Because of the high crime rates in minority communities and the disproportionate number of minorities who are processed by the criminal justice system, criminologists must consider race and crime from minority perspective. Unfortunately, social science researchers rely on measuring the immediate world as the basic source of truth and often ignore the thoughts and experiences of the people in a community. Research into forces such as unemployment or racial violence which cause human suffering requires a conceptual framework that is compatible with the minority viewpoint and a methodology for obtaining knowledge of human beings. This approach begins by examining structures which determine the quality of life in society, including occupation, income, housing, education, race, laws, and the political system. Race and class cannot be separated, but must be viewed within the context of capitalist expansion and accumulation. Then cultural determinants of behavior should be analyzed and linked to structures. This exemplified in William Whyte's classic study of Chicago gangs in the 1930's, which focused on interactions between the individual and the group. Finally, the minority perspective does not call for psychological studies, but emphasizes the construction of a biography to describe an individual's unique living situation. The crisis in criminology is that contemporary research is contributing to established racially discriminatory criminal justice policies which assume that the individual can control structures and cultures. To illustrate the need for a minority perspective in addressing conflicts that inevitably arise in criminal justice, a police report on a fatal shooting of black woman by two Los Angeles policemen is presented. This incident escalated from a disagreement over payment of a gas bill, and the officers' decision to shoot can only be understood in the cultural context of racial hatred. The article contains 40 footnotes. (Author abstract modified)