In Deep Roots (2018), Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen offer an impressive, extensive, and extremely rigorous empirical analysis of the effects of high- and low-slave counties on the socioeconomic status and political psychology of white Americans. They consider how these effects are manifested, for example, in partisan votes within the Democratic Party (and for presidential and gubernatorial candidates) over time and through whites’ (non-) support of affirmative action or their subscription to racial resentment, as indicators of antiblack animus. Using “high-slave” and “low-slave” counties, as defined by the geographic concentration of enslaved African-descendant Americans in the US South (whose population is documented in the 1860 US Census), the authors use geography (via the “county”) as their primary unit of analysis, thereby linking political psychology to space and, most importantly, to history.
Through a theory of behavioral path dependence—norms, attitudes, and beliefs transmitted over time—the authors analyze how white Southerners’ attitudes are produced, replicated, and transferred across generations through “mechanisms of reproduction,” such as intergenerational socialization (via parents, family, social mores, and racial etiquette) and institutional reinforcement (via schools; larger policy systems like Black Codes, Jim Crow, and amended Southern state constitutions; and changed economic interests and the need for black labor). Often scholars of race and politics examine the significance of “race, space, and place” in the analysis of intergroup interactions. Deep Roots acknowledges and tests empirically the relationships of these several factors with white attitudes in high- and low-slave counties by analyzing the nuances of seemingly remote data sources (e.g., farm mechanization data in 1930 and 1940). The empirical evidence mostly bears out the effects of slavery, with greater effects occurring most often among whites who have historical roots in high–slave-concentrated counties.
Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen argue that critical junctures, such Reconstruction (1865–77), introduced changes in the economy and divergent interests among whites, which set in motion the path-dependent process of antiblack attitudes, the sociopolitical enforcement of white supremacy, and the oppression of African descendants of formerly enslaved people. Thus, Deep Roots more directly links a longer lineage of black–white relations to slavery as an institution than did V. O. Key’s (Reference Key1949) proposition that whites’ propinquity to blacks created a “racial threat” and induced harsh Jim Crow conditions.
The book is a very important, necessary, and timely contribution to the discourses surrounding race and US political development. Deep Roots is also significant for contemporary discussions about the effect of slavery on US history and the current (socioeconomic) statuses of black and white Americans. The data analyses reflect comparative gaps between these two groups, with black Americans often disparaged for their poverty, especially in former high-slave counties.
In addition, Deep Roots is well-situated in contemporary politics, as the US political party system has become increasingly racially polarized, especially since the 1964 presidential election and the passage of the Civil Rights Act. As a result, today’s Democratic presidential candidates have become increasingly reliant on blacks (especially, black women) as a reliable base of the party, with several of their platforms appearing to acknowledge the significance of incorporating the history of black Americans into their policies. The notion of “repair” through embracing a history often excluded from the larger narrative of the United States helps redress romanticized myths of a “better and empowered” South, one in which slavery “benefited” whites and purportedly even “benefited” enslaved Africans. Deep Roots shows how slavery actually affects both groups, although disparately. Unfortunately, this proposition about slavery’s effect on society writ large remains contested in broader political discourse and within the halls of power.
Deep Roots demonstrates how various and unconventional data sources can be used to conduct numerous tests to show the relationship between slavery and contemporary Southern white political and racial attitudes. This is where the book makes its mark. The authors show that slavery affected societal structures not only during its periodization but also far into the future, creating unforeseen human interactions in society in an era of purported social and political equality between blacks and whites. Perhaps this is an even larger point: there are more facets to inequality than we have previously accounted for. As a result, slavery has lasting effects on human interactions that can inhibit cross-racial bargaining and even future equality, because race and racial difference were themselves constructed within the mores of slavery (Omi and Winant Reference Omi and Winant1994). Jurisprudence also codified and legalized the inequality that slavery had created (Crenshaw et al. Reference Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller and Thomas1990).
Of course, the link between America’s history of slavery and white Americans’ racial attitudes today is not surprising. Such a link between slavery (and Jim Crow) and racial attitudes among blacks has been well established by African American public opinion researchers, and W. E. B. Du Bois’s approach in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) discusses the dualities of black identity and American identity, based on the experiences and vestiges of this history. The conceptual meanings of this linkage continue to be developed and parsed rigorously in contemporary studies by scholars of African American psychology and politics, who have been researching this issue for a considerable time (Brown and Lesane-Brown Reference Brown and Lesane-Brown2006; Dawson Reference Dawson1994; Demo and Hughes Reference Demo and Hughes1990; McClain et al. Reference McClain, Johnson Carew, Walton and Watts2009; Nunnally Reference Nunnally2010a; Tate 1993).
Through the examination of racial identity and racial consciousness, these researchers have explored the effects of historic discrimination (including slavery and Jim Crow) on contemporary black public opinion and political behavior. For example, when asked whether knowledge about the history of black Americans affects how one interacts with various racial groups, blacks in short order report most often that it affects their interactions with whites (Nunnally Reference Nunnally2012). And, when asked about whether they learned about the historic effects of racial discrimination on black life, an overwhelming number of blacks across age cohorts indicate such racial socialization (Nunnally Reference Nunnally2010b, Reference Nunnally2012). Slavery was part and parcel of black Americans’ lives for centuries (and almost a century for Jim Crow). These systems defined their personhood and rights, shaping both their attitudes and activism about contesting their oppression. With this said, why would we not expect a similar pattern for white Southerners, who also lived in these systems, but under different circumstances meant to establish white supremacy?
Does the rigor of empirical examination in Deep Roots about the effect of slavery on Southern whites, thus, lead to counterintuitive conclusions? No. Does it add a needed quantitative empirical perspective to a story about race that otherwise seemingly dismisses the effect that slavery had on whites’ racial attitudes? Certainly. Of course, other forms of qualitative empirical data (e.g., oral histories, archives, legislative records) can draw equally important linkages between slavery and today. Deep Roots, thus, provides additional data analyses and, thereby, spawns important and, arguably, ground-breaking inquiries about what we presume to know about racial attitudes in the United States. It rightly implies that slavery was a system based on white Southerners’ commitment to white supremacy and the denigration of African descendants, one perpetuated through psychological and sociolegal reinforcement whose effects endure. As such, the book also points us to another important query: Where do we go from here?
