Spatial segregation weakens paternalism’s coercive power over subordinates

Evidence

The ideological mold of paternalism holds a shimmering allure for dominant groups because of its unparalleled effectiveness in using positive beliefs and feelings to coerce subordinates. However, when the system of expropriation dictates a shift to spatial segregation and a more aggregated pattern of interaction across group lines, the paternalistic system of conditional love loses its coercive potency because subordinates are afforded more opportunity to develop their own systems of social support, freed from the overbearing presence of dominants. Under these conditions, subordinates begin to dissociate emotionally from the dominant group and to formulate challenges to the expropriative arrangements that have cost them so dearly. Dominant group members are obliged to confront a changed political environment in which the comfortable old avenues are slipping away. The initial disbelief and sense of umbrage (as in the indignant diary entries of slave-owners in the 1860s when their apparently loyal slaves escaped behind Union lines during the Civil War; see Litwak, 1979) yield slowly to the regretful realization that a new way must be found to communicate with and control subordinates. Dominants are goaded to try to mitigate, divert, and diffuse the potentially disruptive challenge that subordinates have begun to introduce. With the failure of love, dominants gravitate to reason to blunt subordinate discontent. Variants of the reasoned persuasion ideological strategy (which emphasizes individual rights at the expense of group equality) developed in twentieth-century American class relations and in urbanized American race relations in the post-Jim Crow era, as group differentiation depended increasingly on spatial segregation. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 673 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The New Deal inherited Fordist paternalism, racial segmentation, and gendered labor division. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 165; Bureaucratization eroded the paternalism that once rewarded frontline workers — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 595; Benevolent paternalism controls minorities more pervasively than open hostility does (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Physical segregation breaks paternalistic control and forces dominants to adopt reasoned persuasion. #corroborates (0.95) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 673