{"id":47,"date":"2018-06-18T18:32:39","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T18:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/?post_type=podcast&p=47"},"modified":"2021-03-17T20:28:11","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T20:28:11","slug":"05-what-economic-historians-can-tell-us-about-race-problems","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/podcast\/05-what-economic-historians-can-tell-us-about-race-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"05: What economic historians can tell us about race problems?"},"content":{"rendered":"
A growing number of social scientists have focused on historical events to test theories with historical data to see if there is something missing from the historical narrative. In this episode, I interview Prof. Trevon Logan, an economist who uses economic theories and methods to shed light on the historical experience of Blacks. His work updates and corrects many of the beliefs we had about Black experience and highlights the various ways Black Americans have expressed empowerment culturally and politically.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A growing number of social scientists have focused on historical events to test theories with historical data to see if there is something missing from the historical narrative. In this episode, I interview Prof. Trevon Logan, an economist who uses economic theories and methods to shed light on the historical experience of Blacks. His work […]","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2018\/06\/American-Ingredient-Episode-5-Trevon-Logan.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"51.86M","filesize_raw":"54374048","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[35,32,38,37,7,42,41,33,39,34,36,40],"categories":[],"series":[2],"class_list":{"0":"post-47","1":"podcast","2":"type-podcast","3":"status-publish","5":"tag-civil-war","6":"tag-economics","7":"tag-economics-historian","8":"tag-economy","9":"tag-empowerment","10":"tag-historical-narrative","11":"tag-logan","12":"tag-names","13":"tag-ohio","14":"tag-reconstruction","15":"tag-south","16":"tag-trevon","17":"series-american-ingredient","18":"entry"},"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":650,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2021-02-08 16:24:20","post_date_gmt":"2021-02-08 16:24:20","post_content":"\n

Professor McDaniel specializes in American politics. His research areas include religion and politics, Black politics, and organizational behavior. His work targets how and why Black religious institutions choose to become involved in political matters. In addition, his work targets the role of religious institutions in shaping Black political behavior.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Eric McDaniel","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"eric-mcdaniel","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2021-02-08 16:24:21","post_modified_gmt":"2021-02-08 16:24:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/?post_type=speaker&p=650","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":[{"ID":589,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2020-06-23 17:22:13","post_date_gmt":"2020-06-23 17:22:13","post_content":"\n

Trevon D. Logan is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University\u2019s Center for Health and Well-Being and at the University of Michigan, where he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research.  He is also an affiliate of the Initiative in Population Research, the Center for Human Resource Research, the Food Innovation Center, and the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State.  He currently serves on the editorial boards of Explorations in Economic History, Historical Methods and Demographic Research. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Logan specializes in economic history, economic demography and applied microeconomics. His research in economic history concerns the development of living standards measures that can be used to directly asses the question of how the human condition has changed over time. He applies the techniques of contemporary living standard measurements to the past as a means of deriving consistent estimates of well-being over time. Most of his historical work uses historical household surveys, but also includes some new data to look at topics such as the returns to education in the early twentieth century, the formation of tastes, and the allocation of resources within the household.  He is currently extending his historical research agenda to include topics such as childhood health, mortality, morbidity, and racial disparities in health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His economic demography research agenda is diverse. In one project, he looks at the phenomena of dowries in South Asia to see if the purpose of dowry has changed over time.  Another project looks at the economic, social and health implications of male sex work. This work looks at the value of information in this illegal market, uses econometric techniques to quantitatively test sociological theories of gender and masculinity, estimates the values of behaviors in the market, and looks at the role of public health in causing decreases in disease transmission among these men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One project that falls outside of these two larger areas of research is his work on sports, sports betting markets, and college football polls.  He has looked at bias in the betting market, deriving stronger tests for the use of the betting market as a prediction market, and testing for behavioral biases in college football poll rankings.  <\/p>\n","post_title":"Trevon D. Logan","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"trevon-d-logan","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2021-01-13 15:55:40","post_modified_gmt":"2021-01-13 15:55:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/?post_type=speaker&p=589","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"transcript":"

Welcome to The American Ingredient, a podcast that examines grace in American society from
\n\ue5d4
\nan academic perspective, focusing on the work from social scientists and legal scholars. The
\nAmerican regent demonstrates that race is not the only ingredient in making America. But in order
\nto make America, you need to heaping spoonfuls.
\nEven though much of the work in the social sciences examines contemporary problems and events, there’s an
\never growing number of social scientists who have turned to events in the past to help explain
\nmany of the current issues we face. These scholars have looked to history to test theories
\nabout contemporary issues, but also to shed new light on historical events.
\nIn this episode, I talk to Professor Van de Logan, the heysel SAE Young
\nBourg, distinguished professor of economics at the Ohio State University.
\nAs an economic historian, Professor Logan used the theories and tools of the economics discipline
\nto illuminate the black experience and correct several misconceptions. My conversation
\nwith Professor Logan focuses on his work regarding the effectiveness of black elected officials during Reconstruction,
\nalong with his work on trends and black names. We begin the episode with Professor Logan discussing
\nwhat it means to be an economic historian. I think economic
\nhistory is somewhat hard to define. And even when I teach economic history
\ncourses, I always spend a section about a week to say what is economic history? I think
\nthere are a lot of different perspectives that people have on what economic history is. So some people
\nthink that economic history is the ability to test economic
\nmodels. Using history is essentially a laboratory to test economic theories.
\nAnd other people think that economic history is quantifying and
\nestimating relationships that have been assumed to exist from the historical narrative.
\nAnd still others view it as really a combination of quantitative techniques
\nand narrative evidence to tell stories from the historical past.
\nI think all three of those are valid definitions of economic history, and I think what we
\nsee in the field is a movement more from one to the other. I think the current
\nmodel that’s in vogue is to view history as a laboratory, to test economic
\ntheory that has advantages and disadvantages relative to the other two
\napproaches. But I think that is what perhaps the majority of economic stories would say
\nthey are doing today. All right. Where would you place your soul in this regard?
\nI think I’m probably someone who does a little bit more of the third, which is to use quantitative
\nevidence and narrative evidence to try to uncover stories
\nfrom the American past. I think one, I think it’s rather limited to think that
\nhistory should respond to or be put into the service of economic theory.
\nIncomes today, especially when we consider the relatively homogeneous nature of people
\nwho make up the economics profession and particularly those who contribute new economic
\ntheory. So we have to provide a bit more context
\nif we’re going to do something more original than that. And I think actually add
\na little bit more more value. I think the scope should be a little bit larger. So that’s what I tried to do
\nmy work. Okay. In your work, you focus on the 19th century and this
\nlatest project you have focuses on the effectiveness of black politicians during Reconstruction.
\nCan you tell us more about that? Yes. So this project is an offshoot of some work. I’ve been sort
\nof stuck on 19th century for a while now and really considering racial issues in the 19th
\ncentury. And it’s taking me to a lot of different directions, doing work on segregation, doing work on black
\nnames, doing work on antebellum slave marriage patterns,
\ndoing work now on intergenerational mobility and segregation, doing
\nwork now on public accommodations. And the black politicians
\nsort of fell into my lap as something that’s been missing. And I was shocked when I first
\nbegan thinking about the effect that black politicians could have had on public finance and on the provision
\nof public goods, that this was really an unexplored topic in economic
\nhistory. We have a lot of literature on the slave economy and the antebellum
\nera from both economic historians and I would say traditional historians,
\nespecially those now concerned with the history of capitalism. And we have a lot of work on the Jim Crow
\nera. So say post 1890 on In the South and then a lot of work on Great Migration,
\netc. But you know, 1865 to 1880 in particular,
\nmaybe up to 1890, relatively unexplored areas in economic history
\nfor whatever reason. And when I first started in this area, I just really want to answer the
\nvery basic question. You know, we do have these issues of who the politicians do. And then I was really
\ninterested in what do black politicians do and starting down that road and then realizing that I could
\nactually attempt to estimate that relationship as best that we could of the causal effect of black
\npoliticians on public finance at really a critical time in this nation’s history. And
\nI think people now are talking about reconstruction in a way that I’ve been thinking about for the
\nlast, say, five to seven years since I’ve been, you know, really getting started on this project.
\nAnd so it’s interesting to see now, particularly the dynamics of the last presidential election, people really thinking about
\nracial politics and people thinking about black officeholders and people thinking about public
\nattitudes towards black politicians. Those were much more salient in
\nthe reconstruction era. And so reading those histories and seeing these things happen again,
\nas somebody would say, it’s happened again for the first time in American politics, made me think
\nthat we really needed to establish the record for these politicians quantitatively to
\nhonestly rehabilitate them in the historical narrative. It is a nurse that you talk about rehabilitating
\nthem in the historical narrative. How do you believe they’ve been treated in historical narrative?
\nIt’s changed over time, but it has not been quantified. So one of the first
\nthings we know is if you’re coming out of the Dunning tradition. So Dunning was really one of the first histories
\nof reconstruction that we have, very similar for those who are historians,
\nsimilar to Phillips sort of in the antebellum economy. And
\nDunning viewed Reconstruction as a failure. And I think for the majority of the scholarship
\nsince Dunning, although it’s recently certainly been overturned, people view reconstruction
\nas a failure. Now, the daunting Professor Logan is referring to is William Archibald Dunning,
\nan American historian and political scientist whose work on reconstruction dominated how scholars
\ninterpreted it during the early part of the 20th century. Dunning and his followers argued
\nthat black and franchise was a failure and that black politicians elected during this period
\nwere either corrupt or incompetent. And that’s been over. D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation
\nreflects the sentiment in a scene where he paints black legislators as corrupt and free blacks as
\npreying on white women. The film Furber goes on to paint the Klu Klux Klan as the saviors
\nof the South by chasing out these corrupt officials. Dunn and Eric Foner. Historian,
\nwho is a strong critic of the Dunning school, argues that Dunning’s work help justify Jim Crow
\nand protected the South from criticisms of taking the vote away from blacks. One scholar,
\nsuch as W.E.B. Dubois and Frequent Frazier, were critical in mounting a rebuttal of Dunning
\nand his followers, arguing that the failure of reconstruction was not the incompetence of black elected officials,
\nbut the federal government’s lack of commitment to racial equality. In his classic work,
\nBlack Reconstruction, Dubois notes that the empowerment during reconstruction provided
\ngreat promise and its demise was a tragic defeat for democracy.
\nNow we construction did not achieve its goals. But the reasons for that were very different, safer
\ncoming out of the dining tradition. And the reasons were that it was not meant for the South. We
\nshouldn’t have had enfranchisement of African-Americans. We certainly shouldn’t have had political
\nrepresentation by African-Americans and that this was the reason. For that
\nfailure that’s been overturned. So starting with the voice in black reconstruction,
\nwe know that black politicians were active. They were not all corrupt and an unfit for
\noffice, but we went and have developed that. But it hasn’t
\nbeen quantified their effectiveness and what they’ve actually done and whether they were effective or
\nmore effective than other politicians. So what have you found in your examination of black politicians
\nduring this time period suffering that they have really large effects in a couple of different ways?
\nOne effect is I found that they have a large causal effect on the provision of public goods. So we
\ndo see larger tax revenues in places where they’re holding
\noffice in a very sizable affects of that. And then we have to wonder, do these taxes do anything other than
\njust raise taxes? And I find really large effects on school and woman from a black and white students.
\nBut in particular, human capital acquisition for four African-Americans and a closing of the literacy
\ngap between blacks and whites in areas where black politicians were serving in office.
\nOkay. So in regards to taxes, how exactly are the taxes
\ntaking shape in order to raise revenue to provide these resources? So taxes at the county
\nlevel historically were largely coming from two sources. One is
\ntaxes on land and property taxes and other real assets. The second
\nyou had some excise taxes, but very, very smart at the county level. This second were poll taxes
\nthat were a significant source of local local revenue. And I can’t
\ndisentangle between the very different effects of that is idiosyncratic and lost to us in the historical
\nrecord. But I do find substantial increases in even controlling for land
\nvalues. You know, you do find larger tax receipts in those areas and controlling the population to a larger tax
\nrates probably have been the mechanism for for having larger receipts.
\nNow you’ve talked about the response to black politicians. How would you describe
\nthe response to black politicians doing reconstruction? Whereas you think of them as providing more resources,
\nbut they’re also collecting more resources. So how should we understand the nature
\nof the relationship between black politicians or reconstruction and their
\nblack and white constituents? I think the issue is what level of constituent service you providing
\nand to what constituents who are providing that service. So taxes are redistributive
\nand that’s what taxes do. Taxes are redistributed, at least
\nin the American sense, or most taxes are redistributed. Some taxes are regressive. But these taxes
\nwould have been redistributed tax. Just a quick note for clarification. A regressive tax. The tax applied
\nuniformly, taking a larger percentage of income from low income earners,
\nthen from high income earners. A regressive tax is an opposition to a progressive
\ntax, which takes a larger percentage from higher income earners. How do examples
\nof regressive taxes are things such as sales taxes and property taxes along with user
\nfees? Humanitarian. These types of taxes and fees impact lower income individuals
\nmore severely than those with higher incomes because the tax takes up a larger share
\nof their income or most taxes are redistributed. Some taxes are regressive. But these taxes would have
\nbeen redistributive taxes. And so you had a southern economy
\nin southern politics at the time that needed to provide public goods in an environment
\nin which certainly in the antebellum era, very few public goods were provided. So how do you start
\nand finance a public school system? You’re going to have to do that by raising taxes. How do you improve
\ninfrastructure that’s been decimated by a civil war? You need to raise taxes. How
\ndo you provide humanitarian aid for those who are widowed, sick and infirm
\nfrom a very long civil war? You want need to raise taxes
\nto do that. And so you’re going to have to have public receipt for these goods because the government
\nis going to have to step in and provide them and provide those services. So
\nhow can we explain or do you have an explanation for why the
\nDunning approach kind of pinioned is a failure kind of painted. The elected officials
\nas corrupt. But you begin to see a quick rebuttal to this is this is
\ncertainly coming from black scholars. So Dubois and Franklin, how?
\nWas there something driving this interpretation of reconstruction and led people to see it as
\na failure? I think there are a lot of things that were driving that. You know, I gave
\nan address at it must have in Dartmouth a couple of years ago, actually, about the history
\nof slavery and reconstruction. You can everything about reconstruction without thinking about what comes
\nbefore and also think about reconstruction and what comes after. So
\nif you’re writing a history of reconstruction, when are you writing it? So if you’re coming out with the ending and you’re looking
\nat the beginning of the 20th century and you’re looking at the south as economically more bound, certainly
\nrelative to the north, not participating into the great professional, Logans refer to
\na moribund economy. And this is referred to as a dying economy or economy that is in a very
\nunhealthy state. And this is classic would be understood as the South pre and post
\nreconstruction as the South was mainly an agrarian economy and was unable to
\nindustrialize. And so because of that, its economy was somewhat stagnant or
\nin a very unhealthy state. You’re looking at the south as economically more bound, certainly
\nrelative to the north, not participating into the great ascension of America
\nin the 20th century. And you wonder what’s going on. And you have to end. You might be thinking, well, this is
\njust how the south is always men. It’s important. Understand that gunning comes after
\nPhillips. Ryan Phillips is writing about American slavery, and he says Americans, they reason
\ninefficient institution. It leaves the South economically more bound in
\nthe south, as I’ve always thought of it, which is backward to the rest of the nation. All of that
\nhas to be revised. And I think it’s really important for people to understand this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
\nOne of the things now that history of capitalism is reckoning with which the economic history of slaves
\nis always reckoned with, is slavery is not this more bound institution. The
\nSouth was literally one of the wealthiest places on the face of the earth circa 1860.
\nEven taking into account the fact that it had a large number of people who were not participating
\nand certainly direct beneficiaries of that economic ascension, they were still the wealthiest place
\non that one. What this place on face of the earth that overturns a whole lot of what we think about
\nthe south. And then we have to think about what how does reconstruction figure into that? Reconstruction was an attempt
\nto politically and economically realign the south. But southern institutions had
\ndeveloped predicated on an extreme amount of inequality.
\nAnd we see that press, you know, persistent to this day. We sent work that comes out looking
\nat intergenerational mobility has shown that the south is just a place where there is really
\nlow levels of intergenerational mobility and high levels of inequality. That is a southern perennial.
\nIt doesn’t have anything to do with the level, but it says something about the distribution.
\nAnd I think it says something about the politics and the political economy of those places
\nas well. But then we take that back and we try to fit that into
\nthis mode of, well, that just means these places have been backwards. And that isn’t necessarily always the case,
\nthat that doesn’t mean that they have not been industrial. But I also think that it does not mean
\nthat the South was unfit for capitalism. Yes. You know, that the slave
\nsystem was a capitalist system and it was highly successful. Doesn’t work so well
\nwhen you do away with slavery as an institution leaves it pretty poor. And then you have a political economy
\nthat was created for one particular type of economic institution, which now has to be in line itself
\nand reimagine itself in a new reality. That’s been the difficulty for understanding the South.
\nIt isn’t a feature of the slave economy that made the South economically moribund. It’s that the South could
\nnot adapt to a free labor system. If you read the histories of reconstruction
\nand if you read them from looking at, say, been in the storms along in these other sorts of narrative histories,
\nSoutherners, white southerners could not imagine a free labor market. It just was beyond them.
\nNow, these are intense capitalists and they believe in property ownership. They believe in property ownership and slaves and property ownership
\nand land and property ownership and a lot of things they could not fathom how to deal with a free labor market.
\nTheir original ideas included things such as importing Chinese immigrants to work
\nas slaves. We can we can’t have black slaves. OK, fine. But we’re going to get some Chinese slave. I mean, literally, these are some
\nof the things that they’re thinking about which shows you that they really just did not want to work with free market capitalism.
\nI think some of those ideas continue to persist to this day in southern politic.
\nI don’t think that they’d been called that appropriately in the way that they should be, but those are some of the ideas
\nyou see that with the strong resistance, say, to unions in certain parts of the country, you
\nsee that was strong resistance to the provision of public goods. You’ll see that with strong resistance to
\nstrong protection of voting rights. These are perennial effects from a part
\nof the world in the United States that has just had long standing
\nresistance to true democratic institutions. So 150 years
\nlater, it’s still deeply, but it’s basically in the soil. And
\nit’s something that is Kuznetsov to be rooted out. It’s there. And I think it shows up in a lot of different
\nways and your political side. So, you know, the ways it shows and politics better than I do, certainly. But I think
\nit shows up. I think it shows up in the way that politics marries with religion in the south.
\nDisbelief. And this worship of a very particular type of free market
\ncapitalism that is not really designed for India has a
\ndifferent function than we would see in other parts of the world. And yet these places are also relative to
\nother parts in the United States, poor. So there’s a strong belief,
\nfor example, that very level, low levels of taxes will lead to prosperity. They’ve had relatively low levels
\nof taxes for quite some time relative to many other states in the United States.
\nThey also receive more federal resources than what they send to the federal government. So they receive less
\nnet subsidies, say, from the federal government, still has not had the prosperity
\nthat they have preached. The places that are actually wealthier in the United States have meant much higher taxes.
\nHow does that work? And I think, you know, so what is going to break that logic, which still I think
\nhas some some element of intuitive appeal,
\nhas not been borne out to have empirical support. One of the things that your work notes
\nis this connection between taxes and violence in particular, you note that a rise
\nin taxes is linked to a rise in violence towards black elected officials. Could you explain
\nthis some more? Yes. In some new work, what I have found is that the places that have black
\npoliticians had higher taxes and then higher taxes still,
\nif you see places that have black politicians who are also met with violence. So aggressive taxation
\nwill stamp out. But the most aggressive taxation appears to have been met with
\nviolence. For those black officeholders now, this is still very preliminary and certainly
\nwork in progress. But I think it’s consistent with the violence that was had to be held
\nat the end of the reconstruction era. So this was not a revolution. That was
\na quiet one. It was one that was a violent one. I still think that story has yet to be told.
\nBut we see those persistent effects. I’ve really been quite impressed as a recent working paper
\nby two COLEBY-WILLIAMS, who was at LSU and moving to Clemson University
\nin the fall to certain assistant professor position. And she has looked at persistent effects of racial violence
\non voting patterns. And so I think that the seeds of a lot of the things that we talk about today in our politics,
\nwhich would include, you know, these but, you know, other persistent effects of the of this political violence,
\nI think is an open question that that will soon be answered. But I think we see lots of evidence
\nnow that racial violence, racialized violence and racial oppression have persistent effects to this
\nday. And these are events that happened many, many, many years ago. And we still see persistent effects
\non our political outcomes and economic outcomes to this day. You mentioned
\nhow you kind of challenging the historical
\naccount of reconstruction. You’re part of a larger group. People were basically
\ntrying to reframe the way once you understand reconstruction as an economist. Is there anything
\nin particular about your work? Does that challenges existing arguments within economics?
\nYeah, a couple of things. I’ll give one example. So there’s a lot of literature now,
\nespecially from a very famous paper that looked at black names on resume.
\nAnd then there wasn’t some follow up work that found maybe there really aren’t these effects to black names
\nand maybe their sort of effects that don’t really have long durations. Maybe you do see them in
\nresum\u00e9 ordered studies, but you don’t see them if you look at a birth certificate things. But all of that
\nwas predicated on this belief that black names are essentially a
\nbasically a late 20th century phenomenon. When I say late 20th century, say to 1970s a post-civil rights
\nmovement, black names, and when I say black names, peoples, what do you mean by black names?
\nBlack names that are highly likely to be held by African-Americans and not likely to be held by whites? My
\njoke to my friends is, well, you know, we’ve just had the NFL draft. So look at a lot of the names that utilize
\nthese players. Have a called out NFL draft or highly likely to be you know, I don’t know that many white Duchamps.
\nAlmost all the disheartens I know are black. Right. So that’s the black name. So one of the
\nand this is a typical economist folly is to say we see these black names. Certainly
\nwe don’t see in the historical record a lot of LA Tanyas. So that probably is something that would be contemporary,
\nbut that isn’t an answer to the question of whether black names existed in the past. And so with some
\ncoauthors, Lisa Cooke at Michigan State and John Harmon at William and Mary, we
\nfound that black names actually do have historical precedents. And we found a
\nblack naming pattern among black men in the early 20th century. But
\nit’s a different set of names in these names or biblical names like Moses and Abraham,
\nother names like Percy Perley, King, M. Titus.
\nThese are also names that are just as disproportionate historically
\nas names like Tyronne and Jamal and the Keesha today.
\nAnd so black names have a history. And now it becomes much more interesting question, which is
\nwhy did these names change as opposed to how did these names come about? Right. So it’s
\na very different process and we have a much different narrative. If it’s now black names
\nhave come about from the civil rights movement, which is what people had assumed in now black names are actually
\na cultural feature of the African-American community that’s been longstanding and the names have changed.
\nThat’s a very different story that we now have to tell. And that’s been part of what I’ve done. This sort of challenge,
\nthe conventional wisdom. And I think part of what I have found is many of the things that we
\ntake as these foregone conclusions. If you say to a group of social scientists, black names come about from the 20th
\ncentury, we’ll just nod their heads because that’s what they believe. But we have to. And I think this is a different part
\nof economic history. If we think about economics as sort of testing out these economic theories, if the
\nif we just take those things as given, we would never even write this paper. Right. Because that’s. Taking the assumption
\nit’s established fact and we go with it, but I think when you marry the narrative evidence, there is now
\nthis way of detecting black names historically. And now why did they come from. Right. And we’re looking at
\nthe very first generation of African-Americans who have been allowed to name their own children.
\nDoubt the purview of the slave system. And we find from the very beginning a very strong
\nand distinctive naming pattern among African-Americans. So it’s a cultural perennial.
\nIt’s not something that comes about from the civil rights movement. It
\nmust say then I think, something deeper about African-American autonomy than
\npeople have presumed to exist in the past. So I think there’s a deeper level when you do this
\nthat challenges some of those notions. And I think it makes them more challenging
\nfor the economics community overall. It’s interesting what you found in regard to
\nhow blacks abuse names over time. My understanding is that many
\nof the names were chosen because African-Americans were never going to be called by
\nMr. Smith. Mr. Johnson, they were always going to be called by their first name. And so many
\nnames were chosen, such as King Prince Major, because they wanted to sound
\nlike a regal day. And if you’re going to be called by your first name, they wanted to be something that sounded
\nvery regal. And in addition to this, the name changed to see a post-civil rights movement.
\nTo what degree are the names we’re seeing? post-Reconstruction post-civil rights movement,
\nreally signs of black empowerment or black autonomy? This idea of
\nembracing the idea that black is beautiful, but also trying to find a way
\nto navigate a discriminatory world. Yet I think
\nit deepens the questions that we have to ask about it. Right. So if we now know
\nthat there’s been this long history of these names and we mentioned names. King Master was
\nyour name and your first name is Master. So how do you have to call someone? Now you have to call them by their first name. I
\ncall the master. It’s a very different context, right? Prince
\nRegal sounding names and then biblical names. So Moses and Abraham
\nand others, which are very biblical, but very different than we would think of traditional
\nnames that are also biblical in their orientation. And then a third set of names that that
\ndon’t fall in either one of those sets. But also what we found was
\nwe were able to reject another piece of conventional wisdom, which is that African-Americans
\nnamed their children disproportionately after presidents. So this would be when I call the the George
\nWashington Carver hypothesis right up. And we do see this in the narratives say
\nRalph Ellison has some pieces and he mentions he said, oh, if only my parents, Adam. Because he’s. Who
\nis he? He’s Ralph Waldo Ellison, right? Ralph Waldo Emerson. Right. So this idea of naming
\nyour children after famous individuals, we don’t find that there’s any racially disproportionate degree
\nof doing that. That’s more likely among African-Americans and among whites. Now, it is the case
\nthat some of the names are a little bit different. There are very few we fine whites who are
\nnaming their children after Abraham Lincoln and Alabama in the early 20th century. But we
\ndo see some. We do see similar rates of naming them, say, after Thomas Jefferson
\nand other sort of famous individuals. So and we don’t see me very many whites or any naming the choice
\nof Frederick Douglass. But we do see similar patterns of sort of naming that after famous individual
\noverall. So we don’t see any racial differences in naming your children after
\nfamous individuals, some that we were able to actually also find a new fact. There were historical black names.
\nBut to reject another sort of piece of conventional wisdom as well, which I think is
\ncertainly worth mentioning. So the question is, where do these names come from and why? Why do we have King
\nand master and Prince in the past? And now we have Tyronne, number one. Tyronne
\nis actually an Irish name, I think very important to establish. But but second, but
\nwe wouldn’t think of that name today as being Irish. If you see Tyronne Jackson today, you don’t think of someone
\nwith no red hair. And eventually you’re thinking of someone who is black. And so that
\nin and of itself says us something that’s dramatic and changed. But did we have a deeper story about what what is the intention
\nwhen you have these names adopted two people and that then, as I said, gives us deeper questions.
\nAnd we don’t if we run with what we believe the names represent, that we implicitly
\nassume something about where we think the historical origins of these names are coming from.
\nAnd if that is changed by the fact these names have a much longer history than we can no longer use those
\nconjectures. OK. So what does it mean to name your daughter? You know, Lakisha
\nor Tanya today as opposed to historical name that would apply
\nto African-Americans in the past. So something has to be going on different about
\nthe naming intention that itself is changing. And that’s important now to investigate.
\nRight. So it cannot be simply about defiance of conventional norms and making
\nnames that are racially distinctive because those things existed in the past. Why have the names changed? I
\nthink now is the new question. I don’t have a good answer to that right now. But to know that the names have changed.
\nWe had you know, that there was a different set of names in the past that are being used today. So
\nhow can I guess the work you’re doing with the names, but also the work you’re
\ndoing with black elected officials? How could this inform us about issues
\ngoing on today? I think it informs us, because it tells
\nus that we have been living not in only
\ncontemporary circumstances that need contemporary
\nexplanations, but that these are perennials which require a much more nuanced and I think
\nhistorically grounded explanation that talk about their persistence over time. They’ve always been
\nblack names and they’ve changed. Then that tells us something different about name, intention
\nand potentially about name effects. One thing that we found was that black names today
\nare associated with discrimination in terms of r\u017dmi audit studies and lower levels of
\nsocioeconomic. So it’s highly correlated with poor outcomes.
\nHistorically, we find that they are protective and have and are associated actually with. Lower
\nlevels of mortalities. In other words, those men who had African-American names live longer than other
\nAfrican-American men. So some of these effects actually defy some of the conventional explanations
\nthat we we’ve had typically. But then if you think about politicians, I think it goes to the same
\nextent. So a lot of people believe in political science. You certainly would know this literature better than I do,
\nthat a lot of what we see in contemporary politics might be a backlash to to black office holding. Certainly
\nthat’s what we saw in the reconstruction era. But it tells us that we’re dealing much more
\nwith much long standing issues than things that are much more temporary. It’s easy
\nto say. We’re sort of like, you know, many times I say in joke that we’re sort of drunks. We’re looking for
\nour keys under the lamp post. That’s the last place they’re likely to be, but it’s the first place that you should start to look
\nlike. And I think that we do a lot of that with our analysis of racial topics. So we
\nthink about race and policing. This is a perennial issue in African-American communities.
\nIf you read, say, Ida B, Wells are the first crusaders and who died.
\nStill not having a national lynching anti-lynching law. We still don’t have one yet
\nto this day. And yet we see these this police thing is many, too many people
\nvery consistent with sort of lynching and these sort of ideas about lynching, a law enforcement.
\nThese are not new issues. These are really perennial American
\nperennials. And I think it’s very important for people now to think about them as being
\nconsistent, perennial. And I’ll give you another example that people won’t want to talk about. We’ll probably should.
\nSo Kanye West is, you know, running his mouth lately and talking
\nabout slavery being a choice or things like that. You will be very surprised to see some of these
\nsame ideas coming up in the late antebellum era in defense of slavery.
\nAnd you see many of these ideas in the early reconstruction era about how good it was
\nfor African-Americans to be in the South and how even in Fogleman inGermany
\ntalk about the economics of slavery, much of which has been absolutely refuted
\nfrom deeper discussions in the narrative sources that there were these benefits,
\nthat there was all of this black achievement under this adversity in the slave system, and that there were
\nthese were wards for Hard-Working slaves. All of it has no empirical support. And I spend
\na lot of time when I teach American economic history talking about this extensively. But
\nour ignorance of these historical facts allows
\npeople to say these sorts of things that put us right back into a lot of these discussions
\nthat I think we should certainly have moved past as a nation. Will we continue to go
\nback to them because we are largely ignorant about the operation of the slave economy. We’re
\nignorant about construction. We’re ignorant about Jim Crow. And so we have people and
\nCountry West is the child of a professor. Yes, an African-American professor. He should know better.
\nYeah. And yet he’s running his mouth in absolute ignorance. And so if he is saying
\nall of that, how can we expect other people who should know better? What should they be saying and doing? Certainly
\nthey should be saying something quite different than why Connie West is saying to this day. And I think that’s
\nreally important, that we will continue to have these discussions. They will continue to be important
\nif we continue to be ignorant about our history, and particularly if we continue to be
\nignorant about our race in our and the effects of race on
\nour political economy historically and all the way down to the present. This is the big question,
\nI guess. How does your work help us better understand the race problem within the US?
\nThat’s a really big deal. I got it. I think I make very, very small,
\nvery, very small contributions to understanding that race problem. But I think one of the things I’ve been pushing
\nfor and I’ve been challenging my economic history colleagues and
\nI want to preface this by saying there are very few African-American economic historian, although there
\nis a very large literature about race in economic history. Put a pin in that, because I think that’s important
\nfor the interpretation and the way that we do this work. I think the contribution that I have
\nmade is to say that we have a economic
\nhistory and our race in economic history. And it’s important to understand that
\nif we’re talking about racial inequality today, this is not anything new. And what we
\nhave to understand then is that we cannot discuss
\ninequality and racial inequality today without thinking about it as being a function of a long process.
\nWe don’t magically arrive at these points in time, say, 2018,
\nwithout thinking about there being something in the past. And it forces us to reconcile
\nand think about everything. Isn’t just a function of persistence from. Slave experience.
\nThere’s much richer and nuanced patterns. There were so many opportunities to have
\nprogress have always been really struck by the work of I mentioned when I was doing my black names
\nwork. I worked with Lisa Cook and John Palmer, and Lisa has done some extraordinary work with black invention
\ninnovation. And she finds that rates of black patenting are really low. When you have lots of racial
\nviolence. And so we haven’t thought about those methods and we haven’t thought about the effects
\nof racial violence and racial hatred. And these are the sorts of things on economic
\noutcomes. Right. And so one of the questions that we still have to wrestle with and I hope that my work is
\nsort of speaking to is we pay an economic price for these racial
\npolicies. And no one talks about it in that way. And we are very rarely talk about it. We talk about discrimination,
\nbut we haven’t really thought about is we know that we have lower levels of output
\nin places that have racially discriminatory policies. So that means that we’re willing to pay
\nfor that. So what is our willingness to pay for discrimination as a nation? And it turns
\nout that it’s a lot and it’s similar to discussions that people have when they talk about
\nthe white working class voting against their interest in something you hear consistently. I do not use
\nthat language myself because it’s not clear to me that they’re voting against their interest. If
\nwe can think about their interest being very much broader and that some of their interest
\nand some of white interest might be in the support of white supremacy, you might have to pay for that.
\nYou might have to pay for lower levels of economic output overall to maintain
\nracially repressive regime. You have to pay me economists. Nothing is free. So
\nif you if you want to have a system of white supremacy will cost you something. The question is, how much is that going to cost you
\nand are you willing to pay it? That is a way of reframing those questions. And that’s I think the
\nwork that I try to contribute is to think about it in a new way. And instead
\nof thinking about people are voting against their best interests. No, let’s go. Let’s take that rational man and say people are voting for their best
\ninterests. When how much are they willing to pay for that? If it turns out that it’s a lot of money that they’re willing to pay
\nfor these racially restrictive policies, then it says something about what it’s worth to them. And that
\nthen might be a little bit more disturbing, but it’s certainly we orients the questions
\nthat we’re asking about our political economy kind of going back to the idea of paying
\nfor racial discrimination. It appears me that is in high demand and that
\nthere is, I guess, adequate supply or maybe reduce supply, but there seems
\nto be a very high demand. And so there are groups that are willing to pay a very high cost
\nin order to achieve a sense of white supremacy, racial discrimination in
\nit. And so I guess in thinking about this in terms of kind of supply, demand or equilibrium,
\ndo you believe that the supply is abundant and along with the demand? Or do
\nyou believe the demand is pushing for more supply? Well, I think and I’d be remiss
\nat University of Texas at Austin. So there’s a very famous quote attributed to
\nLyndon Johnson about a willingness to pay for racial discrimination. He says,
\nyou know, if you can simply offer whites the ability to discriminate, they’ll they’ll
\npay you. They’ll pay you in the wages they pay you and a whole lot of other ways. And so if you could hold up white primacy,
\nyou can actually have people pay you to their political choices to maintain
\nthat sort of a system. And it’s supply for it, areas of demand.
\nAnd that’s always a question that we have will always have. That keeps the economist employed. Right. Because
\nwhat we have always are equilibrium outcomes. You believe. What is it? Price movements are getting prices
\nin quantities and we have supply and demand. Well, the supply equation and the demand equation are both
\nabout prices and quantities. And so that’s both in the supply and demand equation. So
\nwhat’s moving is it’s supply and demand. I don’t know. And I think fundamentally that’s what we don’t know.
\nAnd I think and hopefully what history in my work tries to contribute are different sort of historical context
\nwas tell us that we might be on the supply dimension much more than the demand dimension or vise versa. But I think
\nit’s important to understand that both are at work, but that the system might still be the same. Fundamentally,
\nwhat does the study of race are issues related to race? How does that help
\nbuild the economics fields? What does it provide to the discipline? I think it provides to this
\none of a couple of different things. One of which is a challenge. And I continue to tell
\nmy economic colleagues that we need an economic theory
\nof race. We do a lot of racial analysis. And when we try to unpack what
\nthat is, well, what should race be if we have axioms as economists
\nthat don’t have race at all in their contract? We don’t have a theory of race. So strange
\nto me that we do all of this racial work and scholarship and we don’t have
\nfundamentally an understanding what race should be. At a theoretical level. Certainly my
\nsocial science brethren in sociology and political science and psychology
\nare literally light years ahead of us as economist and thinking about race, theorizing
\nabout race and attempting to understand the nuances of race.
\nAnd economists are still thinking of race as frankly, usually
\na a category of data analysis. Right. And so we have a race variable
\nin an equation. That’s not gonna cut it. I don’t think that that is the way of thinking about it. I
\nhave advocated that race is really an experience. And that, I think, is why I’m an historian.
\nSo obviously it takes me it’s the cumulative experience, but I don’t think even among a lot of the economic
\nhistorians, they’re very comfortable with thinking about race as an experience and certainly not comfortable analyzing
\nit as an experience. They’d like to think about it as a category, but what is that category mean?
\nI have not yet received good answers to those sorts of questions that I’m posing. So I
\nreally still in pushing back against that. I’m not a theorist, but I think before we run around doing
\na lot of this work, we need to have some really good theoretical dimensions that we
\ncan analyze on race. So there are some people working and making progress on that. William
\nSandy Darity, who is at Duke, Derrick Hamilton, who’s at the new school pushing
\non some really good work and thinking in stratification. And they are building
\nnew theories that are out there. It is beginning to bear some fruit. And I’m very, very
\nglad that they have continued to press upon this. And they’re not historians, but they are still thinking about
\nwhat it means, theoretically to think about race in groups and people operating in groups, because fundamentally,
\neconomic models don’t have group assignment. Don’t have group identities and affiliations. And so economists
\nare really always flatfooted when we want to think about these sort of social dimensions. And I think we have to start
\nthat. We have to continue to push upon upon that. And so I’m trying to add a historical dimension in thinking about
\nwhen we think about race. What does that really mean and how that’s changed over time? As I experienced it. And so that means also
\nthat we’re going to have to have a different way of thinking about
\nempirical relations. Not everything that is empirical is necessarily
\nmeans that it’s, you know, quantitative. You no empirical evidence can be qualitative as well. That is actual empirical
\nevidence. And economists don’t necessarily have not always really seen
\nthat or these practice that. And I think that it’s high time we start doing that as well. So that’s part
\nof what I want to see come happen, happen in our new scholarship.
\nA nation identifies who it is, but what it has done. A nation’s history is
\ncritical to establishing its place in the world and the norms of its citizens. Several
\npoliticians and pundits hearken to times when the nation was at its greatest.
\nProfessor Logan and scholars like him point out that these times may have been great for some,
\nbut extremely painful for others. Furber His work notes that events
\nthat have been understood as failures had several successful elements by demonstrating
\nthe misinterpretations of the black experience in American history. He hopes to prevent false
\nnarratives, creating damaging situations for black Americans and the nation as
\nthe nation works to reconcile its identity. We must be attentive to how history can be misremembered
\nand misinterpreted to prevent the creation of narratives that distort the true nature of our problems
\nand in turn, generate harmful solutions.
\nThank you for listening to the American ingredient, American Daniel, a professor in the Department of Government at the University
\nof Texas. I would like to think Michael heidenreich and Jacob Weiss, their assistants, along
\nwith the Department of Garbarek, the University of Texas and the University of Texas is Elei t-s
\nDevelopment Studio.<\/p>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2018\/02\/The-American-Ingredient-Logo-with-text.png","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/podcast-download\/47\/05-what-economic-historians-can-tell-us-about-race-problems.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/american-ingredient\/podcast-player\/47\/05-what-economic-historians-can-tell-us-about-race-problems.mp3","audio_player":"

05: What economic historians can tell us about race problems?<\/a><\/blockquote>