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The Ku Klux Klan
Here is the abstract from the new Roland Fryer and Steve Levitt paper:
The Ku Klux Klan reached its heyday in the mid-1920s, claiming millions of members. In this paper, we analyze the 1920s Klan, those who joined it, and the social and political impact that it had. We utilize a wide range of newly discovered data sources including information from Klan membership roles, applications, robe-order forms, an internal audit of the Klan by Ernst and Ernst, and a census that the Klan conducted after an internal scandal. Combining these sources with data from the 1920 and 1930 U.S. Censuses, we find that individuals who joined the Klan were better educated and more likely to hold professional jobs than the typical American. Surprisingly, we find few tangible social or political impacts of the Klan. There is little evidence that the Klan had an effect on black or foreign born residential mobility, or on lynching patterns. Historians have argued that the Klan was successful in getting candidates they favored elected. Statistical analysis, however, suggests that any direct impact of the Klan was likely to be small. Furthermore, those who were elected had little discernible effect on legislation passed. Rather than a terrorist organization, the 1920s Klan is best described as a social organization built through a wildly successful pyramid scheme fueled by an army of highly-incentivized sales agents selling hatred, religious intolerance, and fraternity in a time and place where there was tremendous demand.
I find this interpretation plausible; for many (evil) people, evil is downright fun, especially if you are bored in the first place. Both Donnie Brasco and The Sopranos capture aspects of this equation.
Google does not generate a non-gated version, let us know in the comments if I missed one.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 16, 2007 at 01:54 PM in History | Permalink
Comments
"I find this interpretation plausible; for many (evil) people, evil is downright fun, especially if you are bored in the first place."
In my case, introspection confirms that.
Posted by: Keith at Sep 16, 2007 2:17:04 PM
How many people actually pay for NBER working papers?
Posted by: Guan Yang at Sep 16, 2007 2:17:23 PM
Here's a copy from Roland Fryer's homepage.
Posted by: Rob J. at Sep 16, 2007 2:48:59 PM
Ohio was a hotbed for the Klan in the 20s, one of my great-uncles was a Klansmen for a while.
Why Ohio and why someone who was alleged to be totally disinterested in politics is a mystery to me and the family.
Could have been peer pressure, boredom, real bigotry or a desire to be socially connected, but whatever it was didn't last long for my ancestor. My mother was still a child when he died, and apparently no one ever ask him why.
Posted by: save_the_rustbelt at Sep 16, 2007 3:38:25 PM
selling hatred, religious intolerance, and fraternity in a time and place where there was tremendous demand.
In other words, a taste for discrimination without any objective benefits. Surprise!
Now, let's see if the usual suspects try to argue that actually it was all rational and objective and to the members' advantage (because they can never admit racism exists and must always find alternative rational / evolutionary expectations for plain old bigotry).
Posted by: dug at Sep 16, 2007 4:17:08 PM
dug, badmouthing negroes (though at that time it was less of a priority and there were even a few black klansmen) at a Klan meeting costs much less than charging prices customers won't pay for or passing over competent employees. A good example of rational discrimination can be seen in lending when you look at default rates. Also, many people who argue against racism as an explanatory cause today do not claim that the 1920s were the same as today.
Posted by: TGGP at Sep 16, 2007 6:01:43 PM
Assumedly, the authors studied Klan membership rolls, not "roles."
Posted by: Jim Harper at Sep 16, 2007 6:16:35 PM
"Surprisingly, we find few tangible social or political impacts of the Klan. There is little evidence that the Klan had an effect on black or foreign born residential mobility, or on lynching patterns"
Incredible statement. The very existence of the Clan are an indication of the level of racism in American society and also act as a signal to broader society that racism and discrimination are acceptable.
In fact conclusions like that above are a by product of the acceptance of lynching and intimidation of minorities.
Posted by: Ray at Sep 16, 2007 6:26:53 PM
My mother was raised on a "plantation" in eastern Louisiana in the 20's and 30's. She always told me her father was a klan leader in the area, but that she didn't think he harmed anyone. She told about the klan taking food and clothing to any sharecropper families who had someone ill or were burned out. They wore the garb but no one could mistake my grandfather's black mare so they didn't fool anyone. My mother said my grandfather took good care of the sharecroppers on his farm, paying them first when the crops were sold, etc. She grew up with the black kids around her and considered them like cousins if not brothers and sisters. I often witnessed her real affection for the folks she grew up with and theirs for her.
I'm not proud of this history and I certainly don't know everything about the situation, but just suggest that the effects of Reconstruction lasted a long time in the deep south. Good men did things we wouldn't approve of today.
Posted by: Gray Lensman at Sep 16, 2007 7:09:46 PM
The Klan was not as bad as everyone cooks it up to be. Interesting.
Posted by: James at Sep 16, 2007 8:50:12 PM
Hmm, should we be surprised that Klan members were better educated, and more likely to be professionals, than the average person, given what we know about radical Muslim terrorists today?
Posted by: Scott Wood at Sep 16, 2007 9:17:17 PM
In other words, for the last half century, the media has vastly overstated the historical importance of the KKK, probably for demonological purposes. Human beings love to hate somebody, and the KKK has represented the new Satan.
And for fundraising, too -- the Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, has become a legend in direct marketing industry circles for the vast amount of money it has extracted from elderly liberals by endlessly alarming them that the Cossacks are about to ride again in the form of the KKK, which for the last several decades has largely consisted of undercover agents (no doubt some of them agent provocateurs).
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 16, 2007 11:19:52 PM
In other words, for the last half century, the media has vastly overstated the historical importance of the KKK, probably for demonological purposes. Human beings love to hate somebody, and the KKK has represented the new Satan.
And for fundraising, too -- the Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, has become a legend in direct marketing industry circles for the vast amount of money it has extracted from elderly liberals by endlessly alarming them that the Cossacks are about to ride again in the form of the KKK, which for the last several decades has largely consisted of undercover agents (no doubt some of them agent provocateurs).
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 16, 2007 11:20:26 PM
Are these double comments just being generated by Firefox users like me? I don't understand why they always show up?
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 16, 2007 11:31:25 PM
Don't refresh. Don't press back. Click only once. If you are doing all this, then I apologize, and have no clue why the double posts. You'd think there'd be a doublepost filter these days. More important, why is the same CAPTCHA valid twice?
Posted by: NE1 at Sep 17, 2007 1:43:33 AM
Trying to sanitise the Klan...now there's an ambitious undertaking.
Actually the Klan was symptomatic of the social attitudes of the times and not the driving source. I socialised with black high school teammates in the 60's and was shocked at the extreme hostility we regularly received in public from white strangers.
Posted by: fred barrowman at Sep 17, 2007 2:25:03 AM
it should be noted that the paper uses data from Pennsylvania and Indiana - although both of these states had high levels of Klan membership (and political influence in Indiana) there has to be a question about whether you can draw conclusions about the whole Klan from these two Northern states. The authors actually say:
"Perhaps the most limiting feature of our data is that we were unable to obtain any records
on Klan members or activities in the Deep South."
which I think could perhaps be entered for the Caveat Of The Year Show.
(also, I think that using the percentage change in the Republican vote as your proxy for the political influence of the Klan is really begging a hell of a lot of important questions and doesn't convince at all).
Posted by: dsquared at Sep 17, 2007 7:08:29 AM
This freedom is the prime reason that attracts so many to academia in the first place, no?
For another idea that Fryer and Levitt might similarly appealing, read this:
http://laviequotidienne.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/exemplar-organisations-moral-dilemmas-and-academic-freedom/
Posted by: Shefaly at Sep 17, 2007 9:43:29 AM
dsquared has a good comment. In the 1920s the republicans were still the liberal party when it came to race.
Posted by: spencer at Sep 17, 2007 10:54:35 AM
An eminent economist, on page 21 of his recent book warned: "The error is to assume that a single instance of individual behavior [like joining the Klan?] represents a deeply rooted personality trait [like evil?]".
I remember a family discussion in the '50's, when integration was an issue, and my uncle admitted having participated in a Klan parade (in Ohio or Indiana) in the 1920's. Bemusedly, he wondered why he'd done it. Of course, that was before TV and most radio, parades were big, fraternal organizations were big (anyone remember the Shriners and their parades--Prof. Putnam would have approved), nativism was big (remember the restriction of immigration to a quota system favoring "old Europe"), prohibition was big. I'd agree with dsquared that the Klan in the north was not the Klan of the south, but not about the big problems of using Republican votes as an indicator. The Northern Dems were the party of the machines, and the wets
Posted by: Bill Harshaw at Sep 17, 2007 12:23:37 PM
It's important to note that the Klan is not the same institution when you talk about the KKK in different years. The 1870s clan was clearly a terrorist organization, but it was destroyed by the Grant administration.
The 1920s Klan revived the name, but it was more of a social networking organization. The Klan benefited from the backlash against World War I and portrayed itself as an American patriotic organization against the corrupting influences of foreigners. But as Ray said, that the Klan was successful in being mainstream is indicative of how racist the 1920s were.
The 1920s Klan fell apart because of its financial ponzi scheme aspects, the great scandals of certain members - especially in Indiana - and the growing power of America's Catholic community and its integration into the American mainstream. When it was no longer able to appear respectable, its members departed - but they all probably had the exact same mentality before, during, and after they were Klan members.
The Klan of the post civil rights era is another beast altogether. A fringe organization, while despicable, is mostly harmless due to its lack of influence. They are all linked, but are different.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at Sep 17, 2007 1:30:47 PM
Ray, I like your blog's motto.
dsquared, that's a great point. I wouldn't expect the Pennsylvania Klan to be like the Mississippi one.
You guys are missing the point on Republican vote as an indicator. Since the Klan was affiliated with the Democratic party (Woodrow Wilson said "Birth of a Nation" would turn any viewer into a good Democrat), Klan strength would cause one to expect a negative impact on the Republican vote. No effect is no effect no matter the sign.
Posted by: TGGP at Sep 17, 2007 3:38:14 PM
The Indiana Klan was very active in the Republican Party, but it wasn't a "get the vote out" organisation - it did its work in the Republicans' committees and primaries. In any case, surely the influence of the Klan could potentially have the effect of *losing* votes by forcing Indiana Republicans into unpopular extreme positions on Klan issues (in particular, anti-saloon measures). My complaint about regressing Klan membership on county-level Republican vote share is that I just don't understand what it's measuring at all.
Posted by: dsquared at Sep 17, 2007 3:45:32 PM
My great uncle told me he was a member of the Klan in Indiana. Since his last name was Levine I thought that was kind of odd. He told me that he joined because the Klan members would patronize his store more. I asked him didn't they know he was Jewish, he said some knew, but they only disliked Catholics.
Posted by: Larry SF at Sep 18, 2007 12:19:06 AM
The authors discussion of the effects of the Klan on black migration are particularly bizzare. They exclude all the states blacks were migrating from, and most of the states they were migrating to. There is not doubt the Klan had a substantial impact on migration. Landowners, factory owners, mill owners in the South all leaned on and pled with the Klan not to chase away their labor force.
Posted by: steve at Sep 18, 2007 11:19:15 AM
