How We Remember (and Forget) in Our Public History

Woodrow Wilson is the only American political scientist to have served as President of the United States. In the time between his political science Ph.D. (from Johns Hopkins, in 1886) and his tenure as president (1913–21), he also served as president of Princeton University (1902–10) and president of the American Political Science Association (1909–10). Wilson is one of the most revered figures in American political thought and in American political science. The Woodrow Wilson Award is perhaps APSA’s most distinguished award, given annually for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs published in the previous year, and sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation at Princeton University

A Discussion of Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen’s Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics

If the election of Donald Trump has proven anything indisputably, it is that the notion of America as a “postracial” society in the aftermath of the Obama presidency is a canard. Yet how should we understand the specific pattern of race’s persistent salience in US politics? In Deep Roots, Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen argue that it is the long legacy of chattel slavery that continues to shape politics in the US South in distinctive fashion. Comparing regions that were once marked by slavery with those that were not, the authors develop the concept of “behavioral path dependence” to describe the production and reproduction of a political culture marked by intergenerational racial prejudice. They argue that this legacy continues to shape US politics today in a fashion that is both understandable and predictable with the tools of empirical political science. We asked several scholars with expertise on politics and race, US political development, and political behavior to address this controversial argument

Racial distancing in a Southern city: Latino immigrants' views of black Americans

The United States is undergoing dramatic demographic change, primarily from immigration, and many of the new Latino immigrants are settling in the South. This paper examines hypotheses related to attitudes of Latino immigrants toward black Americans in a Southern city. The analyses are based on a survey of black, white, and Latino residents (n = 500). The results show, for the most part, Latino immigrants hold negative stereotypical views of blacks and feel that they have more in common with whites than with blacks. Yet, whites do not reciprocate in their feelings toward Latinos. Latinos' negative attitudes toward blacks, however, are modulated by a sense of linked fate with other Latinos. This research is important because the South still contains the largest population of African Americans in the United States, and no section of the country has been more rigidly defined along a black-white racial divide. How these new Latino immigrants situate themselves vis-à-vis black Americans has profound implications for the social and political fabric of the South

Black Americans and Latino immigrants in a southern city: friendly neighbors or economic competitors?

Dramatic demographic changes are occurring in the United States, and some of the most dramatic changes are occurring in the South from Latino immigration. Latinos, by and large, are an entirely new population in the region. How are Black southerners reacting to this new population? Using survey data gathered from a southern location, this article explores several questions related to whether Blacks see these new residents as friendly neighbors or economic competitors. Results suggest that Blacks and non-Blacks perceive a potential economic threat from continued Latino immigration, but Blacks are more concerned about the effects of Latino immigration than are Whites

Black Elites and Latino Immigrant Relations in a Southern City: Do Black Elites and the Black Masses Agree?

The United States is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse as a function of immigration, both legal and illegal, from Asia, Mexico, and Latin America. Latinos are the fastest growing population, and in 2000, Latinos replaced African Americans as the largest minority group in the United States. Although much of the media and scholarly attention has focused on demographic changes in traditional Latino immigrant destinations such as California, New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona, the rapid growth in Latino populations is occurring across the nation. The South has undergone a particularly dramatic alteration in terms of racial composition, with six of seven states tripling the size of their Latino populations between 1990 and 2000. This settlement of Latinos in the South is no more than ten to fifteen years old, and new immigrants from Mexico and Latin America are settling in states like North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee (Durand, Massey, and Carvet 2000). They bring ethnic and cultural diversity to areas previously defined exclusively as black and white. Not only have new Latino populations migrated to urban and suburban locations in the South, they also have settled in small towns and rural areas, reinforcing projections of the “Latinization” of the American South. Examples of these “New Latino Destinations” (Suro and Singer 2000) include cities such as Atlanta, Georgia; Charlotte, Greensboro-Winston Salem, and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee; and Greenville, South Carolina