ABSTRACT
The study of racial inequality has been a routine and ubiquitous part of the social scientific investigation of all aspects of life in American society for much of this century (e.g., Pettigrew 1980; Jaynes and Williams 1989). During the past half-century, guided most often by the principles of the conflict perspective, numerous researchers have examined the relationship between race and social control in the United States. They have noted the control and subordination of nonwhites by those of European ancestry and have shown that indices of crime and punishment are a direct reflection of such subordination. However, a review of the literature on social control reveals that in comparison to race, researchers have been relatively inattentive to concerns of ethnicity. For example, they have provided limited discussion of the social control of the nation’s white or nonwhite ethnics or of the extent to which interethnic differences exist.
