nucleation

THEORY-1225: Among white Southerners today, those living in counties where a larger share of the 1860 population was enslaved are somewhat less Democratic, less supportive of affirmative action and more racially resentful, by about a tenth of a standard deviation per standard deviation of slave share, and colder toward black Americans, by about a third; the difference is not accounted for by the present black share of the population, and in voting it appeared after Reconstruction rather than before the war, which supports its origin in the incentives that emancipation gave planters to repress black labor and votes, and its local transmission thereafter

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Properties4
StatusProposed
Tagssociety-and-governance, social-science, causality
SourceLIT-1388 — The Political Legacy of American Slavery
ExtendsTHEORY-889 — In Acharya, Blackwell and Sen's analysis, white Southerners surveyed in 2006 to 2011 who live in counties where a larger share of the 1860 population was enslaved are, with state fixed effects and 1860 county controls, somewhat less Democratic, less supportive of affirmative action and more racially resentful, by about 0.09 to 0.13 standard deviations per standard deviation (about 20 points) of slave share, and in 1984 to 1998 survey data colder toward black Americans, by about 0.32; a cotton-suitability instrument gives larger estimates; the direct effect estimated with present black share held fixed is about as large; and in county presidential vote, which counts black voters until disenfranchisement, the difference appeared after Reconstruction rather than before the war

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Source

LIT-1388, read in full in NOTE-1089. What the source measured is THEORY-889, which this entry extends.

The claim

Acharya, Blackwell and Sen argue that slavery’s prevalence in 1860 caused present white Southern attitudes by way of its abolition: emancipation gave planters incentives to repress black labor and votes, which widened local attitude differences after Reconstruction, and families and local institutions passed them on.

What would settle it

The promote_when, carried word for word from THEORY-889 when that entry was narrowed. More readings of the same source cannot settle it.

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