Race in the Eye of the Beholder

Guest Blog by Aliya Saperstein*

 A person’s race is as fixed as the color of his or her skin or the shape of his or her eyes – or so it seems. In fact, across American history, from the era of “octoroons” and “quadroons” and the days when the courts debated whether “Hindus” were white to recent arguments over what race or races Barack Obama should have checked on his census form, racial categories have not been so fixed. New research by our guest blogger (here, here, and here) shows that even a particular person’s race can shift from one time to another. What race we think someone is in part reflects the popular stereotypes we have about race and social difference.

Americans tend to think of race as a fixed characteristic defined by descent. During the early 20^th century the “one-drop rule” crystallized legal segregation. Anyone with any known African ancestry was to be classified and treated simply as black. The rule applied even to people who appeared to be white, such as Walter White, a prominent early member of the NAACP.

Taking the Census, 1870

The very fact that the United States tried so hard to impose such sharp distinctions suggests that race was not so much a biological or genetic characteristic but a socially constructed one. If racial differences were “natural,” how could the same person be considered blanca (white) in Brazil, or perhaps mestiza in Mexico, but black in the United States? How could the same person be described by the Census as “White” in 1910, “Hindu” in 1930, “Other” in 1960, and “Asian Indian” from 1980 on?

Nevertheless, most Americans still think a person’s race is fairly obvious and unchanging; we know it the minute we meet him or her. Similarly, most academic research also treats race as fixed and foreordained. A person’s race comes first and then his or her experiences, education, job, neighborhood, income, and well-being follow. My research with Andrew Penner on how survey respondents were classified by race over the course of their lives, calls into question this seemingly obvious “fact.”

Getting Smarter

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“Human nature” appears to be one of the few constants in a world of rapid social change. We assume that an American transported from, say, 1900 would have pretty much the same character, instincts, impulses, and mind as an American today. But on at least one important dimension of human nature, there is considerable evidence of major and rapid change in the last century: cognitive skills. In a recent column for the Boston Review — linked here – I expand an earlier blog post on how people seem to have been getting “smarter” over recent generations.

Suicide Boom?

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Charles Fischer [no relation to your blogger] arrived in New York City in 1890. A well-educated clerk from Stuttgart, Germany, he struggled in America, failing in real estate, in the saloon business, and finally in china plate decorating. He divorced and lost touch with his only child. Fischer wrote his mother, “I cannot stand this much longer. If I don’t get work within two weeks I will have to go out on the street and work as a laborer.” At 10:00 pm on a Saturday evening in 1896, he entered his small rented room on East 3rd Street, sealed up every crack, and turned on the gas without lighting it.[1]

Fischer’s suicide puts into historical context news reports from this past week of a “startling” (to quote the PBS Newshour) rise in suicides among the middle-aged over the last ten years. (Actually, it’s not such new news; essentially the same story was reported three years ago.) Fischer’s case illustrates that suicides often come in waves – his was one of many committed by immigrants in late 19th-century American cities. It also illustrates the role of technology – gas became a common tool of suicide. And it illustrates the importance of financial strains – he took his life in the middle of the Panic of 1896. The 21st-century suicide spurt has an additional twist, however: Boomers.

Tweedledee-Tweedledum Nostalgia

Back in the day – roughly the third quarter of the 20th century – observers of American politics debated the wisdom of what seemed to be a Tweedledee-Tweedledum party system. Some thought it was pretty good. In the 1960s, political scientist Robert E. Lane hailed an emerging “politics of consensus in an age of affluence.” Government by agreement and expertise would replace divisive, ideological politics.[1] Famed political columnist James Reston explicitly endorsed Tweedledee-Tweedledum parties that disputed only the details of the emerging welfare state. He counseled Republicans that their best route to success was “not by moving to the right and exaggerating the differences” with the Democrats, but by showing that they “can administer [liberal policies] more efficiently.”[2]

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Others thought the similarity in positions was terrible for democracy. Conservatives demanded A Choice, Not an Echo. Leftists bemoaned a “choice of a tweedledee as against a tweedledum” and liberals’ timidity to go to a third party. [3] In 1950, the American Political Science Association complained (pdf) that the parties’ differences were too poorly defined against one another and that they were insufficiently cohesive. Beware of what you ask for.

As is well-known, the political positions of the two parties have divided sharply since those days. This animation

[3] shows visually how members of the House separated out on a left-right dimension from roughly 1950 to 2000. Most of the shift has been due to the GOP moving right, exactly opposite to James Reston’s recommendation. Early analyses of this ideological polarization stressed that it seemed to be exclusive to politicians and the politically active, that average Americans were not drawn into this ideological fight. Recent work suggests that, while average Americans have still not gotten more ideological, they have become more tightly loyal to their parties as the parties have become more distinct. Party identification has almost become almost tribal. (See this earlier post.) Three new studies underline the power of party loyalty.

Sexual License, Sexual Limits

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One clear social change of the last half-century is Americans’ increasing support of sexual freedom. It is all around us: magazines at the check-out counter blaring advice about orgasms, easy-access pornography on the web and soft-core pornography on cable, hooking-up culture on tv programs, and nonchalance about couples “living together” before (or after) marriage (see this earlier post).

Sexual restraints loosened over much of the twentieth century, but the great release, so to speak, occurred in the late 1960s. As I noted in a post three years ago, the hinge of change seemed to between the time that Diana Ross and the Supremes’ hit song “Love Child” made the charts in 1968 – “My father left, he never even married mom / I shared the guilt my mama knew / So afraid that others knew I had no name” – and 1975, when First Lady Betty Ford described the possibilities of her daughter having a premarital affair as “perfectly normal.”

The rise in the proportion of Americans who had such “normal” premarital affairs slowed down in the 1980s. Similarly, the public’s growing acceptance of premarital sex slowed down. [1] Still, Americans’ approval of sexual liberation across a variety of fronts continued even after the late ‘60s hinge. For many observers, it just shows how hedonistic and morally unstrung our society has become. But there is an interesting pattern to changing public views on sex that suggests a more complex story.

Markets, Prices, and Justice

In February, 1917, thousands of women stormed the streets in the poorer parts of Brooklyn, New York, overturning pushcarts and setting them on fire. It took police hours to restore order. [1] The women were protesting rapid increases in the prices of food staples and decried the injustice of hungry children. Congress was soon in debate. One senator warned that the disorders showed that “the country is dividing into two great classes–the very poor and the very rich.” [2] In fact, the U.S. had had many earlier commodity riots, going back to the founding of the nation; it was a frequent response to market pressures.[3]

Pushcarts in New York (Source)

In 1779, Philadelphia artisans mobilized to demand that merchants’ prices on “necessaries” be restrained. A free market was dividing the city into rich and poor, they charged, and they wanted “a just and regulated price.” The merchants association replied that “the limitations of prices is … unjust … by compelling a person to accept less in exchange for his goods than he could otherwise obtain, and therefore acts as a tax upon one part of the community only.” Moreover, they argued, allowing the market to dictate prices meant less hoarding and more efficient distribution of necessities. [4] The debate about price justice continued in Philadelphia that year (more below), but it largely ended in America over a century ago – the housewives’ riot of 1917 notwithstanding. The merchants won.

Immigration and Political Clout

Salt Lake Tribune

Two hot-button social issues seem to be moving to some sort of political resolution rather quickly. Their stories tell us something about the nature of attitudes Americans hold on such topics and also about the nature of American politics. One issue is gay marriage. It appears that, whether de jure or de facto, most gays will be able to marry or to “marry” relatively soon. This outcome seems to be driven in great measure by strong shifts in public opinion. According to the General Social Survey, the percentage of American adults agreeing that “homosexual couples should have the right to marry” rose from 11percent in 1988 to 49 percent in 2012, a strikingly rapid shift in public opinion.  Although young people and more liberal Americans are leading the cultural shift, this rush to accept gay couples is evident virtually across the board. (A recent Pew study shows the same.) Politicians are now tripping over one another to declare that they have “evolved” on this issue.

The other issue concerns undocumented immigrants. Most Washington observers are saying, as of this moment, that some reform is likely to come to fruition this spring. This political development, however, does not seem to be riding on a rushing wave of popular support.