proximity to (dis)advantage shape family life in critical ways. In particular, Black-White differences in proximity to spatial (dis)advantage may have serious implications for young children's health and well-being. Yet, little research has directly explored how race and family economic status shape children's family and neighborhood contexts. This chapter presents a mixed-methods study that integrated semi-structured interview, neighborhood observation, and neighborhood crime data from a socioeconomically-diverse sample of Black and White families to explore how the interplay between race and family economic status shapes parents' perceptions of neighborhood safety. Findings revealed that race intersects with SES to produce complex patterns of inequality in community life and neighborhood conditions. Although economic disadvantage places limits on all parents, irrespective of race, dangerous conditions and stressors at the neighborhood level tended to be more pronounced and take a more pernicious form among low-income Black parents. Higher income granted parents escape from the most serious threats to their children's well-being, but the returns to increases in SES were not equivalent for middle-income Black and White families, and only among the most affluent families did race differences diminish considerably or disappear altogether.

Keywords: Academic achievement; Black-White achievement gap; Inequality; Intersectionality; Mixed-methods; Neighborhood.