As
events in Ferguson continue to dominate public political attention, it’s
worthwhile to take a step back and take a long hard look at how we got
here. Why did the Democratic “Solid South” of old become such a
stronghold of Republican strength? Lyndon Johnson, one of the smartest
Southern politicians ever, had no doubt in his mind — “There goes the
South for a generation,” he reportedly said, after signing the Civil
Rights Act in 1964.
But the South was already halfway out the door
at the time. Missouri, with a fair amount of Southern culture in its
veins, is nonetheless a border state, home to Harry Truman, whose
,
which cost him a dramatic 20 percent drop in the share of the Southern
vote from where it had been in 1944. That launched a transitional era
that is strangely lost to most who ponder such things today.
This
lack of longer historical memory is part of what helps to support a
popular brand of revisionism that claims the South turned Republican
because the people there embraced “principled” “small-government”
conservatism. There are numerous problems with this explanation. First,
if that’s why the South changed, then why didn’t the shift happen
earlier? Second, if the change is explained by gradual economic
development (as some such as Real Clear Politics senior analysis
have argued), then why did Herbert Hoover do almost as well in 1928 as
Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952? And why did the Democratic share of the
Southern vote drop precipitously by 20 percent in 1948, as noted above,
the year the Democrats put a civil rights plank in their platform, and
the Dixiecrats walked out?
Third,
what exactly is meant by “small-government conservatism”? And how does
that square with the fact that Southern states almost universally get
far more money from the federal government than they send in by way of
taxes? And finally, how to explain the findings in a
2005 paper by Nicholas Valentino and David Sears,
which found that “whites residing in the old Confederacy continue to
display more racial antagonism and ideological conservatism than
non-Southern whites,” and that “Racial conservatism has become linked
more closely to presidential voting and party identification over time
in the white South”?
But there’s also another problem with the
“it’s-not-race-it’s-principled-small-government-conservatism”
explanation — namely that race and small government conservatism are
inextricably linked. This is not to say that all small government
conservatives are racists. But it is to say that racial attitudes and
attitudes toward robust government activism are strongly linked,
statistically; the more positive (or negative) your attitudes toward
activist government are, the more positive (or negative) your attitudes
toward blacks are likely to be, and vice versa as well. Negative racial
attitudes manifest both in terms of opposition to black political power,
and in blaming blacks for their subordinate status. If this sounds like
a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t sort of situation, you’re right.
That’s exactly what it is.
As I explained in a
recent article, the earliest statistical evidence of this relationship came from one of the classic studies of American public opinion:
The
year after the March on Washington, pioneer pollsters Lloyd Free and
Hadley Cantril conducted surveys that were the basis for their 1967
book, The Political Beliefs of Americans; a Study of Public Opinion. They found that those opposed to five forms of federal spending were three times as likely
as those who supported the spending to think that blacks should have
“less influence” in politics. Since blacks only had five representatives
of Congress at the time—just over 1%, compared to 11% of the
population—the notion that they had too much influence was ludicrous on
its face—and clearly racist. Yet, that’s precisely what 60% of those
‘small government conservatives’—people like Rand Paul and the Tea
Partiers—believed.
Free and Cantril used three
different measure of political orientation, one based on
self-identification, one based on ideology (laissez-faire,
individualist=“conservative”), and one operational, based on the degree
of support for social spending. This involved five questions, dealing
with federal aid to education, Medicare, the Federal housing program,
the urban renewal program, and the government’s responsibility to do
away with poverty. The “Ideological Spectrum” was based on agreement or
disagreement with the following statements:
- The federal government is interfering too much in state and local matters.
- The government has gone too far in regulating business and interfering with the free enterprise system.
- Social
problems here in this country could be solved more effectively if the
government would only keep its hands off and let people in local
communities handle their own problems in their own ways.
- Generally speaking, any able-bodied person who really wants to work in this country can find a job and earn a living.
- We should rely more on individual initiative and ability and not so much on governmental welfare programs.
Free
and Cantril found that while half of all respondents qualified as
ideological conservatives, two-thirds qualified as operational liberals,
a condition they referred to as “mildly schizoid, with people believing
in one set of principles abstractly while acting according to another
set of principles in their political behavior.” It’s not that everyone
held contradictory views, of course, but the contrast in dominant modes
was certainly a mass phenomenon, not just an individual quirk. More
precisely, almost a quarter of the respondents, 23 percent, were both
ideological conservatives and operational liberals. What’s more, this
percentage doubled in the handful of Deep South states that Goldwater
carried that year. This is a point well worth digesting: The vanguard
states in terms of realigning from Democrat to Republican were the ones
with a sharply higher number of people who were ideological “small
government” conservatives
in principle, but who supported
social spending in practice. It’s only natural that these are the sorts
of people whose views were likely to change dramatically based on the
situation, but who then turn around and explain themselves in terms of
unchanging “principles.” After all, this is what they were already
doing in 1964.
But that’s not the main point I want to make here.
Because so many ideological conservatives were operational liberals in
practice, it’s not a helpful way to look at who the true believers
really are. The true believers are the ones who actually opposed
government spending
in practice. They are the ones who didn’t
just say they supported conservative principles in the abstract; they
applied those principles to their spending priorities as well. Hence,
if you want to know who the principled conservatives really are, you
don’t look at the expression of principles in the ideological spectrum,
but at the support for social spending in the operational spectrum. And
this is where you see the sharp differences I described in the passage
quoted above: 60 percent of those who were completely operationally
conservative thought that blacks had too much political power in 1964,
compared to 20 percent of those who were completely operationally
liberal. It couldn’t be clearer: Small government conservatives are
much more opposed to black political power than those who support big
government.
But that’s just one piece of evidence from 50 years
ago. What if it’s just a relic of a bygone era? That’s certainly a
distinct possibility. Which is why I’ve also looked at decades of
polling data from the General Social Survey, which began collecting data
every year or two in 1973, and is cited by social scientists more often
than any other source, except for the U.S. Census. The data I’m about
to present is cumulative data, spanning decades, but the broad shape of
the data has not changed dramatically over the years, although there
have been nuanced changes. Instead of the five spending questions Free
and Cantril asked, I used a battery of seven items: Social Security,
welfare, “solving problems of big cities,” “improving nation’s
educational system,” “improving and protecting nation’s health,”
“improving the conditions of blacks,” and “improving and protecting
environment.” Two of these items can be expected to be directly
influenced by attitudes toward blacks — welfare and “improving the
conditions of blacks” — but since America’s welfare state does
disproportionately benefit blacks in some ways, it would be unrealistic
to exclude such questions. However, we’ll take a somewhat different look
later, below.
There is no single GSS question that’s comparable
to the question that Free and Cantril asked, but there are questions
related to blacks’ ability to live their lives as they wish, which is
arguably the most basic form of political power there is. Can blacks
live and go wherever they want to? Or do they need the permission of
whites? There are at least three GSS questions that bear directly on
this, and all tell a remarkably similar story: those who are less
willing to let blacks live as they want to are also much more likely to
be “small government conservatives,” while those who support black
autonomy are much more supportive of big government.
The first
question on this point (RacOpen) gave respondents the choice between two
laws, one saying that homeowners can’t discriminate on who they sell
to, the other saying that owners can decide, even if they do
discriminate. A second question (RacSeg) asked if white people have a
right to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods if they want to, and
blacks should respect that right. A third question (RacPush) asked if
folks agreed or disagreed with the statement that blacks “shouldn’t push
themselves where they’re not wanted.” All three questions revealed a
similar pattern: Those who valued white feelings over black autonomy
were roughly twice as likely to favor cutting social spending overall:
15.9 percent to 8.9 percent for RacOpen; 18.4 percent to 8.3 percent
for RacSeg; and 17.6 percent to 7.3 percent for RacPush. On the other
hand, those who value black autonomy and would outlaw discrimination are
about twice as likely to support increasing spending on six or seven
items: 16.5 percent to 8.1 percent for RacOpen; 15.9 percent to 9.0
percent for RacSeg; and 16.4 percent to 9.1 percent for RacPush.
There
was also one GSS question related to formal political power — but it
was of limited usefulness. Even fairly early on, people were extremely
reluctant to say they wouldn’t vote for a black president. Only around
10 percent would say that over the decades. So the samples are very
unevenly split. But the basic pattern remains the same: 21.5 percent of
those who wouldn’t vote for a black president are small government
conservatives who would cut social spending program, compared to 11.2
percent of those who say they would vote for a black president. Only
4.7 percent of those who wouldn’t vote for a black president would
increase social spending on six or seven items, compared to 13.3 percent
of those who say they would vote for a black president.
Attitudes
toward black political power are clearly an important component of
racial ideology in America. But perhaps even more basic is the view of
basic worthiness. Do blacks continue to be poorer than white Americans
because of external barriers holding them back, or because of their own
inner deficiencies? A two-factor attitude measure found that those
giving all internal answers — saying that blacks didn’t face
discrimination, but simply lacked the will to succeed — were much more
likely to be small government conservatives: 17.3 percent of them
supported decreasing government spending programs, compared to just 4.5
percent of those who gave all external explanations. In contrast, those
giving all internal explanations were far less likely (5.4 percent) to
support increased spending on six or seven items than those giving all
external explanations (22.4 percent).
Now, as I already noted, the
questions I used included two that were likely to directly reflect
attitudes toward blacks. But what would happen if those were replaced
with quite neutral spending questions — questions about spending on mass
transit, and “highways and bridges”? I won’t go through the whole
battery of questions this time; it’s enough to just look at the question
of whether internal or external factors are to blame for blacks’ lower
economic status. With this new battery of seven spending questions, 8.2
percent of those blaming blacks would reduce spending, compared to just
2.9 percent blaming external conditions, a smaller proportion for both,
but a relatively comparable ratio between them. There was more
significant convergence on the other end of the scale, but the
differences were still quite noticeable: 12.2 percent of those blaming
blacks would increase spending on six or seven items, compared to 18.5
percent of those blaming external conditions.
Taken all together,
this seems to clearly show that some of the opposition to government
spending is directly tied to spending that targets blacks, but that some
of it does not; it is simply correlated with negative assessments of
black worthiness. But how general is this finding?
I’m not
prepared to give a comprehensive answer, but I can give you a bit of a
surprise: When it comes to spending that would help combat the impacts
of global warming, attitudes toward black worthiness turn out to be
quite important. I created a three-item spending scale related to
global warming — one question we’ve already seen, “improving and
protecting environment,” one concerning spending on science, and one
specifically on developing alternative energy. For this three-item
scale, the differences are just as dramatic as for the first seven-item
scale. 17.5 percent of those who blame blacks would cut spending
overall, compared to just 5.8 percent of those who blame external
conditions. And 30.7 percent of those who blame external conditions
would increase spending on all three items, compared to just 16.3
percent of those who blame blacks. Thus, even when it comes to fighting
global warming, one’s attitudes toward blacks are a strong indicator of
how much of a “principled conservative” one is likely to be. Some
“principles,” eh?
All the evidence I’ve given so far comes from
comparing attitudes within the U.S. as a whole. But it turns out that
this sort of correlation is virtually universal in a way; people in
general are more willing to spend government money on people they
perceive to be more like them. Some striking data in this regard was
presented in a 2001 paper from the Brookings Institution, “
Why Doesn’t the United States Have a European-Style Welfare State?”
by Alesina, Alberto, Edward L. Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote (Brookings
Papers on Economic Activity 2, 2001: 187-277). The online introduction
explains:
European countries are much more generous to
the poor relative to the U.S. level of generosity. Economic models
suggest that redistribution is a function of the variance and skewness
of the pre–tax income distribution, the volatility of income (perhaps
because of trade shocks), the social costs of taxation and the expected
income mobility of the median voter. None of these factors appear to
explain the differences between the U.S. and Europe. Instead, the
differences appear to be the result of racial heterogeneity in the U.S.
and American political institutions. Racial animosity in the US makes
redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately black,
unappealing to many voters. American political institutions limited the
growth of a socialist party, and more generally limited the political
power of the poor.
The paper itself is a
sophisticated consideration of multiple factors and possible
explanations, but I want to just focus on two charts the authors
presented. Both involve comparisons between social spending and the
presence of racial minorities.
The first
is a country-level comparison comparing social spending as a percentage
of GDP with “racial fractionalization,” which the authors describe as
“the probability of randomly drawing out of the country’s population two
individuals that do not belong to the same racial group.” It showed a
visible correlation between a larger presence of racial minorities and a
lower level of social spending. The
second chart is a state-level comparison between the size of welfare benefits and the percent black. It shows a similar correlation.
In the years since this paper was published, a broader literature has appeared. A 2011 survey of that literature “
Ethnic Diversity, Public Spending, and Individual Support for the Welfare State”
concluded that the evidence was “mixed,” though “many studies do show
evidence of a negative association.” It also speculated that future
research would probably reveal that “the relationship is most likely
non-linear: ethnic diversity will matter most near a ‘tipping point’ at
which ethnic minorities are perceived as posing a political or economic
threat to the native majority.” It also needs to be stressed that
racial antipathy is just one factor to be considered. Just because one
empathizes more readily with those one sees as coming from a similar
racial or ethnic group does not necessarily mean one is hostile to other
groups. Generally speaking, the more genuinely self-confident and happy
people are with their place in the world, the more open they are to
welcoming others. So in-group identification and out-group hostility are
two related, but distinguishable phenomena. But the GSS questions
explored above should leave little doubt that racial antipathy is part
of the mix supporting the politics of “small government” “principled”
conservatism.
Let’s not forget a bit of history recounted by Taylor Branch
last year,
just before the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, which I
referred to in my earlier article mentioned above. As Branch recalls,
George Wallace led the way in disavowing racism, shifting hard to a
brand of “principled conservatism” that he pretty much invented as he
went along. He did this within months of the march, which so thoroughly
discredited his former segregationist stand:
By the
end of 1963, with segregation losing its stable respectability, he
[Wallace] dropped the word altogether from a fresh stump speech
denouncing “big government” by “pointy-headed bureaucrats,” tyrannical
judges, and “tax, tax, spend, spend” legislators. He spurned racial
discourse, calling it favoritism, and insisted with aplomb that he had
never denigrated any person or group in his fight for local control.
So,
there’s nothing new in the claim that “principled conservatism” has
nothing to do with race. If you want to be a true believer, it’s the
very first lie that you have to believe.
Clockwise,
from top left: Joy Behar, Alec Baldwin, Stephen Colbert, Maureen Dowd,
Jimmy Kimmel, Susan Sarandon, Ryan Seacrest, Bill Maher (Credit: Reuters/AP/Carlo Allegri/Mark Blinch/Alex Brandon/ABC News/Janet Van Ham/Jonathan Alcorn/Matt Sayles)
