ABSTRACT
Racial violence has a history as old as the nation itself. Limitations of space prevent the discussion of participation of all other special categories of people in racial violence. The most thoroughly documented material is that on characteristics of victims and offenders in the Detroit race riot of 1943, but there are journalistic and quasi-scholarly accounts of lynchings and of other urban racial disturbances. Violence is social when it is directed against an individual or his property solely or primarily because of his membership in a social category. Social violence internal to national states can result from disturbances of the status quo. Such disturbances may result from changing value systems, from rising levels of aspiration, from political alienation, or from changes actually generated outside of the polity. The goal of social control in a political democracy is to enhance the personal competence and personal control of the individual.
