De facto segregation was often de jure in effect, hidden by self-deception

Evidence

This suburban ideology of racial innocence underlay a predisposition to reject—or more often to fail even to consider—the abstract proposition that the government’s culpability in concentrating black residents in a certain part of the city should have any personal impact on middle-class lifestyles. — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 42 (#builds-on, via linked claim)

Haight (1980) argues that in much of what is called self-deception, individuals are aware of the reality they are trying to deny, but they create the public appearance that they naively misjudged what was going on. Others are thus left uncertain about how to judge and treat persons who seem sincerely to have misled themselves. The public pretense is designed to head off social reproof. When people are caught up in the same moral predicament, the result may be a lot of collective pretense. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 706 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Originally, as Gewinner’s address made clear, segregationists relied on populist rhetoric and stark racism to harness the discontent of working-class whites. But with each passing year and each new group, segregationists steadily adopted a subtler pitch predicated on appeals to white homeowners with middle-class aspirations of respectability and upward mobility. In time, they would learn to put aside the brown shirts of the Columbians and the white sheets of the Klan and instead present themselves as simple homeowners and concerned citizens. They would tone down their racist rhetoric and stress their own rights instead. … By empowering these groups to negotiate the course and character of neighborhood racial changes, the Hartsfield coalition thus unwittingly legitimized the very segregationist forces it had just routed. Their voices of resistance, which had only recently seemed so far outside the political mainstream, would now occupy center stage for the remainder of the 1950s and 1960s. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 106 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Segregation was deliberately engineered through planning policy, not emergent preference. — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 21; Racial innocence ideology let white suburbanites fail to consider government culpability — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 42; Suburban segregation was reframed as de facto and thus survived legal challenge — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 28 (+4 more)

Related

• Suburban segregation was reframed as de facto and thus survived legal challenge (similarity 0.84)
• Racial innocence ideology let white suburbanites fail to consider government culpability (similarity 0.83)
• Federal courts tolerated self-deceiving denials of de facto segregation. (similarity 0.82)
• Suburban racial innocence made government housing segregation almost unthinkable as a personal concern (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Segregation became the assumed natural norm while integration seemed unnatural #expands (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 447
• Called self-deception often is public pretense designed to head off social reproof #complicates (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 706
• Desegregation pressure forced segregationists to reinvent themselves as respectable homeowners #exemplifies (0.80) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 106
• Genuine self-deception and intentional social deception are distinct phenomena #contradicts (0.72)