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central force in black-Latino relations (Alozie and Ramirez 1999; Falcon 1988; Johnson and
Oliver 1989; Oliver and Johnson 1984; Kaufmann 2003a; Mindiola, Niemann, and Rodriguez
2002; Mohl 2003; Vaca 2004; but see McClain and Karnig 1990; McClain 1993; McClain and
Tauber 1998, 2001). Idealized notions of “natural” inter-group comity and mutual support
collapse when confronted by a finite number of public and (low-skilled) private sector jobs; by
the lack of educational resources to meet the needs of black children and Spanish-speaking
Latino children; by a shortage of adequate and affordable housing; and by the desire among both
groups for descriptive political representation on neighborhood councils, school boards, and in
municipal government. Antagonism toward Latinos is believed to emerge, at least in part, from
African Americans’ fears of displacement or loss due to the advancement of an out-group
competitor. The fear, as one African American described it, is that Latinos are “taking the food
from black children” (quoted in Vaca 2003, 5).
This conceptualization of black-Latino conflict—that is, as being conditional on blacks’
fears of material deprivation—prompts the question of what factors can amplify or neutralize
these fears of displacement. In addition to a variety of individual-level correlates, researchers
have sought to link the environment in which blacks live to their levels of anxiety about and
hostility toward other minority groups (Bobo and Hutchings 1996; Bobo and Johnson 2000;
Cain, Citrin, and Wong 2000; Cummings and Lambert 1997; Oliver and Wong 2003; Sears et al.
1999). To date, the primary emphasis has been on the racial composition of the environment,
with fears of black displacement purported to increase with the size of the Latino population in
the area. To the extent that residential integration is viewed by blacks as a significant threat to
their material well-being, some speculate that the growing diversity of cities and neighborhoods
will lead inevitably to greater conflict between blacks and Latinos.
Convention