2 - White Racial Attitudes, 1937–1950

Summary

This chapter describes and assesses the racial liberalization hypothesis: the notion that World War II had a liberalizing impact on white racial attitudes. Contrary to the Myrdalian account, however, analysis of rarely utilized survey evidence is used to demonstrate that there is much less evidence for the racial liberalization hypothesis than is often assumed, particularly when the focus is on measures of policy rather than prejudice. Although there is some evidence that the war coincided with decreases in anti-black prejudice (e.g., whether black blood is biologically distinctive from white blood),this chapter demonstrates that white attitudes toward civil rights policies—particularly federal intervention in state lynching cases—did not liberalize over the course of the war. If anything, white opposition to anti-lynching legislation actually seems to have increased. While the available evidence is more limited, whites were also largely opposed to wartime civil rights demands like integration of the armed forces.