The Racial Makeup of Assault
The Perth Amboy Evening News does not place a huge emphasis on the races of victims or offenders, at least in regards to Assault. Of the forty cases within this project only five allude to the races of the victims or offenders. Of these five cases, three provide readers with the specific race or ethnicity of the offender or victim. The remaining two cases only inform readers that the offender or victim is “colored”. In regards to the races of offenders and victims, of the cases in which the race or ethnicity is provided there is one Japanese offender, two “colored” offenders, and one black offender. In regards to victims, there is one “colored” victim, one white victim, and one Spanish victim. In the instance of this specific newspaper, it is hard to compare it to the literature provided, as there is not a large enough sample size to either back up or go against what the historical literature states in regards to assault and race.
It’s important not to assume, therefore one cannot determine exactly what the papers mean by “colored” in their language. Therefore when drawing comparisons to the historical texts it’s hard to verify Graves’s claim that at least half of assault perpetrators were black men (Donna Graves, “‘We’ll Fight It Out Fair Right Now’: Homicide, Felony Assault, and Gender in Kansas City, Kansas, 1890-1920,” Kansas History, 26, 1 (2003): 34. Furthermore, there is also a lack of known immigrants present within the case distribution, opposed to Graves’s claim that immigrants make up some distribution of the assaults committed in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Below is an article featuring the use of the word "colored" to describe the offenders.
