This proposal is to examine and compare sources of contem- porary racial unrest in the United States and in South Africa. The proposed research builds on previous research supported by NSF and expands the ecological perspective by (1) considering how the timing and goals of state actions regarding desegregation policies intensify racial competition and conflict, (2) establishing a comparative context within which new applications of event-history methods will be applied to the best available data on racial conflicts in the United States and South Africa, and (3) giving substantial attention to violent events initiated by dominant groups: white citizens, the police, and other agents of the state apparatuses in the two countries. The key argument is that initial deviation from complete segregation sparks intense racial unrest. This argument is tested using data on desegregation and racial conflict in cities in the United States during 1960-1990 and in cities in South Africa during 1970-1984. Data on the occurrence and timing of racial events have been coded from newspaper accounts that provide continuous coverage of events in the United States and South Africa. The proposed project uses event-history methods to analyze parallel models of racial conflict in the two countries. Such models use information on the exact timing and duration of events so that effects of changes in racial policies and racial segregation during this period can be examined directly.
