The Legacy of Black Lynching and Contemporary Segregation in the South |
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Authors: | Robert DeFina Lance Hannon |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Sociology, Villanova University, SAC #272, 800 Lancaster Ave., Villanova, PA 19085, USA |
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Abstract: | Wacquant (2001) and others have argued that social control efforts directed at racial and ethnic minorities frequently shift
institutional form and become more nuanced as societies modernize, even as the underlying function persists. This study examines
the connection between southern lynching and housing segregation. We argue that legal, political, social and demographic changes
in the south made lynching dysfunctional as a means of control. Among other more nuanced control mechanisms, modern housing
segregation helped serve as a replacement. We test this proposition by relating historical southern black lynching rates to
recent levels of segregation in southern MSAs. We find that an MSA’s historical lynching rate is positively and significantly
linked to the MSA’s current segregation levels after accounting for standard determinants of segregation. Thus, segregation
does not just occur generally throughout the south, but follows a very particular pattern based on past lynching rates. Our
findings add to a growing literature on the legacy of lynching, such as studies examining contemporaneous variation in support
for and use of capital punishment. |
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