Maya Sen: Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics

Date: 

Monday, February 26, 2018, 12:15pm to 1:30pm

Location: 

Land Hall (Belfer 400)

Maya Sen, Associate Professor, Harvard Kennedy School.

Maya SenPolitical scientist Maya Sen will present research from her forthcoming book, Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politicsco-authored with Avidit Acharya (Stanford University) and Matthew Blackwell (Harvard University), forthcoming from Princeton University Press, May 2018.

▶ Read chapter 1


Abstract

Deep RootsThe lasting effects of slavery on contemporary political attitudes in the American South

Despite dramatic social transformations in the United States during the last 150 years, the South has remained staunchly conservative. Southerners are more likely to support Republican candidates, gun rights, and the death penalty, and southern whites harbor higher levels of racial resentment than whites in other parts of the country. Why haven't these sentiments evolved or changed? Deep Roots shows that the entrenched political and racial views of contemporary white southerners are a direct consequence of the region's slaveholding history, which continues to shape economic, political, and social spheres. Today, southern whites who live in areas once reliant on slavery—compared to areas that were not—are more racially hostile and less amenable to policies that could promote black progress. 

Highlighting the connection between historical institutions and contemporary political attitudes, the authors explore the period following the Civil War when elite whites in former bastions of slavery had political and economic incentives to encourage the development of anti-black laws and practices. Deep Roots shows that these forces created a local political culture steeped in racial prejudice, and that these viewpoints have been passed down over generations, from parents to children and via communities, through a process called behavioral path dependence. While legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act made huge strides in increasing economic opportunity and reducing educational disparities, southern slavery has had a profound, lasting, and self-reinforcing influence on regional and national politics that can still be felt today.

A groundbreaking look at the ways institutions of the past continue to sway attitudes of the present, Deep Roots demonstrates how social beliefs persist long after the formal policies that created those beliefs have been eradicated.

Avidit Acharya is assistant professor of political science at Stanford University. Matthew Blackwell is assistant professor of government at Harvard University. Maya Sen is associate professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. 


About the speaker

Maya Sen is a  political scientist and an Associate Professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Her research interests include statistical methods, law, political economy, and race and ethnic politics.

Sen writes on issues involving the political economy of race relations, the American legal system, and law and politics. Her research has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, and the Journal of Legal Studies, and has been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Economist, National Public Radio, and other outlets.

Sen received her PhD in 2012 from the Harvard Department of Government and her AM degree in 2011 from the Harvard Department of Statistics. She also holds a JD from Stanford Law School and an AB degree in Economics from Harvard College.

At Harvard, she is an affiliate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government.

Learn more about Maya Sen's work
scholar.harvard.edu/msen

 

See also: Spring 2018