Historical Associations
Black Empowerment and White Mobilization: The Effects of the Voting Rights Act
Andrea Bernini et al.
NBER Working Paper, July 2023
Abstract:
The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) paved the road to Black empowerment. How did southern whites respond? Leveraging newly digitized data on county-level voter registration rates by race between 1956 and 1980, and exploiting pre-determined variation in exposure to the federal intervention, we document that the VRA increases both Black and white political participation. Consistent with the VRA triggering counter-mobilization, the surge in white registrations is concentrated where Black political empowerment is more tangible and salient due to the election of African Americans in county commissions. Additional analysis suggests that the VRA has long-lasting negative effects on whites' racial attitudes.
Preferences over the Racial Composition of Neighborhoods: Estimates and Implications
Morris Davis, Jesse Gregory & Daniel Hartley
Federal Reserve Working Paper, June 2023
Abstract:
We estimate the parameters of a dynamic, forward-looking neighborhood choice model in 197 metro areas where households have preferences over the racial composition of neighborhoods. Our inclusion of multiple metro areas in the estimation sample enables us to develop a new, shift-share IV strategy to estimate the impact of the racial composition of neighborhoods on location choice that relies only on across-metro comparisons of similarly situated neighborhoods. For the “shift,” we use national data to determine the probabilities different types of households live in different neighborhoods in a metro when neighborhoods are ranked only by within-metro income quantiles. The “shares” are the metro-level population shares of each household type. Thus, the instrument predicts variation in neighborhood-level racial shares, which for a given within-metro income quantile is attributable exclusively to variation in metro-level type shares. The overall IV estimate is a weighted average of the contribution from all of the income quantiles. We use the tools of Goldsmith-Pinkham, Sorkin, and Swift (2020) to analyze the comparisons that are weighted most heavily for identification and to derive appropriate balance tests. Our key finding is that many households have very strong preferences to live in same-race neighborhoods. These preferences are so strong that the current demographic composition of neighborhoods is not stable.
Causal Effects, Migration, and Legacy Studies
Moritz Marbach
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political scientists have long been interested in the persistent effects of history on contemporary behavior and attitudes. To estimate legacy effects, studies often compare people living in places that were historically exposed to some event and those that were not. Using principal stratification, we provide a formal framework to analyze how migration limits our ability to learn about the persistent effects of history from observed differences between historically exposed and unexposed places. We state the necessary assumptions about movement behavior to causally identify legacy effects. We highlight that these assumptions are strong; therefore, we recommend that legacy studies circumvent bias by collecting data on people's place of residence at the exposure time. Reexamining a study on the persistent effects of U.S. civil rights protests, we show that observed attitudinal differences between residents and nonresidents of historic protest sites are more likely due to migration rather than attitudinal change.
Household Mobility, Networks, and Gentrification of Minority Neighborhoods in the US
Fernando Ferreira, Jeanna Kenney & Benjamin Smith
NBER Working Paper, July 2023
Abstract:
We study how recent gentrification shocks impact Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, including where minority households move to after a shock and if the subsequent spatial distribution of households within a labor market area affects segregation. We first report that household moves from a given neighborhood are concentrated to a few destinations. For minority neighborhoods, destinations tend to have similar minority shares but are farther away from downtown. Those mobility patterns are partially explained by neighborhood networks. We then use Bartik-style labor market income shocks to show that gentrification has many effects. In Black neighborhoods, gentrification increases house prices and reduces the share of Black households while increasing the share of White households. For movers from Black neighborhoods, gentrification increases the share of movers going to top 1 and 2 destinations based on neighborhood networks and increases the share of households moving out of the MSA, but does not change the pattern of households moving to neighborhoods with similar Black shares that are farther away from downtown areas. Hispanic neighborhoods have negligible effects from gentrification. Finally, our model reveals that overall labor market area segregation decreases after a gentrification shock because highly Black neighborhoods become less segregated.
The Great Migration and Implicit Bias in the Northern United States
Heidi Vuletich, Nicolas Sommet & Keith Payne
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The spatial patterning of present-day racial bias in Southern states is predicted by the prevalence of slavery in 1860 and the structural inequalities that followed. Here we extend the investigation of the historical roots of implicit bias to areas outside the South by tracing the Great Migration of Black southerners to Northern and Western states. We found that the proportion of Black residents in each county (N = 1,981 counties) during the years of the Great Migration (1900–1950) was significantly associated with greater implicit bias among White residents today. The association was statistically explained by measures of structural inequalities. Results parallel the pattern seen in Southern states but reflect population changes that occurred decades later as cities reacted to larger Black populations. These findings suggest that implicit biases reflect structural inequalities and the historical conditions that produced them.
The genetic legacy of African Americans from Catoctin Furnace
Éadaoin Harney et al.
Science, 4 August 2023
Abstract:
Few African Americans have been able to trace family lineages back to ancestors who died before the 1870 United States Census, the first in which all Black people were listed by name. We analyzed 27 individuals from Maryland’s Catoctin Furnace African American Cemetery (1774–1850), identifying 41,799 genetic relatives among consenting research participants in 23andMe, Inc.’s genetic database. One of the highest concentrations of close relatives is in Maryland, suggesting that descendants of the Catoctin individuals remain in the area. We find that many of the Catoctin individuals derived African ancestry from the Wolof or Kongo groups and European ancestry from Great Britain and Ireland. This study demonstrates the power of joint analysis of historical DNA and large datasets generated through direct-to-consumer ancestry testing.
“Unlawful Intimacy”: Mixed-Race Families, Miscegenation Law, and the Legal Culture of Progressive Era Mississippi
Kathryn Schumaker
Law and History Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines the enforcement of anti-miscegenation law in Progressive Era Mississippi by focusing on a series of unlawful cohabitation prosecutions of interracial couples in Natchez. It situates efforts to police and punish mixed-race families within the broader legal culture of Jim Crow, as politicians, judges, and district attorneys sought stricter enforcement of morals laws, including those barring interracial cohabitation. This article argues that the historic prerogative of white men to choose their sexual and domestic partners undermined the illegality of interracial marriage. Lynching deterred Black men from cohabiting with white women, but prosecutions for “unlawful cohabitation” did not effectively punish white men and Black women who formed lasting partnerships. This article relies on extensive research in local court records that reveal that prosecutions of white men and Black women often resulted in fines and, in many cases, had little effect on these mixed-race families. In Natchez and elsewhere, eugenic ideologies of “white racial purity” were no match for a patriarchal legal culture that gave white men leeway to ignore the law when it suited them, even amid outward denunciations of miscegenation. In Mississippi, many white men did not view relationships between white men and Black women as a clear threat to white supremacy, creating space for some interracial families to survive into the twentieth century.