Segregation serves dominants’ status maintenance, not an intermediate hostility phase

Evidence

In 1960, van den Berghe published an influential paper in sociology on “Distance Mechanisms of Stratification,” in which he argued that all systems of stratification devise mechanisms to differentiate subordinates from dominants and to maintain status boundaries between them. Instead of depicting segregation as an intermediate step in the expression of intergroup hostility, he saw it as one of two possible types of distance mechanisms that would necessarily be employed by dominant groups to serve their unequal relations with subordinates. To create an impermeable status barrier between themselves and subordinates, he argued that dominants rely primarily on either social distance mechanisms that dictate group-specific social roles (e.g., restricting the occupations subordinates can pursue) and an intergroup etiquette of dominance and deference, or spatial distance mechanisms (such as de jure or de facto segregation) that separate the two groups in their use of physical space. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 654

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Chesterfield’s etiquette-of-deference and dress-as-class/status-signaling passages in the vault (immodesty moral panics thread).
• SEED: Van den Berghe’s distance mechanisms recast physical separation as active status work, offering an angle on why ‘equal-status contact’ alone fails without dismantling structural distance.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 654