Organized Racism and the Stranger

To attract members and adherents, contemporary racist organizations construct interpretive frames that address a wide variety of social issues and problems. We draw on Simmel's insights on the social position of “the stranger,” arguing that racist framing should have greater resonance in communities with a large non-White population that is not fully integrated into the community. We examine county-level variation in the presence or absence of an active racist group in 2001. Results show that the combination of a large non-White population and White isolation from non-Whites provides a favorable context for racist activism.