| 来源类型 | Discussion paper |
| 规范类型 | 论文 |
| 来源ID | DP15938 |
| DP15938 Reconciliation Narratives: The Birth of a Nation after the US Civil War | |
| Elena Esposito; Alessandro Saia | |
| 发表日期 | 2021-03-18 |
| 出版年 | 2021 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | We study how the spread of the Lost Cause narrative -a revisionist and racist retelling of the US Civil War- shifted both opinions and behaviors toward reunifying the country and racially alienating African Americans. Drawing on a large set of archival data from between 1910 and 1920, we reconstitute a monthly record of the staggered screenings across US counties of The Birth of a Nation, a blockbuster movie that popularized the Lost Cause narrative across large segments of the population. Our empirical analysis shows that the movie induced (i) a semantic shift in the public discourse toward more patriotic and less divisive language on post-Civil War nation building; (ii) a surge in patriotism with an increased enlistment rate in the US military; and (iii) a cultural convergence between former Confederate and Unionist states with a rise in the adoption of first names traditionally associated with the former enemy's regional identity. We go on to document how the racist content of the narrative helped foster reconciliation through a common enemy rhetorical argument. While we find that the movie strengthened discrimination against African Americans in public discourse and the labor market, our quantitative estimates suggest that 55% of the total effect of the movie on reconciliation was indirectly mediated precisely through this rise in discrimination. All of our findings are detected within both former Confederate and Unionist states. |
| 主题 | Economic History ; Public Economics |
| 关键词 | Reconciliation Narratives Us civil war Segregation African americans |
| URL | https://cepr.org/publications/dp15938 |
| 来源智库 | Centre for Economic Policy Research (United Kingdom) |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/544929 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Elena Esposito,Alessandro Saia. DP15938 Reconciliation Narratives: The Birth of a Nation after the US Civil War. 2021. |
| 条目包含的文件 | 条目无相关文件。 | |||||
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