The 2022 Project
The Side Effects of Immunity: Malaria and African Slavery in the United States
Elena Esposito
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper documents the role of malaria in the diffusion of African slavery in the United States. The novel empirical evidence reveals that the introduction of malaria triggered a demand for malaria-resistant labor, which led to a massive expansion of African enslaved workers in the more malaria-infested areas. Further results document that, among African slaves, more malaria-resistant individuals, i.e. those born in the most malaria-ridden regions of Africa, commanded significantly higher prices.
The Other Great Migration: Southern Whites and the New Right
Samuel Bazzi et al.
NBER Working Paper, November 2021
Abstract:
This paper provides a novel perspective on the Great Migration out of the U.S. South. Using a shift-share identification strategy, we show how millions of Southern white migrants transformed the cultural and political landscape across America. Counties with a larger Southern white share by 1940 exhibited growing support for right-wing politics throughout the 20th century and beyond. Racial animus, religious conservatism, and localist attitudes among the Southern white diaspora hastened partisan realignment as the Republican Party found fresh support for the Southern strategy outside the South. Their congressional representatives were more likely to oppose politically liberal legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and to object to the Electoral College count in 2021. These migrants helped shape institutions that reinforced racial inequity and exclusion, they shared ideology through religious organizations and popular media, and they transmitted an array of cultural norms to non-Southern populations. Together, our findings suggest that Southern white migrants may have forever changed the trajectory of American politics.
Prejudicial reactions to the removal of Native American mascots
Tyler Jimenez, Jamie Arndt & Peter Helm
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
As Native American mascots are discontinued, research is needed to understand the impact on intergroup relations. Such discontinuations may be threatening to some and increase prejudice against Native Americans. In Study 1 (N = 389), exposure to information about a Native American mascot removal increased punitive judgments against a Native American in a hypothetical legal scenario, particularly among those high in racial colorblindness and those residing in the implicated geographical location. Study 2 (N = 358,644) conceptually replicated and extended these findings, using population-level implicit bias data to perform a natural quasi-experiment. Prejudice against Native Americans increased in the year following the removal of two Native American mascots: "Chief Illiniwek" and "Chief Wahoo." However, in the case of Chief Illiniwek, the effect diminished after 6 years. Together, the studies contribute to understanding the psychological impact of Native American mascots, offering a first look at how their removal influence intergroup relations.
Historical Lynchings and the Contemporary Voting Behavior of Blacks
Jhacova Williams
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the extent to which the political participation of blacks can be traced to historical lynchings that took place from 1882 to 1930. Using county-level voter registration data, I show that blacks who reside in southern counties that experienced a relatively higher number of historical lynchings have lower voter registration rates today. This relationship holds after accounting for a variety of historical and contemporary characteristics of counties. There exists evidence of the persistence of cultural voting norms among blacks yet this relationship does not exist for whites.
Race and Economic Well-Being in the United States
Jean-Felix Brouillette, Charles Jones & Peter Klenow
NBER Working Paper, December 2021
Abstract:
We construct a measure of consumption-equivalent welfare for Black and White Americans. Our statistic incorporates life expectancy, consumption, leisure, and inequality, with mortality rates playing a key role quantitatively. According to our estimates, welfare for Black Americans was 43% of that for White Americans in 1984 and rose to 60% by 2019. Going back further in time (albeit with more limited data), the gap was even larger, with Black welfare equal to just 28% of White welfare in 1940. On the one hand, there has been remarkable progress for Black Americans: the level of their consumption-equivalent welfare increased by a factor of 28 between 1940 and 2019, when aggregate consumption per person rose a more modest 5-fold. On the other hand, despite this remarkable progress, the welfare gap in 2019 remains disconcertingly large. Mortality from COVID-19 has temporarily reversed a decade of progress, lowering Black welfare by 17% while reducing White welfare by 10%.
Whose Vote Counts for Crime Policy? Group Opinion and Public Representation in Mass Incarceration, 1970-2015
Scott Duxbury
Public Opinion Quarterly, Fall 2021, Pages 780-807
Abstract:
Policy responsiveness to public opinion is necessary for democratic governance, yet research on crime policy responsiveness has focused on the public at large, overlooking variation in policy support among demographic bodies and its heterogeneous effects on policy implementation. Creating new state-level measures of group opinion on punitive policy mood using 257,356 responses to 79 national surveys administered between 1970 and 2015, this study examines the effect of race, age, and gender-specific opinion on the incarceration rate. Consistent with prior studies, results reveal parallel trends in punitive policy support, with punitiveness increasing in tandem across demographic subgroups. Statistical findings from error correction models, however, reveal that not all groups had equal influence. Only the opinions of the most punitive groups - whites, men, and 30-44-year-olds - influenced the incarceration rate. Further, the largest divide in policy responsiveness to group opinion was between blacks and whites. In fact, estimates suggest that if whites' punitive policy support had not risen, the current incarceration rate would be roughly the same as if violent crime had not risen during the 45 years of mass incarceration. The implications of these results are discussed for research on policy responsiveness, partisan politics, and for the "democracy at work" hypothesis of mass incarceration.
The 1982 Voting Rights Act Extension as a "Critical Juncture": Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, and Republican Party-Building
Richard Johnson
Studies in American Political Development, October 2021, Pages 223-238
Abstract:
Republican support for the 1982 Voting Rights Act (VRA) extension is a puzzle for scholars of racial policy coalitions. The extension contained provisions that were manifestly antithetical to core principles of the "color-blind" policy alliance said to dominate the GOP. Recent scholarship has explained this puzzling decision by arguing that conservatives were confident that the VRA's most objectionable provisions could be undone by the federal bureaucracy and judiciary, while absolving Republicans of the blame of being against voting rights. This article suggests that the picture is more complicated. Applying the concept of "critical junctures" to the 1982 VRA extension, the article highlights the importance of actors' contingent decisions and reveals a wider range of choices available to political entrepreneurs than has been conventionally understood. Highlighting differing views within the Reagan administration, this article also identifies a wider range of reasons why Republicans supported the act's extension, including career ambition, party-building, policy agenda advancement, and genuine commitment, rather than simply a defensive stance as implied by recent histories.
"Every Dollar Brought from the Earth": Money, Slavery, and Southern Gold Mining
Ann Marsh Daly
Journal of the Early Republic, Winter 2021, Pages 553-585
Abstract:
This essay explores the material origins of gold coinage to argue that enslaved gold miners built the metallic foundations of America's financial system. It traces two concurrent changes in the production and use of the nation's first domestically mined specie from the 1830s to the 1850s. During America's first gold rush in the late 1820s and early 1830s, white mine owners transported thousands of enslaved miners to goldfields in northern Georgia and western North Carolina. As mines grew, the industry shifted away from the undifferentiated workforces of the early gold rush and came to rely on enslaved women who were experts in the technically-complex work of refining gold. As the means of mining shifted, so did the kind of money that gold became. In the early 1830s, the Second Bank of the United States sought southern gold, which it used to back paper money. In the midst of the Bank War, hard money advocates and Democratic partisans came believe that coins made from Southern gold held the key to a safer and more stable currency system. As a result, the federal government provided economic and technical support to the slave-labor dependent mining industry in the name of monetary reform. Using gold mine owners' account books and correspondence, the records of the US Mint, Congressional debates, newspapers, geological reports and scientific treatises, this article underscores the links between the material production of coin and abstract capital, demonstrating that the antebellum period's political debates and financial institutions all revolved around acquiring and controlling gold made by enslaved men and women.