Rooted in History: Examining the Causes of Racial Discrimination in America

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Rooted in History: Examining the Causes of Racial Discrimination in America

Advanced Social Psychology · Chapter 6: Gender, Race, and Reducing PrejudiceSection 6.5 · lesson 37 of 8511 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Why a disparity measured today needs a century of policy to explain it.

  • Trace the roots from slavery through Jim Crow to the present
  • Explain how mid-century policy shaped the racial wealth gap
  • Apply group conflict theory and social dominance theory
  • Weigh individual-difference against structural explanations

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Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,422 words). Read along, or search it.

Gender, Race, and Reducing Prejudice

Rooted in History

You cannot explain a wealth gap measured this year with attitudes measured this year. That is the argument of this section, and it is a methodological one. Contemporary disparities are accumulated, not instantaneous. So we will trace the accumulation, in five phases. From chattel slavery, through Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Through the mid-century policies that built the modern wealth gap. And through the civil rights era and what came after it. Then we return to theory, with three frameworks for why hierarchy persists. The conclusion is that neither structure nor personality alone is sufficient. And that an argument using only one of them is a familiar bad argument.

The Method

Why Historical Depth Is Not Optional

Advanced study of racial discrimination requires historical depth. Here is why, stated as a claim about evidence. Contemporary patterns of disparity are not free-standing snapshots. Disparities in wealth, health, residence, and incarceration. They are accumulated effects of policies and practices stretching back centuries. So an adequate social psychology of race has to do two things at once. It integrates individual-level processes. Prejudice, stereotype, and implicit bias. With structural analysis of how racial categories were created and maintained. Created, weaponized, and maintained over time. This section focuses on the United States for a specific reason. It offers a particularly well-documented case. The analytical strategy applies to other societies with their own racial histories.

The Arc

Five Phases, One Accumulation

The arc runs in five phases, and each one leaves residue for the next. Chattel slavery, running until eighteen sixty-five. Reconstruction, which was brief and then reversed. Jim Crow, from the eighteen nineties through the nineteen sixties. Mid-century policy, which is the least visible and possibly the most consequential. And the period from nineteen sixty-four onward. Watch for the pattern as we go through these. The disparity is cumulative rather than episodic. Each phase does not simply replace the last one. It builds on what the last one left behind.

Slavery

The Ideological Apparatus Outlived the Institution

Chattel slavery defined the legal and economic position of people of African descent. In the American colonies, and in the early United States. For more than two centuries. Sustaining an institution like that required something in addition to force. It required an intricate ideological apparatus. An apparatus to justify the dehumanization of enslaved people. That apparatus included pseudoscientific theories of racial inferiority. Theories built to serve an economic institution. And here is the part that matters for a psychology course. Those theories long outlived emancipation. The institution ended in eighteen sixty-five. The ideas built to defend it did not. Note the direction of causation carefully. The racial ideology did not cause the institution. It was manufactured to justify it, and then persisted as an independent object.

Reconstruction

Progress, Then Reversal

The abolition of slavery in eighteen sixty-five was followed by Reconstruction. A brief period, and a genuinely transformative one. Formerly enslaved people gained political rights. And made substantial educational and political progress. Then it was stopped. Reconstruction was violently dismantled by the late eighteen seventies. And replaced by the Jim Crow regime of legal segregation across the South. This is the first instance of the section's central lesson. Gains in this domain are not self-sustaining. They are maintained, eroded, or reversed by what comes after them. We will see the same pattern again, roughly a century later.

Jim Crow

Law, Violence, and Movement

From the eighteen nineties through the nineteen sixties, Jim Crow laws governed the South. They imposed racial segregation in schools and transportation. And in housing, and in public accommodations. Enforcement came from two directions at once. State action, and extralegal racial violence. That violence includes a documented wave of more than four thousand lynchings. Of Black Americans, between eighteen seventy-seven and nineteen fifty. The Equal Justice Initiative documented that figure in twenty seventeen. The Great Migration was, in significant part, a response to this regime. Six million African Americans left the rural South. For northern and western cities, between nineteen sixteen and nineteen seventy. But the North was not an exit from the system. Northern cities reproduced racial segregation by other means. Restrictive covenants. Discriminatory mortgage lending. And racial violence at neighborhood boundaries.

Redlining

Denying Credit at Exactly the Wrong Moment

Now the mid-century policies, which are less visible and more consequential. Redlining is the first and best known. It was the practice of classifying neighborhoods as poor investment risks. Black and integrated neighborhoods, specifically. Practiced by the federally sponsored Home Owners' Loan Corporation. And later by private lenders. Now the timing, because the timing is the whole mechanism. It systematically denied mortgage credit to Black households. During exactly the decades in which suburban homeownership built generational wealth. Generational wealth for white households, that is. Exclusion from an asset boom is not something you recover from later. The effect is not a one-time loss. It is a removed compounding period, which is a different and worse thing. This is why the wealth gap far exceeds the income gap.

Two More Policies

The New Deal and the GI Bill

Two more policies did comparable work. The New Deal social-insurance programs excluded certain occupations. Specifically, occupations in which Black workers were concentrated. Agricultural labor, and domestic labor. That is a neutral-looking occupational rule with a racial effect. The post-war GI Bill worked differently, and arrived at the same place. It distributed housing and education subsidies through institutions and localities. Institutions that were free to exclude Black veterans. The federal money was equal. The distribution was not. Katznelson described the resulting benefits regime in two thousand five. He called it affirmative action for white Americans. And the cumulative claim is careful about attribution. These policies, together with their incomplete reversal, account for much of the gap. Neither the policies nor the incomplete reversal alone is the explanation.

After 1964

Gains Are Not Self-Sustaining

The Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty-four was a historic gain. So was the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty-five. Together they dismantled the legal infrastructure of Jim Crow. Subsequent decades complicate the story considerably. The most significant development is mass incarceration. The United States prison population grew roughly fivefold. Between nineteen seventy and twenty ten. With disproportionate impact on Black Americans. Michelle Alexander analyzed this in twenty ten, as The New Jim Crow. And in twenty thirteen, Shelby County versus Holder was decided. That decision weakened federal pre-clearance of voting changes. So the advanced lesson repeats what Reconstruction already taught. Civil-rights gains are not self-sustaining. They are maintained, eroded, or reversed by subsequent policy and political contest.

Two Frameworks

Competition and Hierarchy

Now the theoretical frameworks for why racial hierarchy persists. The first is realistic group conflict theory. From Sherif in nineteen sixty-six, and LeVine and Campbell in nineteen seventy-two. Prejudice intensifies under zero-sum competition. For material resources, jobs, housing, or political power. And the historical point is that those conditions were repeatedly manufactured. Manufactured along racial lines, by the policies we have just covered. The second framework is social dominance theory. Sidanius and Pratto set it out in nineteen ninety-nine. Human societies organize themselves into group-based hierarchies. Maintained by legitimizing myths, which are ideologies that justify inequality. And individuals differ in social dominance orientation. Their preference for group-based hierarchy. Here is the finding that makes that measure indispensable. High SDO predicts opposition to redistributive and integrative policies. And it does so independently of explicit prejudice.

Threat And Personality

The Individual-Difference Layer

Stephan and Stephan's integrated threat theory returns here, from section five point two. It distinguishes four types of perceived threat. Realistic threats to material resources, political power, or physical safety. Symbolic threats to values, beliefs, and worldview. Intergroup anxiety, arising from uncertain interaction. And negative stereotypes, which prime threat. It belongs in this section for a specific reason. It predicts when intergroup contact will reduce versus inflame prejudice. Which is exactly what section six point six develops. Then there is the personality line, which runs back to Allport in nineteen fifty-four. Building on Adorno and colleagues, from nineteen fifty. Altemeyer refined it in nineteen eighty-one, into right-wing authoritarianism. Submission to established authority. Aggression toward sanctioned outgroups. And adherence to conventional norms. Contemporary work treats RWA and SDO as the principal individual-difference predictors.

Consolidate

Neither Level Alone Will Do

So how do the levels fit together? The current position treats personality measures as complementary. Complementary to structural and historical explanations. Not as substitutes for them. And the advanced position is best stated as a constraint on argument. The persistence of racial discrimination cannot be reduced to individual personality. But neither can it be analyzed without it. Both clauses are required. Drop the first and you get a story about a few bad individuals. Drop the second and you get a structure with nobody in it. Five terms to carry forward. Jim Crow, and redlining, which are the historical anchors. Realistic group conflict theory, and social dominance orientation. And integrated threat theory, which takes us into the next section.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Rooted in History: Examining the Causes of Racial Discrimination in America

What was redlining and how did it affect wealth?
Redlining was the practice of rating Black and racially mixed neighborhoods as poor investment risks, which cut their residents off from mortgage credit. The federally sponsored Home Owners' Loan Corporation mapped neighborhoods this way in the 1930s, and private lenders followed similar practices. Because it excluded Black households during the decades when suburban homeownership built generational wealth for White families, its effects compounded over time, helping explain why the racial wealth gap far exceeds the income gap.
How did the GI Bill and New Deal programs affect Black Americans?
Both tended to exclude Black Americans from benefits that built economic security. Early New Deal social-insurance programs such as Social Security left out agricultural and domestic workers, occupations in which Black workers were concentrated. The post-war GI Bill distributed housing and education benefits through local institutions that were free to exclude Black veterans. Historian Ira Katznelson described this pattern in his 2005 book When Affirmative Action Was White.
What was the Great Migration?
The Great Migration was the movement of about six million African Americans from the rural South to cities in the North and West between roughly 1916 and 1970. It was in large part a response to Jim Crow segregation and racial violence, including more than 4,000 documented lynchings of Black Americans between 1877 and 1950. Northern cities, however, reproduced segregation through restrictive covenants, discriminatory mortgage lending, and violence at neighborhood boundaries.
Are civil rights gains permanent?
Not necessarily; history shows civil rights gains can be maintained, eroded, or reversed by later policy and political conflict. Reconstruction expanded political rights for formerly enslaved people after 1865, but it was violently dismantled by the late 1870s and replaced by Jim Crow. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 dismantled legal segregation, yet mass incarceration grew afterward, and Shelby County v. Holder (2013) weakened federal preclearance of voting changes.

About the Advanced Social Psychology course

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Advanced Social Psychology (Psychology 310) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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