Civil Rights Protests in Formative Years & Long-Term Racial Prejudice

• In Event: Education, Socialization, and Political Preferences

Abstract

Utilizing access to restricted geocodes, this study merges city and state-level civil rights protest data with a long running, nationally representative cross-sectional survey and a three-wave panel study of youths and parents. The aim is to explore how citizens' exposure to racial protests during their formative years (adolescence to early adulthood) might mold their enduring racial prejudices. The research makes two pivotal contributions:
1. By linking citizens’ experiences during formative years at granular-level (state or city) with later survey responses, this study provides a comprehensive and robust examination of Mannheim’s (1952 [1928]) thesis suggesting that citizens' long-term political orientations predominantly crystallize during adolescence and early adulthood.
2. Building on the scholarship of Mazumder (2018) and Wasow (2020), which addresses the civil rights movement's impact on racial attitudes, this study investigates the mechanisms by which racial protests could durably influence mass racial attitudes.

Author

• Yang Song, Pennsylvania State University