Post-Civil War laissez-faire ideology justified black subordination without slavery

Evidence

Second, and more broadly, a strong case can be made that white racial attitudes have long involved some degree of less positive affect toward blacks than toward whites and a belief that blacks lack certain positively valued traits to be found in whites (e.g., industriousness, a capacity for hard work, and most of the qualities associated with the Protestant Ethic). Johnson (1949) pointed out that, after the Civil War, an ideology of laissez-faire individualism developed in the South as a way of justifying black subordination without the institution of slavery. These beliefs had clear origins in earlier proslavey doctrines. In particular, southern whites emphasized that blacks “would not work without compulsion” (Johnson, 1949, p. 130). This central claim had three subsidiary points: … (1) The Negro needs the direction of the white man in order to be industrious and actually prefers it to supervision of another Negro; (2) without this supervision and compulsion the Negro degenerates; and (3) the Negro is inherently lazy, shiftless, and licentious. (Johnson, 1949, p. 131; italics added). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3405

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Protestant Ethic / work-ethic racial ideology themes; echoes the Weber thesis and later work-ethic-based racial attitudes research.