Psychology of Race & Ethnicity
History of Race and Race Relations in the U.S.
The New “Racial” World
• 1607 Jamestown founded in Virginia (1st permanent European settlement)
• Conditions in colonies very difficult, relations with local Indians strained
• John Smith captured by Chief Powhatan’s half brother
• 1607 Pocahontas (originally Matoaka) “saves” Smith
• 1614 John Rolfe marries Pocahontas (“Rebecca”)
temporary improving of relations with Indians
• 1619 Twenty African “servants” purchased from Dutch
• 1675 Indians raid Mathews plantation to recover debt
• 1676 war declared on all hostile Indians
A 1616 engraving of Pocahontas by Simon van de Passe, the only portrait of Pocahontas
made within her lifetime. The inscription around the picture translates as "Matoaka, also
known as 'Rebecca', daughter of the most powerful prince of the Powhatan Empire of
Virginia". The inscription under the portrait means "at the age of 21 in the year 1616".
The “Pilgrims” of Plymouth Colony
 Disembarked from Mayflower Dec
21, 1620 in area previously explored
by Captain John Smith
 John Carver, 1st Governor. William
Bradford takes over in 1621
 Food scarce, disease rampant. Half
of the colony died in first winter.
 Beneficiaries of a plague (probably
smallpox) that wiped out 90% of
Indian population
"The Landing of the Pilgrims."(1877) by Henry A. Bacon.
 Tisquantum (Squanto) and Samoset
 Formed peaceful relations with local
Indians, especially the Wampanoag
Tribe (Chief Massasoit)
 King Philip’s War: 1675-1676
King Philip, by
Paul Revere
(1772)
Optional Thanksgiving Slides
Common myths about the Plymouth Colony
see http://www.psych.uiuc.edu/~lyubansk/race/thanks.htm
 Myth 1: The Mayflower was filled by Puritans, who wanted to purify
the church of England and who were seeking religious freedom.
 Myth 2a: The Pilgrims discovered unoccupied wilderness, which
with hard work, they cleared and settled
Myth 2b (this one is more recent): The Pilgrims stole the land for
their Colony from the Indians, and mistreated them
 Myth 3: The "first" Thanksgiving in 1621 was the first such
celebration
 Myth 4: The first Thanksgiving was called "Thanksgiving"
 Myth 5: The Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving every year.
 Myth 6 : The Mayflower passengers always wore black and white
clothes, without any color, and had big buckles.
(see last optional slide)
Thanksgiving: Two historical accounts

William Bradford, in Of Plymouth Plantation:
“They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their house and
dwelling against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all
things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were
exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store,
of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now
began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound
when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl
there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc.
Besides, they had about a peck of meal a week to a person, or now since harvest,
Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their
plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned by true reports.”

Edward Winslow, in Mourt's Relation:
“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might
after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor.
They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the
company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our
arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king
Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted,
and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and
bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not
always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are
so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.
History of Thanksgiving

1789: President Washington proclaims a National Thanksgiving in honor of military
victory and the adoption of the Constitution.

1863: President Lincoln proclaims a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on
the final Thursday in November 1863:
“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of
fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed
that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been
added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and
soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of
Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which
has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression,
peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have
been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the
theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the
advancing armies and navies of the Union.…It has seemed to me fit and proper that
they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart
and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in
every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are
sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November
next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in
the Heavens.
Buckle down, Americans
End of optional section
Slavery
 Atlantic slave trade started in early to mid 1500s
 By 1670s, slavery was a legal, racially-based
institution throughout much of the New World


Enslaving indigenous people failed
All slaves were Black
 Was not primarily a U.S. institution (animation)

12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World
(20,528 voyages)

10.7 million survived the Middle Passage
(15% mortality rate)
Correction from lecture

Portugal, England, Spain, France, the Netherlands,
Denmark, and Sweden, Brazil, and the Caribbean
islands all participated in the slave trade

Only 388,000 shipped directly to North America

Some scholars estimate another 60-70,000 ended up
in U.S. after touching down in the Caribbean
Note: Data taken from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Database
Slave ship from Thomas Clarkson's
1786 "Essay on the Slavery and
Commerce of Human Species
Slavery (cont.)
 Slavery legal in all colonies until the revolution
 After revolution, some states wrote
constitutions that eliminated slavery
 U.S. Constitution (1787) originally limited
Federal government from interfering with
slavery or slave trade
 Conditions of slavery
 Chattel slavery different
 Conditions differed according to master’s whims
 A considerable investment: $1000 translates to
a current value of $38,000/slave
 Slave trade prohibited in U.S. in 1808 (film
clip)
 Emancipation Proclamation 1863 (4 mil. freed)
 Slavery in U.S. abolished in 1865
Baton Rouge, La., 2 April, 1863: "Overseer Artayou
Carrier whipped me. I was two months in bed sore
from the whipping. My master come after I was
whipped; he discharged the overseer.” The words
of Peter, taken as he sat for his picture.
Dred Scott Case (1857)


Scott, a slave owned by Emerson, sued
owner’s family for battery and wrongful
imprisonment in the territory of Missouri.

Lower Missouri court rules for Scott

Missouri Supreme Court overturns
Two questions for the U.S. Supreme Court:
1.
2.
Does it have jurisdiction?
If “yes” was earlier judgment in error?
Dred Scott Decision (1857)

Regarding jurisdiction:

The drafters of the Constitution had viewed all AfricanAmericans as "beings of an inferior order, and altogether
unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or
political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights
which the white man was bound to respect."
(Chief Justice Taney)

"It would give to persons of the negro race, ... the right to
enter every other State whenever they pleased, ... the full
liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects
upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public
meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms
wherever they went."
(Chief Justice Taney)
Dred Scott Decision (1857)

Regarding the dispute, the court ruled that Scott was
not a free man on the grounds that:

The Fifth Amendment barred any law that would deprive a
slaveholder of his property (i.e., his slaves) upon entering a
territory
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise
infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand
Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the
Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor
shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in
jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case
to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be
taken for public use, without just compensation.” (5th Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution)

Territorial legislatures had no power to bar slavery.
Dred Scott impact
 Impact of 7-2 ruling profound

Taney thought it would end the “slavery” question once and for all

Actually created more opposition in North, gave rise to new Republicans
“Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we
may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring
that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude
slavery from its limits. [...] We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the
people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall
awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a
slave State.”
(Abraham Lincoln, 1857)
“Mr. Lincoln goes for a warfare upon the Supreme Court of the United
States, because of their judicial decision in the Dred Scott case. I yield
obedience to the decisions in that court—to the final determination of the
highest judicial tribunal known to our constitution.”
(Stephen Douglas, 1857)
The American Civil War (1861-1865)
 Abraham Lincoln campaigned in 1860 against the expansion of
slavery beyond states where it already existed.
 Seven Southern States declared their secession
before Lincoln took office in March, 1861
 Emancipation Proclamation 1862/1863

Freed all slaves in every state of the Confederacy

Did not free slaves in border states (Kentucky,
Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia)

Represented a shift in the war objectives of the
North (reuniting nation no longer only goal)

Had little immediate impact

Represented a major step toward ultimate
abolition of slavery (4 mil. Eventually freed)
 Slavery officially abolished in 1865 (13th ammendment)
After the Civil War…
Question for U.S. Society: What do we do with Blacks?
Six different alternatives (used at different times/places)
• Create a legal system of equity to replace slavery
• Maintain racial hierarchy (Black codes)
• Create “Equal” Segregation (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896)
• Raise up the downtrodden (White men’s burden)
• Keep them or move them out (eugenics, restrictive immigration, 1913-1965)
• Assimilate into the mainstream (Brown v. Board of Ed., 1954)
• Pluralism and Multiculturalism
Legal Equity
 13th Amendment (1865):
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof
the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any
place subject to their jurisdiction.
 Many other new “rights”



hold office
attend school
New Orleans, a model of integration.
 desegregated its streetcars in 1867
 began experimenting with integrated public schools in 1869
 legalized interracial marriage between 1868 and 1896
 elected a total of 32 black state senators and 95 state
representatives, and had integrated juries, public boards, and police
departments
A racial hierarchy in the South
To dissuade congressional
action, suffrage opponents
organized a popular referendum
among the city's white voters in
December 1865. Nearly 7,000
ballots were cast against black
voting rights, with only 35 in
favor.
This Harper's Weekly cartoon,
originally published February 24,
1866, depicts the racial
prejudice that underlay the
rejection of black manhood
suffrage in Washington, D. C.
Legal Equity (cont.)
14th Amendment (1868):
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein
they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
15th Amendment (1870):
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.
A racial hierarchy in the South
 Southern states forced by Martial Law to ratify 13th amendment (and
14th) to be part of Union
 During “Reconstruction” Federal Gov. protects civil rights
 Civil Rights Act of 1875
 Reconstruction ends in 1877, civil rights deconstruction begins
 "Black Codes"






placed taxes on nonagricultural professions
restricted ability of blacks to rent land or own guns
allowed children of "unfit" parents to be apprenticed to the old
slave masters
Illegalized inter-racial marriage
Legislated institutional segregation
Ku Klux Klan forms (in 1866) to protect white women and white
property
“Equal” segregation: Plessy v. Ferguson
(1896)
 The facts:
Homer Plessy (30-year-old shoemaker) jailed for sitting
in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad.
Plessy was only one-eighths black and seven-eighths
white, but considered Black under Louisiana law
 Question before court:
Is Louisiana's law mandating racial segregation on its
trains an unconstitutional infringement on both the
privileges and immunities and the equal protection
clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?
Plessy v. Ferguson Decision (1896)
"That [the Separate Car Act] does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which
abolished slavery...is too clear for argument...A statute which implies merely a legal
distinction between the white and colored races -- a distinction which is founded in the
color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are
distinguished from the other race by color -- has no tendency to destroy the legal
equality of the two races...The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly
to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of
things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to
enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two
races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.” (Justice Henry Brown, for the majority)
"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.
In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law...In my opinion, the
judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision
made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case...The present decision, it may well be
apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon
the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by
means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficient purposes which the people of the
United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the
Constitution. (Justice John Harlan, lone dissenter)
The “Liberal” Response: White Man’s Burden
Take up the White Man's burden —
Send forth the best ye breed —
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild —
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
(Stanzas omitted…)
Take up the White Man's burden-The savage wars of peace-Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
(Rudyard Kipling, 1899)
link to entire poem
The “Liberal” Response: White Man’s Burden
http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/schooli
ng_the_world_2010/
link to entire poem
A more progressive (but less mainstream voice of the time:
Mark Twain (on Imperialism)
“I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific ...Why
not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? ... I said to
myself, Here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We
can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and
country of their own, put a miniature of the American Constitution
afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place
among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to
which we had addressed ourselves. But I have thought some more,
since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris [which ended
the Spanish-American War], and I have seen that we do not intend to
free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone
there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our
pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with
their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an antiimperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any
other land.” (from the New York Herald, October 15, 1900)
Scientific Racism: The foundation
A. The foundation of the eugenics movement

Thomas Malthus: Principle of Population (1798)



Populations increase geometrically while food supply only arithmetically
European rulers began to see masses as liabilities instead of assets
Charles Darwin: Origin of Species by way of Natural Selection (1859)



Evolutionary transformation of one species into another (Lamarck)
Natural selection: traits that increase reproductive success are
selected
Drive behind evolution is the sexual reproduction instinct
Scientific Racism: Birth of Eugenics
2. What to do with surplus populations?
• Move them out
• The age of imperialism (see next slide)
• "Lebensraum" (living space), popular German slogan in 1871
• Put them to work (servitude, serfdom, prison labor)
• Breed them out (racial purification or eugenics)
• Eugenics founded by Francis Galton (Darwin's cousin) (1869-1889)
• Herbert Spencer coined "survival of fittest" (1870); believed many were unfit
• Adolf Jost: The Right to Death (1895):
solution to population problem: state control over human reproduction
Scientific Racism: Intelligence Tests
 The new science of intelligence testing

Alfred Binet (1904) -- 1st IQ test

Henry Goddard (1908) -- eugenicist; translated Simon-Binet

1912 book The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of
Feeble-mindedness

Wanted to prevent the breeding of feebleminded people

Hesitated to promote compulsory sterilization, even though
convinced it would solve problem

Suggested "colonies" where the feeble-minded could be
segregated
IQ Tests and Immigration
 Intelligence testing program on Ellis Island established in 1913
1. Rejected 80% of immigrants as "feeble-minded"
 83% of all Jews
 80% of the Hungarians
 79% of the Italians
 87% of the Russians.
2. Resulted in an exponential increase in deportations
3. Served as foundation for the Immigration Restriction Act (1924-1965)




strongly influenced by American eugenics' efforts
restricted numbers of immigrants from undesirable racial groups
(including Jews)
upon signing, President Coolidge commented, "America must
remain American."
publicized race-group differences on Army IQ tests and claimed
Americans were unfit for Democracy
Brown v.
Board of Education

The NAACP (on behalf of Brown) argued that segregated schools sent the message to
black children that they were inferior to whites; thus, the schools were inherently unequal.
"...if the colored children are denied the experience in school of associating with white
children, who represent 90 percent of our national society in which these colored children
must live, then the colored child's curriculum is being greatly curtailed. The Topeka
curriculum or any school curriculum cannot be equal under segregation.”
(Expert witness, Dr. Hugh
W. Speer)

The Board of Education's defense was



Segregated schools simply prepared black children for the real world
Segregated schools were not necessarily harmful to black children
(see Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver)
The Supreme Court was unanimous in its decision:
"We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools
solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors
may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational
opportunities? We believe that it does...We conclude that in the field of public education
the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal.”
(Chief Justice, Earl Warren, 1954)
Segregation continued…
"I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny
and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.“
(Governor of Alabama George Wallace, Inaugural address, Jan. 14, 1963)
Assimilation
 Began with Brown v. Board of Ed. (1954)
 Promised economic opportunity
 Based on immigration model
 Typically works over two or more generations
 Sometimes voluntary, often forced
 Somewhat successful but discrimination still exists
(not everyone allowed to assimilate
 African American exclusion leads to separatist counter-movement
 Rise of Black Nationalism (e.g., Black Panthers)
 Civil Rights Movement vs Black Power
Pluralism
 The hyphenated-American
 Two realms


Private, familial, and cultural
Public (national identity)
 Limited opportunity for public expression of racial identity
 Often viewed as half-way station to assimilation
 Racial/Ethnic identity watered down, languages and cultural
traditions are lost because they are not valued or taught
Multiculturalism (1980s)
 Ethnicity and diversity become the “in-thing”
 Salad bowl metaphor invented
 “Assimilation” equated with uniformity and seen as negative
 Multicultural curricula emphasizes history and traditions of many
 May undermine shared national identity
 Only moderately successful


Assimilation (i.e., color-blindness)
Discrimination and Racism