Socioeconomic Mobility and Low-Status Minorities: Slow Roads to Progress

Socio-economic Mobility and Low-status Minorities

This book concentrates on ethnic minorities such as former slaves, outcastes and indigenous peoples dispossessed of homeland. These groups are universally without power, usually undereducated, and always victims of their fellow citizens. The book asks why these socially excluded groups remain at the bottom of their social hierarchies as the poorest of the poor, even in nations long committed to equal opportunity. Their slow progress has four causes: obviously discrimination and poor education, but also low economic growth and cultural heritage. Low growth limits revenues for schools as well as new job opportunities, and perpetuates traditional exploitative social relations and customs. The cultural heritage of traumatic enslavement or conquest may induce behaviours by victims that reduce upward mobility. Together these four interacting variables suggest a “mobility model” that explains the impasse. The book develops this model to interpret the mobility history of five stigmatized, low-status, ethnic groups: US African Americans, Japan’s Burakumin, Afro-Cubans, India’s Dalits (Untouchables) and Bolivia’s highland Indians. The book also compares actions by governments and the groups themselves to overcome barriers to progress, including job quotas, mass protests, road blocks, and the kangaroo courts of Japan’s Burakumin. Meerman’s unusual cross-disciplinary approach and fascinating comparative case studies of success and failure will appeal to scholars, policy-makers, development practitioners, journalists, and advocates working on issues of minority discrimination, poverty and inequality. Jacob Meerman, a Chicago Ph.D. in economics, is a Scholar-in-Residence at the School of International Service of the American University, Washington, DC. He has held several academic positions, most recently as visiting professor at the National University of Malaysia. During his quarter century with the World Bank, he carried out a pioneering study of who benefits from government expenditure and has extensive experience in developing projects including the main trunk highway in Bolivia, irrigation in Madagascar, and export crops in Rwanda.

Routledge Advances in Social Economics Edited by John B. Davis, Marquette University This series presents new advances and developments in social economics thinking on a variety of subjects that concern the link between social values and economics. Need, justice and equity, gender, cooperation, work, poverty, the environment, class, institutions, public policy, and methodology are some of the most important themes. Among the orientations of the authors are social economist, institutionalist, humanist, solidarist, cooperatist, radical and Marxist, feminist, post-Keynesian, behaviouralist, and environmentalist. The series offers new contributions from today’s foremost thinkers on the social character of the economy. Published in conjunction with the Association of Social Economics. Previous books published in the series include: 1 Social Economics Premises, findings and policies Edited by Edward J. O’Boyle 2 The Environmental Consequences of Growth Steady-state economics as an alternative to ecological decline Douglas Booth 3 The Human Firm A socio-economic analysis of its behaviour and potential in a new economic age John Tomer 4 Economics for the Common Good Two centuries of economic thought in the humanist tradition Mark A. Lutz 5 Working Time International trends, theory and policy perspectives Edited by Lonnie Golden and Deborah M. Figart 6 The Social Economics of Health Care John Davis

7 Reclaiming Evolution A Marxist institutionalist dialogue on social change William M. Dugger and Howard J. Sherman 8 The Theory of the Individual in Economics Identity and value John Davis 9 Boundaries of Clan and Color Transnational comparisons of inter-group disparity Edited by William Darity Jr and Ashwini Deshpande 10 Living Wage Movements Global perspectives Edited by Deborah M. Figart 11 Ethics and the Market Insights from social conomics Edited by Betsy Jane Clary, Wilfred Dolfsma, and Deborah M. Figart 12 Political Economy of Consumer Behaviour Contesting consumption Bruce Pietrykowski

Socio-economic Mobility and Low-status Minorities Slow roads to progress

Jacob Meerman

First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

© 2009 Jacob Meerman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Meerman, Jacob, 1931– Socioeconomic mobility and low status minorities : slow roads to progress / Jacob Meerman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Social mobility. 2. Minorities–Social conditions. 3. Minorities– Economic conditions. 4. Marginality, Social. 5. Social mobility–Case studies. 6. Minorities–Case studies. I. Title. HT612.M44 2009 2008049308 305.50 13–dc22 ISBN 0-203-87747-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 978-0-415-77566-3 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-203-87747-0 (ebk)

For Joan Marie

Contents

List of tables Preface Acknowledgments List of abbreviations

viii x xiii xv

1

Introduction: overview, organization, contribution

1

2

Stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities (SRELIM)

6

3

A mobility model for SRELIM

23

4

The Dalits and human rights: the Indian dilemma

46

5

The mobility of Japan’s Burakumin: militant advocacy and government response

96

6

The Afro-Cuban story: a brief success

118

7

Bolivia’s highland Indians: oppressed but not conquered

137

8

US African Americans: updating the American dilemma

176

9

Comparisons and conclusions

213

10 Postscript: politics and SRELIM progress

233

JOAN M. NELSON

Notes Bibliography Index

239 255 269

Illustrations

Tables 2.1

Distribution of selected stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities 2.2 Basic data on the five SRELIM case studies 3.1 Education and family incomes of native-born members of selected ethnic groups, 1990 4.1 Village untouchability offenses in 11 states, 2001–02 4.2 Denial of access to government services, 2001–02 4.3 Police registration of crimes against Dalits, 1994–96 4.4 Distribution by occupation, total and SC, 1991 and 2001 4.5 Literacy by gender, total and SC population, 1991 and 2001 4.6 Scheduled Caste and total population below the poverty line by type of residence, 1993–94 and 1999–2000 4.7 Median of monthly per capita consumption expenditure in rupees by group and residence, 1999–2000 4.8 Distribution of rural/urban population by total, SC and non-SC, 2001 4.9 SC employment by class in central government civil service 4.10 Sanitation facilities in India, 1998–99 4.11 Caste marriage decisions in India, 2005 5.1 Educational achievement, Buraku population and all Japan, 1976 5.2 Selected survey results, dowa-district Burakumin and total population, 1993 5.3 Highest education attained, dowa-district Burakamin (1993) and all Japan (1990), by age groups 5.4 Buraku exogamy: birthplace of spouse, Burakumin population of dowa-districts, by age brackets, 1993 6.1 Estimates of life expectancy by race, Cuba, Brazil, and the United States, 1980s 6.2 Maximum educational attainment by race, Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, 1980s

19 21 33 58 59 60 65 65 66 66 67 80 84 89 101 101 102 114 124 124

Illustrations 6.3 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 9.1 9.2

Percentage distribution of occupations, civilian labor force by race: Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, 1980 Bolivia, ownership of arable land by size of holding, 1950 Progress to parity of the Highland indigenous population, 1950 and 2001–2 Bolivia, languages spoken, age six and older, 1997 Reconstruction by state, key dates and number of African Americans in office, 1870–76 US families with incomes below the US poverty line by race, 1940–2005 Pertinent federal civil-rights legislation, 1865–1991 Educational attainment by race 1960–2006, high-school graduate or more and college graduate or more US black and mixed black married couples, selected years 1980–2006 Incomes of black and white families for selected periods in 2005 dollars National assessment of educational progress: average reading and math scores, selected years, 1971–2004 Preprimary school enrollment rates by race and age, 1970–2005 Current parity indicators for five SRELIM Educational attainment, SRELIM, and dominant groups compared

ix 125 143 160 164 178 185 187 189 189 190 206 211 214 218

Box 2.1

Some causes and consequences of SRELIM disadvantage

12

Preface

South Side Americans In the 1940s, when I was growing up in Chicago, there were no Americans. The stock question on meeting a new peer was, “What a’ you?” He knew what you meant. The answer was typically one of the big four, German, Irish, Italian or Polish. But many other groups were also well represented on the city’s immigrant “South Side”: all kinds of Slavs, Lithuanians, Greeks, Hungarians, Scandinavians, not to mention my Austro-Croatian mother and Dutch father. There were also African Americans. But I mostly saw them as I looked through the windows of Chicago’s mass-transit “elevated trains,” as they rumbled and squealed over their ghettos. I was curious about them, yet did not dare break the taboo and enter one of their neighborhoods just to look around. Protestants, although approachable, were also exotic. Fall asleep on the south-side “El” and you might wake up on the far North Side with its big houses and standard English speakers. There, even the old folk usually talked clear, idiomatic, American English! They tended to be well-heeled and also believed in God and Jesus Christ. But we Catholics, we of the one True Faith, knew that there were many things wrong with their whole outlook. It was a world that provided abundant material for ethnic jokes, stereotyping, and celebration of a fleeting diversity. So as far back as I can remember, I have been aware of ethnicity. My world was mainly altar-boy Catholic, parochial in more ways than one, but even within this narrow confine there was substantial ethnic diversity. During my middle-school years, I was always amazed and somewhat envious of long, creative, and convoluted Irish replies to the good nun’s queries about missing homework or the like. The original “The dog ate it” has to be of Irish origins. It was quite a contrast to my own unimaginative, terse, fearful, and very subservient Teutonic approach to interaction with authorities. Yet I relished this world and look back with nostalgia. I also acknowledge it as an inspiration for this undertaking. Of course, the entire discourse with my “What a’ you?” crowd was in American English. Moreover, we of the melting pot were all growing up with the same values, customs, peer behaviors, norms about sex and marriage, as

Preface xi well as how to organize government and run economies and where to put our larger loyalties. We also mostly lost the language and other culture of parents, that is of the “Old Country,” and emerged from the pot as homogenized, mono-lingual American even if we did not think of ourselves in those terms. (Growing up, my nuclear family reserved the word “American” for people who had at least two generations between themselves and their foreign progenitors.) Unwittingly, we were participating in one version of the planetencompassing social transformation made possible by the Industrial Revolution. Our parents belonged to the Heroic Generation of mostly poor and poorly educated country folk who had made the great leap from traditional rural life to modern urban civilization, although they also crossed an ocean to a different world to achieve it. Yet we, their children, the first generation of “native-born Americans” always took for granted having enough to eat, easy access to education, freedom of occupation and religion, the eight-hour day, democracy, meritocracy, and many other blessings. After high school, ethnicity dropped off my radar screen, notwithstanding my fascination with the topic. Eventually I became an economist at the World Bank where I also became somewhat frustrated by the Bank’s failure to consider ethnic variables in project development or country analysis.

Gestation of the theory In 1998, following retirement from the World Bank, I was able to concentrate on ethnicity. I began with Donald Horowitz’s Ethnic Groups in Conflict and was soon much taken by his analytical apparatus, above all his partition of all inter-ethnic conflict into that involving either ranked or unranked groups. As discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, in ranked systems the lowest-ranking group is subordinate to all other ethnic groups; e.g., the recent black/white ranking in the American South. In contrast, unranked ethno-racial polities may have entire class systems within each ethnic group, as in Malaysia or Switzerland. Horowitz also spells out important differences between the two kinds of hierarchies in the nature of the ethnic conflict they generate (US black–white conflict has always been far less catastrophic than the civil war in Sri Lanka between Sinhalese and Tamils.) He has concentrated his work on ethnic conflicts involving unranked groups. As I continued my exploration, I was surprised to find that few social scientists were interested in exploring the implications of ranked ethnic systems, or to heed the Horowitz partition in framing ethnic studies be they statistical or discursive. I decided to address this apparently neglected area, a decision that led to the present book. The persistence of ranking, with its discrimination, exploitation, and hardcore poverty of the low-ranked minority, has important implications. Worldwide, the ongoing pace of economic development inevitably involves movement of traditional rural people to the cities and profound social change as a consequence. Usually the transition generates a paradigm shift in individual behavior, a spectacular broadening of opportunities and, not the least, the rise

xii

Preface

of governments that are likely to develop meritocratic and egalitarian norms. But ranked groups (in other words, the world’s socially excluded minorities, such as indigenous peoples, outcasts and former slaves) are less successful in making the shift than the corresponding majority populations of their various societies. It is plausible to believe that by the twenty-second century, most people on the planet will be urban, “middle-class,” and substantially educated. Yet, one of the conclusions suggested by the book is that there may still be hundreds of millions of ranked, ethnic, low-status individuals, members of stigmatized groups, trapped in poverty and on the outside looking in. Further study brought a second surprise. I found that the very diverse mobility histories of such ranked groups had similar causative factors. Despite obvious contrasts, they all were victimized, impoverished minorities who suffered similar antipathy and exploitation by main-line groups and manifested similar reactions to such experience. These similarities led me to construct a theory which explains most of the difficulties of the socially excluded in their quest for upward mobility. The theory has also proven helpful in interpreting government efforts to promote the progress of excluded groups. Although driven by normative considerations, the book makes few explicit policy recommendations concerning elimination of discrimination and other factors that impede minority progress to parity. Instead, it mainly aims to improve comprehension. Of course better understanding should lead to more effective advocacy. The book, however, does not involve advocacy per se. I hope that the work makes a contribution toward more meaningful discussion and communication concerning the plight of low-status minorities.

Acknowledgments

In constructing the theory and in applying it to the detailed case studies, I reviewed much empirical work in the social sciences and integrated many of their findings into my volume. I am indebted, therefore, to historians, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, legal scholars, journalists and economists. In many instances, I know them solely from their written work. I am particularly grateful to have had access to the careful scholarship and cogent analysis of two distinguished contemporary historians, Herbert S. Klein and Eric Foner. I am also indebted to Professor Morris Adelman for his support of and suggestions concerning an early paper that tried out the theory. I am not sure how the book would have evolved without the early grasp of Horowitz’s dichotomy between ranked and unranked ethnic groups. The undertaking also profited from several workshops devoted to the research. These were arranged by Norman Hicks at the World Bank, Carol Graham at the Brookings Institution, and Sumit Mandel at the Institute for Malaysian and International Studies of the National University of Malaysia. I also benefited from participation in the World Bank seminar in Manila on Social Cohesion and Conflict Management in 2001. I much appreciate my current affiliation as a scholar in residence with the School of International Service of the American University in Washington DC. Three of my publications based on the case studies encouraged me to believe that the work had value: “Poverty and Mobility in Low-status Minorities: The Cuban Case in International Perspective,” World Development, 29(9): 1457–81, published by Elsevier (2000) on the ascent of Afro-Cubans; “The Mobility of Japans Burakumin: Militant Advocacy and Government Response,” in William A. Darity Jr. and Ashwini Deshpande (eds), Boundaries of Clan and Color: Transnational Comparisons of Inter-Group Disparity, London: Routledge, pp. 130–51; (2003) “Oppressed People and the Economic Mobility of the Socially Excluded,” Journal of Socio-Economics, 34(4): 542–67, published by Elsevier (2005). Many social scientists, both generalists and specialists in the five minorities studied, colleagues, friends and advocates have discussed and commented on parts of the manuscript or on issues related to it. Some provided new ideas or corrected misconceptions and factual errors. Others provided additional kinds

xiv Acknowledgments of help. All in all, their interest and responses motivated me to continue the work. They number more than I can list here. However, I wish to thank and acknowledge the following: Suman Bery, Deborah Brautigam, Gautam and Jayati Datta, Alejandro de la Fuente, Ashwini Despande, Sakiko Fukuda Paar, Eduardo Gamarra, David Hirschmann, Maureen Lewis, Jancis F. Long, Glenn Loury, Edwin Luce, Martin Macwan, Alastair McLauchlin, Tatyana Meerman, Ian Neary, Emiko Otake, Bruce Parrott, Ronald Ridker, Catherine Sreedhar, Abigail and Steven Thernstrom, Kenzo Tomonaga, Tikamichi Uesugi, and Frank K. Upham. In addition I wish to thank the Inter-American Dialogue, many of whose public sessions proved particularly informative and pertinent to my own concerns. I am indebted to Kelly Witkowski for reliable, timely, and helpful editorial and research assistance. Finally, there is one individual who has read every word in the book, and commented on nearly every one of them: my wife, Joan Marie Nelson. For nearly a decade, our eternal discussions of parts of the work, plus her ideas, enthusiasm, and criticism, greatly improved it. She is also responsible for the Postscript. I am responsible for the rest.

Abbreviations

BLL BSP CNTCB COB CSUTCB

EEOC FY GDP HSP IMF INE LDP MAS MIA MNR MRTK MSJE NAACP NGO OBC PPP SC SES SK SML SRELIM

Buraku Liberation League (Japan) Bahujan Samaj Party (People’s Majority Party, India) Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (National Federation of Rural Workers of Bolivia) Central Obrero Boliviano (Bolivian National Labor Federation) Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (United Trade-Union Federation of Campesinos of Bolivia) Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (US) fiscal year Gross Domestic Product Head Start Program (US) International Monetary Fund Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (National Statistics Institute, Bolivia) Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement to Socialism, Bolivia) Montgomery Improvement Association (US) Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement, Bolivia) Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Katari (Tupac Katari Revolutionary Movement, Bolivia) Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (India) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (US) non-governmental organization Other Backward Castes (India) purchasing power parity Scheduled Castes (India) socio-economic status safai karamcharis (manual scavengers, India) Special Measures Law (Japan) stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities

xvi

Abbreviations

ST UN UNESCO UOA

Scheduled Tribes (India) United Nations United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Untouchability Offenses Act (India)

1

Introduction Overview, organization, contribution

… every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity. (Eleanor Roosevelt, 1958)1

Overview This book concentrates on socially excluded minorities, without power, marginalized, frequently illiterate, usually undereducated, and nearly always the victims of discrimination at the hands of their fellow citizens. Its basic query is why such groups remain the poorest of the poor, at the bottom of their social hierarchies even in the most promising situations such as long citizenship in wealthy nations committed to equal opportunity and other egalitarian values. I have in mind stigmatized, low-status minorities such as Roma (Gypsies), America’s blacks, Australian aborigines, India’s Dalits (Untouchables), Hazaras of Afghanistan, and hundreds, if not thousands, of indigenous peoples recently dispossessed of homeland and culture. Why do such groups suffer persistent poverty at higher rates than other groups? Most obviously, they are or recently were victims of economic discrimination and exploitation. Even, however, in many cases where public and private efforts plus various social forces have eliminated the most injurious and obvious forms of discrimination, they continue to make slow progress into the economic mainstream. Impeded access to education is part of the explanation. Lack of economic growth is also fundamental. In developing countries, slow growth implies scarcity of middle-class employment opportunities and limited access to public education. It also implies persistence of the status quo such that entrenched political forces (traditional elites, ruling tribes, religious authorities, etc.) and traditional social institutions (e.g., customs, norms) are unlikely to permit rapid redefinition of highly discriminatory social roles. Perhaps a more controversial cause lies in the cultural heritages of some excluded groups. Traumatic histories, such as enslavement or conquest and ensuing exploitation, have led to patterns of behavior and belief among the victims passed on from generation to generation that reduce their upward

2

Introduction

mobility. Together these interacting variables suggest a theory that responds to the basic query. I formalize this theorizing in two steps. First, in Chapter 2, I define the socially excluded as the set of stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities, or SRELIM. I only include as SRELIM those ethno-racial groups that have endured overpowering economic discrimination and other injury within the last century as a consequence of being descendants of slaves, or indigenous groups deprived of their homeland and culture, or social outcasts and who still suffer discrimination today. So defined, such minorities have been and generally are still “ranked,” that is forced into a position subordinate to the dominant groups of their countries. So defined, SRELIM also have much in common because they have all suffered similar injury and exploitation. Specifically:  The indicators of status, income, employment, education, life expectancy, health, and social deviance of SRELIM are always less favorable than those of the dominant majority.  Members of each majority rationalize exploitation and discrimination against the corresponding SRELIM by attributing to the latter myths of genetic or other innate shortcomings including defective intellect, bad karma, or moral corruption.  SRELIM usually share much of the dominant culture but may also develop subcultures that, in part, contradict the corresponding majority culture but support minority self-respect. These subcultures may lead to beliefs and other behaviors that slow their progress to economic parity.  Unlike many ethnic minorities, SRELIM are too weak to strongly threaten the larger state (although they may cause riots and take other violent actions). Some SRELIM have made substantial progress to parity with other citizens. Others are still at a very early stage. Still others have broken into smaller groups including some that have fully integrated into the larger society and others that appear indefinitely trapped in poverty. The second step is to formulate a theory that explains these outcomes. Similar characteristics and historical experience across SRELIM groups in many countries suggest that similar causal mechanisms operate to slow their progress out of poverty. Thus far, my findings from study of SRELIM mobility histories invariably support this assertion. This outcome led me to develop a theory or model rooted in the hypotheses used to define or construct the set of SRELIM. The model’s dependent variable is minority progress to socioeconomic parity with the corresponding majority. Four independent variables explain most of their slow progress to parity: 1 degree of economic discrimination in labor markets and school admissions; 2 pace of economic development;

Introduction

3

3 educational attainment of SRELIM; 4 their individual family cultural endowments. In Chapter 3, the book explores this model and cites some of the impressive multidisciplinary array of empirical evidence supporting it. Later, the theory is used to analyze the problems and prospects of the five SRELIM cases presented in the book. The case studies address four SRELIM: Cuba’s blacks, India’s Dalits or Scheduled Castes (Untouchables); Japan’s Burakumin; and US African Americans. The model is also applied to a fifth group, which appeared to be a SRELIM, but probably is no longer: Bolivia’s Quechua and Aymara highland peoples. These five groups were chosen because in addition to fitting the definition of SRELIM, they fulfilled three additional criteria: 1 For each group studied, at least minimal quantitative data exist that permit some estimate of their comparative progress towards socio-economic parity. 2 Their national governments have long made sustained efforts to integrate them into their economic mainstreams. 3 The countries corresponding to the minorities differ significantly in degree of economic development, ideology, and political institutions. Criterion 1 is a necessary condition for meaningful analysis. Criteria 2 and 3 are desirable because one research goal is identification of effective approaches to SRELIM integration. Including nations that differ substantially in their degree of economic development is also desirable because it provides a partial test of the model’s assumption that rapid growth per se is a necessary condition for rapid increase in the upward mobility of SRELIM.

Organization The book is divided into three parts:  The first part consists of this Introduction (Chapter 1), Chapter 2 (definitions), and Chapter 3 (theory).  The second part consists of five chapters devoted to the five case studies. Each of these traces the historical development of the SRELIM in question and analyzes its mobility history and how governments and SRELIM themselves have attempted to deal with their plight (increased educational opportunities, job preferences, antidiscrimination legislation, political empowerment, etc.). Insofar as data permit, these chapters also assess the success of these measures. The five case studies also apply the theory to clarify and analyze each SRELIM’s mobility history. They point to similar causal factors in the various SRELIM mobility histories, suggesting that the theory has value. In many ways the cases also elucidate and flesh out

4

Introduction

the bare-bones definitional hypotheses of Chapter 2; e.g., the forms and prevalence of stigmatization or of involuntary identity among SRELIM.  The third part, the two concluding chapters, draws on the case studies to compare progress to parity of the five minorities studied. It also summarizes and compares the actions that the SRELIM and their governments have taken to promote SRELIM parity. It briefly reviews the mobility histories of the five SRELIM cases in terms of the constraints implied by the mobility model. Finally, Chapter 10 briefly considers how political variables impact on SRELIM and government behavior with respect to promoting SRELIM mobility.

What does the book contribute? Social scientists have long been interested in the plight of the socially excluded. There has been an enormous amount of work on why these groups suffer poverty, humiliation and exploitation to a greater degree than others in their societies. This book is very much in that tradition, given its two basic queries: Why are SRELIM universally the poorest of the poor? And how do the SRELIM themselves, their governments, and others attempt to close the deep and durable poverty/status gaps between SRELIM and their dominant groups? The book follows in the footsteps of many others who have asked similar questions. It differs, however, from what has gone before in its syncretic, cross-disciplinary, and comparative approach. To address the two basic questions, the book integrates empirical work and thinking from anthropological, economic, historical, legal, political, and sociological perspectives. On one level, therefore, everything in the book is old-hat and drawn from the work of others. On another level it is distinctive in digging out material from all these disciplines and integrating it into a final product. Put differently, what the book mainly contributes is its cross-field synthesis. If it has merit, it is in large degree due to the quality of the parts from the diverse disciplines that make up the whole. Put more specifically, the taxonomic definitions and theory provide conceptualization and tools that lend themselves well to SRELIM mobility analysis. They pull together diverse history, parceled out among the social-science disciplines, into a more general analysis of cause and effect. The content of the book also provides a preliminary test of the usefulness of the mobility model in that the reasoning engaged in the case studies is based on the hypotheses that underpin the mobility model.2 So the study offers a “first cut” at constructing a cross-disciplinary theory to explain the slow roads to progress of SRELIM. Applying the resulting “mobility model” turned out to be a feasible and economical way to frame the analysis of each case study. Together economic growth, discrimination, education, and family culture amount to the binding constraints on SRELIM progress. Deal adequately with these constraints and social parity for SRELIM will become a reality.

Introduction

5

Of course, grand conclusions based on five case studies are like the proverbial single swallow as proof of the arrival of summer. Difficulties with my conceptualization of both SRELIM and the mobility model could materialize when considering mobility histories of other socially excluded minorities. As detailed in Chapter 9, one way to improve the model has already come to the fore: the behavior of government is a crucial variable in causing or resolving the plight of the SRELIM. A better model would integrate the determinants of government behavior into the model per se.3 Nevertheless, at this juncture, I find that the SRELIM concept and the mobility model are the most important contributions of the book. The book also makes several other contributions:  It helps clarify the widely used but vague and variably defined concept of social exclusion (Chapter 2).  It distinguishes SRELIM conflict from other categories of ethnic conflict, building on Horowitz’s distinction (1985) between ranked and unranked multiethnic polities. Where ethnic groups competing within a polity are “unranked” (i.e. not in a clear dominant/subordinate position) protracted and violent conflict is a frequent outcome. Where groups are ranked, “hot conflict” is unlikely. Analysis of ethnic conflict usually confounds both categories in ways that probably weaken analysis (e.g., the design of ethnic fractionalization indexes). Australia’s native peoples are SRELIM, while the unranked ethnic rivals of Sri Lanka are not (Chapter 2).  It shows that national economic development is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for bringing SRELIM into the economic mainstream (Chapters 3 and 9).  It illuminates problems involved in generating equal opportunity for SRELIM (Chapters 3, 8, and 9).

2

Stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. (African American Spiritual)

The SRELIM concept The book concentrates on socially excluded minorities “marginalized, without power, unable to take decisions over their destiny and often experiencing high levels of illiteracy, undereducation and overt or covert discrimination” (Minority Rights Group International 1997: viii). Even in the most promising situations, after their human rights have been guaranteed in national legislation and international conventions and their governments have eliminated overt discrimination and undertaken compensatory affirmative action, such groups remain among “the poorest of the poor” (ibid.).1 To understand why these groups are on slow roads to progress and also to indicate means for developing remedial policies and measures, I developed a conceptualization that applies to them across the board. This construct differentiates between them and other ethnic groups; e.g., minorities at war as in Sri Lanka or who cooperate as politically equal members of multiethnic states such as Switzerland and Malaysia. There is need for such conceptualization, inter alia, because current analysis of ethnic minorities uses an overlapping and not always consistent definition of “minority.” The conceptualization involves a taxonomic definition of the groups in question as “stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities” or SRELIM. As explained below, this categorical characterization is based on the striking similarities in the diverse histories of victimization and exploitation common to all SRELIM. In this chapter I also indicate some basic implications of the conceptualization and posit that because of the similar nature of their traumatic histories, worldwide, SRELIM have similar status, beliefs, traits, behaviors, and interactions with their dominant majorities such that a single theory or model can be employed to analyze and compare them. The chapter concludes with an indication of the numerical importance of SRELIM in today’s world, and an introduction to the five case studies.

SRELIM

7

Definitions SRELIM are defined as descendants of slaves, or indigenous groups conquered and dispossessed of their homeland, or stigmatized outcasts, that have endured deep economic discrimination and other injury. I put a time dimension on the definition: the discrimination and other injury as a consequence of the initial trauma have persisted in some degree to the present. I portray experience by a minority of any of these three trauma (enslaved, dispossessed of homeland, cast out) as traumatic victimization of that minority. Each case study in the book traces the content of the traumatic victimization of the group under study. The three traumas are not necessarily exclusive. Enslavement usually involves homeland dispossession, as may outcast status. For some of the world’s outcast groups, the initial traumatic victimization that led to their being cast out is unknown; e.g., India’s Dalits. The historical events that precipitated Dalit outcaste status occurred more than two millennia ago and are not known. SRELIM are also defined as ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary, and stigmatized by their recent (i.e. within the last century) traumatic experience of exploitation by dominant groups of their societies. Following traumatic victimization, such minorities have low incomes by the standards of their societies and are or recently have been “ranked,” that is forced into subordinate ranking to the dominant groups in their countries. Ethnicity is an elastic concept but all ethnic groups are minimally defined in terms of some degree of mutual affinity and distinctive culture. I use Horowitz’s definition: “ethnicity easily embraces groups differentiated by color, language, and religion; it covers ‘tribes,’ ‘races,’ ‘nationalities,’ and ‘castes’” (Horowitz 1985: 53).2 It is noteworthy that ethnicity has also been defined in religious terms: the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia was officially made up of “nationalities,” (nacionalnost in SerboCroatian) including Muslim, along with Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Hungarian, Roma, Slovak, etc.3 An individual who self-identified as Muslim could not be identified as belonging to any other nationality. The meanings of involuntary, stigmatization, and ranking are elaborated later in the chapter. For any given ethnic group, if both traumatic victimization and the defining descriptive traits (stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary) are present, I define the minority as a SRELIM. SRELIM are usually, but not necessarily, numerical minorities and they are victimized by dominant groups who are usually numerical majorities. Further, it is convenient to define each SRELIM as a single group within a nation state. In principle, it is possible to find minorities that are stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, and involuntary that do not have a history of slavery, nor of conquest and dispossession of homeland, nor outcast status, that have not experienced traumatic victimization. Were this the case, such minorities would not be included in the set of SRELIM. In practice, in all cases where I have observed a minority with the five definitional characteristics (ranked, ethnic, etc.), I also found recent traumatic victimization. Such traumatic victimization is also an important cause of distinctive behavior that I postulate is common to all SRELIM.

8

SRELIM

There is need for a time dimension in defining existing SRELIM. Ancient SRELIM have long disappeared as distinct entities.4 Mexico provides a recent example of evolution away from SRELIM status (with the exception of some enclaves of indigenous peoples). Most Mexicans descend from indigenous peoples conquered by the Spanish. As a result they lost most of their land, language, religion, and political autonomy. Near eradication of their culture was followed by brutal descent into serfdom and peonage, so that most Mexicans were clearly SRELIM in the late seventeenth and entire eighteenth centuries. Today they have left behind most of their pre-Colombian past to evolve culturally defined mestizo identities. Today, for every Mexican who takes pride in being of pure European ancestry there are at least two who indulge in the reverse snobbery of claiming to be pure Indian and ten who are proud of being mestizos … [The] shattering ruthlessness of Spanish colonization … led in the long run to the relatively harmonious syncretism of modern Mexico. (Van den Berghe 1967: 55 and 57) In contrast, on some Caribbean islands the Conquistadores not only enslaved, but their diseases then eradicated the inhabitants. These SRELIM disappeared with hardly a trace. The Mexican situation and its history of increasing mestizo identities calls attention to what has frequently led to voluntary assimilation of a SRELIM into mainstream society: intermarriage on a freewill basis between the subaltern minority and dominant group. This process has been very common in the United States, with respect to the integration of voluntary immigrants of various European nationalities. But it also has occurred de facto with respect to US SRELIM. The majority of the ancestors of most people in the US who identify themselves as Native Americans, for example, are hardly Native American. Many tribes are able to survive only by including as members mixtures as low as one-eighth Native American in ancestral bloodlines. In the United States, culturally, most members of native tribes are primarily American, in language, education, occupation, religion, residency (off reservation) et cetera. Further, after emancipation, many SRELIM who were numerical majorities in their societies gradually became the dominant groups in terms of political power, and other dimensions. This occurred, for example, among the black populations of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. As analyzed in Chapter 7, Bolivia may be experiencing a similar evolution. SRELIM are not immutable.

Similar SRELIM traits, behaviors and experiences Contemporary SRELIM have more poverty and more durable poverty than their corresponding dominant groups. There is also substantial evidence that,

SRELIM

9

worldwide, SRELIM have other characteristics in common: their statistics on status, income, health, disability, education, and social deviance (crime, substance abuse, vagrancy, vandalism, teen pregnancy, prostitution, domestic violence, unemployment, homelessness) are less favorable than their country averages. There is also much evidence for certain behaviors, effects, and outcomes that appear to apply to all SRELIM in interaction with their majorities that help explain these unfavorable characteristics: 1 If discrimination is strong, the associated behaviors and institutions suffice to “explain” lagging economic mobility of the SRELIM, relative to other low-status groups. 2 The group identity of SRELIM acts to reduce mobility opportunities insofar as majority economic prejudice and discrimination against the disadvantaged minority persists. 3 Some members of corresponding dominant groups continue to rationalize exploitation, discrimination, and stigmatization by myths of genetic and/or other inherent shortcomings such as defective intellect, bad karma, or inbred contamination (Horowitz 1985: 26–27). 4 Traumatic exploitation in the form of enslavement or conquest and forced dispossession of a homeland brings in train full loss or at least substantial dilution (or deculturalization) of indigenous culture and identity, and, in varying degrees, forced assimilation of the culture of the majority (language, religions, customs, and values). 5 But most such minorities have developed subcultures based on their historical experiences that in part contradict the corresponding majority culture, and support minority self-respect (Ogbu and Gibson 1991). 6 Where traumatic exploitation takes the form of pushing groups into outcast status, the groups are also stigmatized, suffer cultural impoverishment, and develop subcultures that partly contradict the corresponding dominant cultures but support minority self-respect. 7 For all three kinds of groups, such subcultures bring beliefs, attitudes, norms, values, and identity that may impede their mobility (De Vos 1992; Nesiah 1999; Ogbu and Gibson 1991; Waters 1999). Moreover, associated habits and other behaviors in part “inherited” via family culture may also slow their progress to economic parity (Bowles and Gintis 2002; Heckman 2000).5 It is posited that such “handicap” habits and traits are expressed with a higher incidence in the minorities in question than in the corresponding dominant groups. Removal of overt discrimination (particularly in labor markets and in education), whether de jure or by custom, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for SRELIM achievement of socio-economic parity. Those members of the minority who have “inherited” (that is have embedded via family/peer culture) dysfunctional values, norms, and beliefs, as well as unhelpful habits

10

SRELIM

may be unable to respond effectively to educational and work opportunities provided after reduction of most or even all overt discrimination. Moreover, such behavior may also be stimulated insofar as covert or unwitting economic discrimination and stigmatization continue to impact negatively on minority esteem and opportunities.6 Formation of human capital may also be reduced because of the distinctive cultural endowments that are induced in SRELIM from the interaction of oppositional values, beliefs, and behaviors with anti-SRELIM prejudice. In addition, even in nations that legally prohibit discrimination against groups and individuals, schooling for minorities is frequently of far poorer quality than that for politically dominant groups. Overt discrimination is not the whole story in explaining SRELIM lag to parity.7

Deculturalization In this book, SRELIM are defined as a dichotomous variable: individuals are classified as either having SRELIM identity or not. This is convenient but oversimplifies. Cultures are in flux. Members of a self-confident group with a strong, shared identity may readily absorb traits from “outside” cultures without jeopardizing their own. Indeed, such voluntary cultural diffusion is a basic element in human history. However, destructive cultural imposition is also a basic part of human experience. Conquest may bring the extinction not of the conquered group but of its culture and its disappearance as a distinct ethnic entity, as when a conquered and enslaved population is dispersed among families of the conqueror. Eradication can be sudden or a process in which one culture slowly eliminates another so that the subordinate culture recedes and is gradually replaced by the “imperialist” culture. Hence, at any given moment, it is possible to define a variable that measures the degree to which a minority’s ur-culture has been diluted (or has become deculturalized) by another culture. To the degree that this process is involuntary and is accompanied by exploitation and discrimination, it has undesirable psychological effects on the members of the losing culture (e.g., conflicting values and antagonistic norms). This reasoning clearly applies to SRELIM whose origins are a consequence of traumatic victimization by conquest-cum-land dispossession or by enslavement. Contemporary outcast SRELIM may also have origins in dispossession of homeland and culture. The Roma left India centuries ago for unknown reasons. India’s Dalits8 have a history of outcaste status that extends over more than two millennia. Their ethnic origin(s) and situation prior to the original or ur-traumatic victimization are unknown. In the case of outcast groups (e.g., Roma, Japan’s Burakumin, India’s Dalits, native Africans in Apartheid South Africa before 1980, etc.) traumatic victimization also takes the form of deliberate exclusion from many values of the mainline culture. These include education, most occupations, mainline religion observance, politics, rituals and ceremonies, and other forms of social life.

SRELIM

11

In addition, movement restrictions and endogamy requirements may further victimize outcasts. The traumatic economic and social impact of the social, political, and economic exclusion visited upon outcasts and the behavior that results from being cast out and highly exploited are similar to those resulting from the trauma and ensuing discrimination inflicted upon the conquered-cum-dispossessed and the enslaved. This is true of the two outcast SRELIM (Dalits and Burakumin) analyzed in this book. Individual means and medians for life expectancy, educational attainment, income and occupational status are less desirable than the corresponding means and medians of their majority populations. Within the last century, both India’s Dalits and Japan’s Burakumin were spatially segregated, restricted to exercise of ignominious occupations, and prevented from marrying into majority communities. Both groups were prohibited from intermingling with peasant farmers, which is the lowest-status majority group. One way to measure deculturalization is to count by major cultural traits: language; possession of homeland; occupational structure and economic system; religion; modes of education; mores such as marriage customs; political participation. Each trait could be weighted by its relative importance in identity formation. The extreme SRELIM could then be defined as having a score of two to zero out of, say, a possible total of 12 for possession of indigenous or ur-cultural traits, that is a minority that not only has lost political autonomy but also has lost homeland, language, indigenous occupational structure, religion, many mores, etc. Former African slaves in the Western hemisphere and the remaining members of certain indigenous peoples in the Americas and Austral Asia provide examples of scores close to zero. One could arbitrarily decide to define as SRELIM any group whose score is less than, say, four or five points. Nevertheless, I have chosen to define SRELIM as having both the five definitional characteristics (stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, and involuntary) and a recent history of traumatic victimization. So proceeding is less arbitrary and involves less judgment than attempting to stipulate a threshold value of deculturalization for definitional purposes, given the difficulties of measuring and even defining deculturalization. The behavioral hypotheses recapitulated here postulate that psychological and social consequences for the stigmatized and exploited descendants of peoples, whose cultures were fully or partially destroyed by force and the cultures of the oppressors substituted, include the development of traits among those descendants partly detrimental to their economic progress. The hypothesized causal chain is clear: trauma, stigmatization, ranking, subsequent durable discrimination, and path dependency are the causes of today’s cultures that reduce economic mobility. Some scholars describe this outcome as a “culture of poverty.” I stress that SRELIM are the result of traumatic victimization, of historical and ongoing injustice, and of persistent covert discrimination.

12

SRELIM

Box 2.1 Some causes and consequences of SRELIM disadvantage A. Traumatic victimization       

enslavement; conquest-with-dispossession of homeland; forced outcast status; exploitation and discrimination by the dominant majorities; ranking; stigmatization; deculturalization.

B. Ensuing persistent economic discrimination, stigmatization, ranking, etc. C. Psychological reactions to B  value and norm ambivalence;  anti-mobility habits and attitudes;  development of esteem-promoting subculture. D. Usual outcomes    

social exclusion; low educational attainment, poverty; high rates of disability and illness, short life span; high social deviance (unemployment, delinquency, substance abuse, etc.).

Elaboration of definitional descriptive traits Ethnicity as used in this study is defined above; the meaning of low status is clear. The remaining definitional traits are elaborated below. Stigmatized Stigmatized is used in the conventional meaning of having characteristics that identify one as socially devalued. Consideration of its etymology is instructive. In ancient Greece, stigma meant the “brand” (scar from a burn) put on outcast groups (Marshall 1998: 642). Dictionaries provide several meanings. In archaic usage it is still defined as the brand left by a hot iron, frequently imposed on criminals and slaves. In current usage it means a mark of shame or discredit, while the derived verb stigmatize means to describe or identify in opprobrious terms.

SRELIM

13

Involuntary identity SRELIM are distinguished from voluntary ethnic, low-status minorities of immigrants (Turks in Germany, Okinawans in Brazil, immigrant Latinos or Caribbean blacks in the US, Asians in Australia, etc.) that in the past generally achieved economic parity with their majorities in two to four generations. Frequently, voluntary immigrants bring cultures with them that facilitate their integration into their new worlds, and provide a substantial degree of intergenerational upward mobility (Ogbu and Gibson 1991; Waters 1999). I use the phrase voluntary migrants to distinguish them from slaves, refugees, or the cases of forced migration, as, for example, by members of India’s Dalits. Before World War II, hundreds of thousands of Tamil “Untouchables” were transported to Malaysia to become rubber tappers. Today, many of their offspring are still unschooled and appear to live as a SRELIM in part because of continuing prejudice and discrimination against them (Center for Public Policy Studies 2006). More generally, SRELIM are distinguished from majority groups in which identity has a larger voluntary aspect in that individuals choose those “identities” which they wish to emphasize, be they religion, race, class, occupation, etc. (Chiswick 1998). SRELIM are primarily defined as involuntary minorities because the dominant groups in the larger societies usually shape the identities of their victims. This facilitates their exploitation and makes it difficult for SRELIM members to escape that identity or radically alter it to eliminate stigmatization and ranking. Until recently, in many contexts such identity was inherited, e.g., slave or outcast status. Today, in many countries, discrimination is either against the law or at a minimum inconsistent with prevailing ideologies of equality. Nevertheless, de facto, stigmatization and ranking are still important variables in determining social behavior in general, as well as the associated involuntary nature of SRELIM identity. A further indication of involuntary identity is found in “passing,” the practice of SRELIM individuals entering into mainstream society by hiding their ethnicity and claiming that of the larger society. Passing is well documented with respect to Japan’s Burakumin, India’s Dalits, and US blacks.9 Ranked and unranked minorities The number of SRELIM minorities accounts for a small part of the total number of ethnic groups in part because only actual or recently ranked (subordinate) minorities are included in the SRELIM, while most ethnic groups interacting with each other within a single polity are unranked. Ranking occurs when ethnic groups within a single nation form an unambiguous social, political, or economic interethnic “pecking order.” This is Horowitz’s classification principle. It defines all ethnic groups as ranked or unranked, depending on whether there is coincidence or non-coincidence of socio-economic class with defining characteristics of the ethnic groups making up the system (Horowitz

14

SRELIM

1985: 21–24). Hence ranked (hierarchical) systems occur where ethnic groups (or ethnic subgroups) divide along class lines without overlap. Ranking may be customary and/or sanctioned by laws. Ranked ethnic systems lend themselves to analysis of poverty groups since by definition social classes are congruent with ethnic groups, while household income correlates strongly with social class. Polities, such as Malaysia, where one group dominates the private economy and another dominates in government are clearly unranked. As a general rule, ranked groups are largely landless and socially excluded. In the simplest case of ranking, each ethnic group forms a single class. Since status is determined by class, all individuals in any class, say class C, have higher status than all citizens in all classes lower than C. Hence, in ranked systems even if a subordinate group includes substantial class differences within itself, all members of the superordinate group still outrank all members of the subordinate group. Caste and slave states generally consist of ranked ethnic groups that interact with each other in an economic division of labor to form a single class system and economy. In the Southern United States before World War II, blacks and whites formed a ranked ethno-racial system of under-group and over-group: in principle, and largely in practice, all whites outranked all blacks notwithstanding substantial class differentiation within the black community. In medieval Europe the peasants were universally outranked by aristocracy and Church officials, although some peasants were far wealthier than the poorest priests. In contrast, unranked ethnic groups that form a polity frequently include entire class structures within each group that to some degree parallel each other. Modern Malaysia, with Malays, Chinese, and Indians, forms an unranked ethnic structure.10 Ranked minorities usually seek increased status within their country. In contrast, unranked minorities may or may not want political autonomy or independence. The kinds of group tactics and techniques of political conflict, as well as government responses, depend on whether the groups are ranked or unranked. The worldwide ascendancy of egalitarian ideology has made ranked systems illegitimate, but many still exist. National economic development and the associated urbanization that erodes traditional social relationships also undermines ethnically ranked systems in part by slowly eroding the myths, ideologies, and institutions supporting them, in part by promoting public education. In contrast to ranked systems, most economic inequality in polities consisting of two or more unranked ethnic groups is likely to be accounted for by the large income discrepancies within each group, rather than the discrepancies in incomes across groups. Sudhir Anand (1977), for example, found that about 90 percent of Peninsular Malaysia’s inequality by household in the early 1970s was explained by the very large variance in income within each of Malaysia’s three main ethnic groups. Today, although historical ethnic ranking is still an important explanatory variable, few completely ranked ethnic systems remain. A contemporary example near to the “theoretic ideal” is that of countries with a sizeable Roma (Gypsy) minority. Most Roma in any single country have low political,

SRELIM

15

economic, and social status, although a few Roma are wealthy. Rural India is still highly ranked in that most Dalits are subordinate to nearly all non-Dalits. In many countries that recently contained customary and usually legally ranked groups, e.g., US blacks, Indian Dalits, Japan’s Burakumin, much current behavior, policy, and inter-group discrimination are legacies of previous ranking. Violent ethnic conflict occurs in both historically ranked and unranked systems, but mostly in the latter. Illustrations come readily to mind: Shiites versus Sunnis throughout the Moslem world, the Kurds in Turkey and other countries, ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia and the Sudan. The Tamils of Sri Lanka demand an independent state in conflict against the Singhalese majority, with large loss of life on both sides. With incomes about twice the national average, Spain’s Basque minority has a history of violent attacks in a quest for separation from Spain. In Rwanda, a UN trust territory under Belgian oversight until independence in 1962, the Hutu majority killed more than 400,000 Tutsi in 1994. The Tutsi had been both dominant economically and Rwanda’s ruling minority until they were displaced after fighting in 1960, when many fled the country. Following the genocide in 1994, the Tutsi fought their way back into Rwanda from Uganda and re-seized control of the government. In contrast, few SRELIM have sufficient resources to undertake protracted, violent conflict with their majorities. Van den Berghe (1978: 320) made this same point with respect to US African Americans: … as a group they lack all the ingredients of a viable nationalist or separatist movement: they are too small a minority to matter much in politics; they are too poor and not educated enough to have a major economic impact; they are territorially dispersed; and they do not have a separate and distinct language and culture … organizing as a racial group against whites is a self-defeating strategy.

The Jewish exception: the cultural endowment Several readers point to the Jews as an exception to the rule of slow progress to parity of SRELIM with dominant groups. True, over their history of more than three millennia, the Jews were dispossessed of homeland, oppressed, impoverished, stigmatized, and recently suffered genocide on a catastrophic scale. Yet today, in many countries with a Jewish minority, Jews have higher average socio-economic status than the population as a whole. So Jews appear to be a SRELIM that does not fit the SRELIM mold. My response to this objection is that Jews have rarely had all the defining SRELIM traits simultaneously: stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, and involuntary minority. During their long history, they have at times been unranked. Rather than deprecatory involuntary identity, they learn that they are God’s chosen people. Hence they have not been wanting in self-esteem and self-confidence. Above all, the majority of Jews have not been deculturalized. Moreover, an essential element in their rapid progress to parity in

16

SRELIM

Europe and the Western hemisphere since the nineteenth century is their cultural endowments, which were conducive to upward mobility throughout this recent period. The following consideration of pertinent elements of Jewish mobility history provides support for these assertions. It also illustrates the importance of cultural endowments for individual and group mobility. In 1990, there were close to 18 million Jews settled in many countries. The largest number, about 5.7 million, were in the US; 3.5 million in Israel; 3.5 million throughout Europe; 2.3 million in Canada and Latin America; and 3.8 million in the Middle East and elsewhere (Lagassé 2000: 1,465). Before the establishment of the State of Israel, they had been dispossessed of their most recent homeland for almost two millennia. During this diaspora, they have been killed, enslaved, exiled, stigmatized, and vandalized in many conflicts with dominant ethnic groups. The atrocities took place at innumerable sites in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Rome, the Muslim states of the Mediterranean Basin, and medieval as well modern Europe. But at various times and places Jewish minorities also had status similar to other citizens; e.g., Muslim Spain from the ninth through the twelfth century. Indeed, over the centuries, a fair number of rulers welcomed Jews because of their skills. In parts of medieval Europe rulers sought the reading, writing, and arithmetic of Jews, skills that were then almost nonexistent in the general population. At times entire Jewish communities were held as pawns by the sovereign. Occasionally, valued Jewish scholars, physicians, etc. were retained by rulers. A specific example: Jewish knowledge of metal smelting, including the technology for producing cannons, led to their quick acceptance in the Ottoman Empire after their expulsion from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century. In parts of Europe, occasionally there was also a kind of cultural florescence within a Jewish community when Jews were energetically protected by rulers (Kahler 1967: passim). However, concentrating on their history from the Crusades to the nineteenth century, European Jews (at that time, the majority of Jews) were increasingly ghettoized and excluded from citizenship, while most livelihoods became prohibited to them including farming and landowning. By the end of this period, in many Jewish communities interactions with gentiles were largely restricted to commerce, including peddling and retail trade, moneylending and pawnbroking. Nevertheless, in the exceptional case, individuals rose to high levels in the civil services of principalities, as financial advisors and even ministers. Typically these individuals used their offices and wealth to defend and sustain the Jewish communities of which they were part. However, their hosts also frequently expelled entire Jewish communities and they were often forced to migrate elsewhere, including Poland, the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, etc. Ever unpopular with the citizenry, Jews were stigmatized, among other things, as responsible for the death of Christ and for the plague. During these centuries some forsook their Jewish identity by conversion to Christianity, although within the latter group many continued to practice Judaism covertly. Others lived through persecution rather than give up their identity as Jews.

SRELIM

17

However, once they were emancipated, (in the Netherlands in 1496, Austria and Germany in 1848, England in 1863, etc.) or migrated abroad, and were given the political status of citizens with occupational freedom, freedom of movement, and, where it existed, access to opportunities for education, they rapidly closed the gap in income and occupational status (Dimont 1962: passim). The story of Jews who migrated to the United States is a case in point. Probably the majority of Jews in the United States today are descendants from the mass emigration out of Russia at the turn of the nineteenth century. (Russia then included most of Poland and the countries in between.) From 1881 to 1911 nearly 1.5 million Jews entered America and were followed by another million in the next decade. The earlier wave was very poor. Most were more refugees than immigrants in that they were fleeing Russia’s Slavophilism with its cry of “one czar, one creed, one Russia.” Under Alexander III (Czar 1881– 94) the formula for solving the “Jewish question,” was also threefold: onethird conversion; one-third emigration; and one-third starvation. In achieving such goals, the pogrom became a basic policy tool (ibid.: 309 ff). More than two-thirds of Jews who arrived in the pre-World War I exodus remained in New York City. About half of these slept three and four to a room and another quarter five or more. Kitchens and parlors converted to bedrooms at night, and often to sweatshops by day producing garments in long workdays at low pay. However, these destitute people brought with them work skills, plus entrepreneurship, business know-how, and a high rate of savings, notwithstanding extremely low incomes. They also arrived with a higher literacy rate (about 50 percent) than most immigrants and an astonishing drive for formal education. By 1916, for example, their offspring accounted for the majority of students at New York City’s free municipal colleges (Sowell 1983: 91–92). Indeed, at times, Jews were so “overrepresented” in higher education (i.e. the proportion of Jews enrolled exceeded the proportion of Jews in the adult population), that many US universities and colleges limited the number of Jewish students. Further, for a period, many of the most prestigious universities also excluded Jews from their faculties. Jewish success in accessing education in turn led to their spectacular rise in the professions. Sowell provides data: in Cleveland in 1938, Jews were 8 percent of the population, “but were 18 percent of that city’s dentists, 21 percent of its doctors, and 23 percent of its lawyers.” In the same year, in New York City, they constituted a quarter of the population but “55 percent of the doctors, 64 percent of the dentists, and 65 percent of the lawyers.” By 1969, Jewish family income had risen 72 percent above the national average and “more than one fourth of all Nobel prizes won by Americans had been won by Jewish Americans” (ibid.: 92). The immigrants’ cultural endowments made possible much of this extraordinary performance. Jews maintained their culture intact through the centuries, including religion, history, cognitive skills, their languages, plus norms and values that proved very conducive to achieving upward mobility. As noted, that culture put a premium on literacy and numeracy over many centuries

18

SRELIM

when most Europeans were completely unschooled. Much of their success in keeping their culture cohesive and alive through the centuries, notwithstanding numerous catastrophes, was thanks to their written language in a world where most people were illiterate. Moreover, Jews [in the US] had the social patterns and values of the middle class, even when they lived in slums. Despite a voluminous literature claiming that slums shape people’s values, the Jews had their own values, and they took those values into and out of the slums. (Sowell 1981: 94) Sowell expands on this statement in pointing out that Jews were extraordinary on additional dimensions:     

condemnation of drunkenness; tendency to be highly industrious, strong family orientation; strong mutual support of upward mobility within the local group; the premium they put on avoiding conflict with other groups. (ibid.: passim)

Consistent with these traits, Jews in the United States have a history of extremely low social deviance (unemployment, crime, substance abuse, domestic violence, homelessness, teen pregnancy, etc.). In sum, rather than the typical cultural endowment of the SRELIM, Jews have a history of strong cultural endowments that have promoted their mobility. Because of the homegrown human capital that these endowments engender, once freed from the most destructive discrimination, i.e. that practiced by or at least condoned by the state, they were able to achieve an extraordinary level of education. Access to education, in turn, permitted them to seize many opportunities provided by the dynamic US economic environment. The outcome has also been extraordinary: during the twentieth century, America’s Jewish population substantially surpassed the remaining US population with respect to income and occupational status.

How many SRELIM are there? Groups consistent with the definition of SRELIM are numerous and some of them are large. This is indicated in Table 2.1, derived from the World Directory of Minorities, a compendium of data for “several thousand different minority groups and subgroups” that account for “ten to twenty percent of the world’s population” (Minority Rights Group International 1997: viii). All minorities included in the Directory are low status, but not all of them are SRELIM. Table 2.1 selects from this universe by attempting to list only minorities that unambiguously fit the category of SRELIM: outcasts; descendants of

SRELIM

19

Table 2.1 Distribution of selected stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low status, involuntary minorities, by selected countries during the mid 1990s (millions of people and percentages of population) Total Conquered/ % population dispossessed Bolivia 6 Brazil 162 Chile 13 Colombia 36 Cuba 11 Ecuador 11 Guatemala 10 Peru 23 Puerto Rico 4 Venezuela 21 Canada Mexico USA

29 92 260

India 953 Japan 127 Australia 18 New Zealand 3

4.0 0.3 1.0

67

Black Low low (%) estimate

Black Outcast high estimate

0.2 65.0

40

120

5.0 3.5 0.6

14 32 5

15 6 1

1.4 0.8 1.9

6 22 9

2 2 14

0.5 30.0

12

7

2.6 5.8 8.8

25 59 38

1.1 15.0 2.0

4 16 1

5

7 0.3 0.4

145 Dalits 16 2 Buraku. 2

2 13

Europe Total

%

8 Roma 41

111

165

155

Source: Compiled from Minority Rights Group, World Directory of Minorities, 1997.

Sub-Saharan Africans enslaved in the Western hemisphere; indigenous peoples of the Western hemisphere and Australia, dispossessed of independence and homeland as a result of European colonization. The table excludes the African descendant populations of Caribbean countries that have long constituted country majorities and are no longer SRELIM, such as those of the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, and Jamaica. The table may include some indigenous groups that have escaped traumatic conflict with the dominant group within their countries and whose native cultures remain intact. Most of the indigenous peoples of the world are not listed, including the scheduled tribes of India,11 as well as those of China which number more than 80 million. According to one source, most of China’s ethnic minorities “are assimilated into mainstream Han-dominated society [although] there is still a lack of socioeconomic advancement in a few cases” (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos 1994: 7–8). The table sums to a total of over 300 million SRELIM individuals.The actual total is considerably larger. Since World War II, many formerly isolated, indigenous peoples apparently have become SRELIM while others are now undergoing traumatic victimization that may result in the

20

SRELIM

same outcome. I refer to the hundreds of small populations (frequently less than 100,000) of indigenous peoples in rural areas, mostly in developing countries, bordered by economically more advanced, larger, dominant groups of entirely different cultures. These “first peoples” include hunter-gatherers, nomad/herders, subsistence farmers practicing shifting cultivation, etc. In the past they were frequently able to move away from groups bent on expropriating the land on which they depended for their livelihoods. Today, such indigenous groups are increasingly unable to flee to “greener pastures.” Rather, they are at risk of losing land and livelihood to individuals and organizations (governments, mining companies, loggers, plantations, tourist complexes, retirement colonies, squatter settlements, etc.) of dominant groups that expropriate land by many means, legal and illegal. These include deception and fraud, such as taking title in cases of indigenous failure to register traditional-tenure lands, gradual occupation of tribal lands by farmers of the majority, bribery of officials involved in land transactions, outright confiscation backed by overwhelming force, etc.12 Without substantial analysis, it is not clear which of the many hundreds of indigenous minorities at risk might be classified as SRELIM, i.e., as victims of contemporary forms of “conquest-cum-land expropriation,” followed by additional exploitation and discrimination. In contrast to these “new SRELIM,” there are many other minorities that have a history of slavery or violent conquest-cum-dispossession, or outcast status not listed in Table 2.1. Many of these are probably best classified as SRELIM. Close examination might lead to this conclusion with respect to Shan in Burma, Oromo in Ethiopia, Delta Khmer in Vietnam, the former Bantu slaves of Madagascar, Hazara in Afghanistan, some of the Orang Asli (about 44 different groups) in Peninsular Malaysia, some of the more than two dozen border peoples of Bangladesh, etc.

Costs of majority-over-minority systems As noted, the costs borne by individual SRELIM go beyond poverty, social deviance, and short lives. They also differ from their majorities in that a higher proportion of their members are socially immobile, caught in “poverty traps,” at the bottom of their nation’s income distributions, than is the case for the population at large. They experience a higher incidence of disability and illness (physical and mental) as well. In poor countries, they are more likely to be malnourished with a deficit in both calories and protein. Psychological costs, including a reduced sense of worth, are high. They endure frequent humiliation and stigmatization. More than most people, they suffer depression and stress and the consequences of stress in substantially reduced health and longevity.13 In addition to costs borne directly by individual SRELIM, their situation leads to heavy financial costs borne by the public, particularly in meritocratic, egalitarian, developed nations. These include outlays to finance compensatory and rehabilitation programs as well as welfare programs, hospitalization, prisons and other institutions responding to social deviance, foster parenthood, homeless

SRELIM

21

shelters, etc. They also include private financial costs of providing security against vandalism, burglary, assault, etc. Low social cohesion between SRELIM and others also engenders high interethnic transaction costs in market, political, and other forms of group interaction.14 Similar interaction among people sharing the same class and ethnicity are characterized by a higher degree of mutual trust. Further, because of low earnings and low labor-force participation, SRELIM can cover but a small part of their share of the taxes needed to provide basic public services, let alone the increased social costs resulting from SRELIM disadvantage. In sum, low-status minorities suffer far more than their fair share of life’s misfortunes. It is less widely recognized that, quite apart from questions of justice or achievement of a good society, the failure to bring SRELIM to socio-economic parity also results in high public financial costs borne individually and collectively. National reluctance to take the measures necessary for bringing SRELIM into the economic mainstream might, therefore, be penny-wise and poundfoolish. The total public financial costs of bringing SRELIM to socio-economic parity with the majority may be less than the increased public expenditure required for maintaining the current situation.

The five case studies This book concentrates on India’s Dalits or Scheduled Castes, the Afro-Cubans, Japan’s Burakumin, US blacks, and Bolivia’s Quechua and Aymara highland peoples. I initially assumed that all five were SRELIM and had the standard SRELIM definitional traits stated at the beginning of the chapter plus a history of traumatic victimization. As discussed later, this assumption proved no longer valid in the Bolivia case. The reasons for choosing these five were sketched out in the Overview of the Introduction: sustained efforts by governments to integrate them into the

Table 2.2 Basic data on the five SRELIM case studies SRELIM

SRELIM Percent of population population (millions) SRELIM

India's Dalits 167 Afro-Cubans 3–4 Japan's Burakumin 2–3 US blacks 39 Bolivia's Aymara 5 and Quechua

16 34 2 13 55

Country GDP per head 2005

Historic status

Emancipation

$3,452 $6,000 $31,267 $41,890 $2,817

Outcaste Slave Outcast Slave Serf

1948 1886 1871 1865 1953

Sources: SRELIM population data and emancipation dates are provided in the corresponding chapters. Population data are for a year between 1998 and 2002. GDP is in 2005 US dollars, uses a purchasing-power-parity concept, and is taken from UNDP, Human Development Report 2007–08, Human Development Indicators, Table 1.

22

SRELIM

economic mainstream; hard-core cases, slow to achieve parity; cases in countries varying in economic development and ideology; and, finally, at least minimal quantitative data for each study so as to permit comparison among them. Table 2.2 presents basic data on the five cases.

Summary of SRELIM conceptualization This is a good point to pull together the inductive conceptualization of the SRELIM as laid out thus far:  SRELIM are ethno-racial groups that experienced traumatic victimization in that they were enslaved or conquered and dispossessed of homeland and livelihood, or cast out by dominant groups and thereafter suffered economic exploitation and discrimination which have continued, in some degree, to the present.  By definition, SRELIM are also stigmatized, ranked, low-status, and involuntary.  Traumatic victimization and ensuing exploitation inflicted by dominant groups on SRELIM victim groups have deculturalized them.  Traumatic victimization, ensuing exploitation, and persistent discrimination also so affect SRELIM that their basic indicators of welfare and social deviance are less favorable than corresponding values for other people in the same country.  Worldwide, SRELIM share many traits (e.g., low educational attainment, high social deviance, etc.) and similar interactions with their dominant groups (e.g., they suffer stigmatization).  SRELIM are not immutable. Extreme deculturalization of a SRELIM may lead to its destruction as a distinct ethnic entity and assimilation into a dominant majority. Many former SRELIM have evolved hybrid cultures, regained autonomy and have discarded their ranked status. Many have also assimilated through intermarriage with dominant groups. The case study of the Aymara and Quechua peoples of Bolivia suggests that they have evolved away from SRELIM status.  The concept of social exclusion is broad, complex, and controversial (Byrne 2008). Analysts may classify certain minorities as socially excluded that I do not classify as SRELIM, such as voluntary migrants.

3

A mobility model for stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities

For many decades, sociologists have believed that any group subjected to persistent, systemic, and intense discrimination will eventually become a problem minority. (Jiobu 1988: I)

In this chapter, I construct a model to explain the slow progress to socioeconomic parity of SRELIM. The chapter also includes a review of research findings that support both the model per se, and hypotheses suggested by the model. My approach is to lay out the theory as assertions, provide context, and explain in general terms why the assertions are pertinent and plausible and then review the evidence from empirical work that underpins them.

The model The development of the SRELIM concept suggested a theory of their mobility history, which addresses why SRELIM make such slow progress in reducing the gap in income between themselves and other groups in their societies. The dependent or mobility variable measures minority progress toward income parity with their dominant majorities. Comparison of historical data on the five minorities indicated four independent variables that largely determine the rate at which SRELIM progress in reducing their income gap, in other words the value of the mobility variable: i) the degree of economic discrimination; ii) the pace of economic development; (iii) educational achievement of SRELIM individuals; iv) the content of the cultural endowments of SRELIM members. The key hypothesis is that the interaction of these four variables explains the recent mobility history of SRELIM, including the five minorities studied here. As explained below, scores or parameters on each independent variable within a certain range are a necessary condition for SRELIM achievement of economic parity. Parameters that meet this condition on all four variables for a given SRELIM are a necessary and sufficient condition for achieving parity. Hence, satisfactory scores on three of the four independent variables do not suffice for rapid progress to parity.

24

A mobility model for SRELIM

There is a consensus on the causal nature of two of the four variables: SRELIM advance to parity is impossible in countries that permit strong discrimination (slavery, bonded labor, forced labor, outcast status, marriage restrictions, inequitable taxation, movement restrictions, land confiscation, occupational restrictions, schooling limitations, voting restrictions). Second, achievement of economic parity is also impossible if SRELIM have less access to education than their majorities, or if the quality of the education accessed is too low. There may be less agreement on the relevance of the other two variables: pace of economic development and content of the cultural endowment. The four independent variables are elaborated below.

Discrimination Labor institutions and educational discrimination explain why there has been little economic mobility of SRELIM before their “emancipation,” that is the delivery of full citizen rights and statutory or constitutional prohibition of exploitation and discriminatory practices. (See Table 2.2.) Reversals of the latter may include, for examples, elimination of bonded labor or restoration of land rights or guarantees of a right to access education and occupations on a par with the population at large. Following traumatic victimization, each SRELIM has a history of restriction, by law and/or custom, to practicing only the lowest-status and most stigmatized occupations and a history of social exclusion including inadequate access to education (public or private). Further, before emancipation, the social context reinforces economic practice with specious beliefs held by the dominant majority in inherent minority deficiency. These inevitably encourage the conclusion that SRELIM are in the main capable of only low-income, low-status work. In the last two centuries, however, legal emancipation, increasing access to education, and a gradual shift away from belief in inherent minority deficiency have sharply reduced labor-market and educational discrimination in many countries. Nevertheless even following emancipation, much labor and schooling discrimination persist and explain much of the relatively slow progress to parity of many SRELIM. Even in fully industrialized countries, discrimination continues not simply at the key decision points of hiring and promoting individuals, but also by limiting minority access to education of good quality. As discussed in the following chapters, because discrimination is illegal or at a minimum “politically incorrect” in the five cases considered here, while prejudice persists in significant degree in the majority populations, the incidence and effects of discrimination and its modus operandi in the case-study countries have become more convoluted and difficult to trace. Research that addresses these issues may be most developed in the United States where the analysis concerning US black citizens suggests that labor market-discrimination persists, although its extent and consequences remain controversial. There is also strong evidence of prejudice and discrimination in many other realms. These include neighborhood-cum-peer-group segregation,

A mobility model for SRELIM

25

and the tolerance of poor quality of education and other public services in inner cities. In addition, among the US black population in particular, but also in the general population, there is widespread belief in the persistence of hidden racism “on the down low,” in the labor market, in access to housing and in many other market transactions. Crime and punishment represent another area where many researchers and most black Americans see widespread persistence of unequal treatment. In general, African Americans typically perceive a higher degree of discrimination than non-blacks, while non-blacks routinely underestimate the degree of discrimination suffered by African Americans.1 Economic discrimination in labor markets may be more destructive than many other forms of economic discrimination because upward mobility for SRELIM usually requires increased wages. In general, non-labor income is insignificant for SRELIM, while high-income self-employment is feasible only for a small minority within the minorities.2 Other institutions (property rights, contract law, labor law, bankruptcy law and procedures, housing codes, business licencing regulations, etc.) which support and otherwise impinge on the operation of factor markets may also have discriminatory impact. For example, India’s rural Dalits are mainly landless laborers, traditionally excluded from owning productive land. They have benefited little from the limited land reforms undertaken by some of India’s states.

Educational attainment There is a consensus on the necessary contribution of educational attainment in moving out of poverty into middle-class status. In part because educational achievement is such a fundamental, necessary, quantitative and well-defined variable, there have been many studies that seek to measure the relationship between education and upward mobility. The economics literature on factors affecting educational attainment is dense and the conclusions that show very high returns to education in status and income are very robust. Throughout the world, the data on schooling of excluded minorities (usually SRELIM) also show very conclusively that achievement of the latter is below the corresponding country mean or median. There are many reasons for this outcome:  Many SRELIM are so poor that the out-of-pocket costs of even free public education may exceed a quarter of household income, particularly if there are two or more children in school.3 Such costs include books, writing materials, uniforms, shoes, transportation, lunch, etc.  Poor parents may require the earnings of children to cover the costs of food and other necessities. This is frequently an important consideration in parents withdrawing children from school once they are old enough to work.  Yet, if discrimination is high and all higher-wage occupations are closed off to SRELIM, the returns to education may be low, reducing student and parent incentives to remain in school.

26

A mobility model for SRELIM

 Because SRELIM are discriminated against in schooling in many ways (poorer-quality teachers, larger classes, shorter instruction periods, intraschool discrimination that may include segregation in separate classrooms), achievement of the cognitive and non-cognitive skills and habits necessary for success in school is less than for non-excluded students in the same age cohort.  SRELIM parents are undereducated and less able to support their children in the learning process to the degree that others parents support them.  As discussed below in the section on cultural endowments, children in SRELIM families are likely to acquire cultural traits (as a consequence of their recent group histories of traumatic victimization) that inhibit learning, including weak self-esteem, attitudes that reduce labor productivity, rejection of the norms of mainline society, etc.  Finally, educational achievement in elementary and higher schools is associated not only with cognitive skills but also development of socio-emotional skills that are also needed for good labor-market performance, and that thereby facilitate upward socio-economic mobility. But SRELIM are likely to be disadvantaged in acquisition of socio-emotional skills for the same reasons that they lag in acquiring cognitive skills.

The pace of economic development Table 2.2, data on the five case studies, shows that they involve countries at different stages of economic development. This permits analysis to explore whether development per se brings improved economic status for SRELIM. Possibly, the best remedy for poverty of such groups is labor-intensive, rapid economic growth. Why might this be the case? Development requires urbanization, which weakens hierarchical and exploitative traditional social structures such as caste and other rigid class systems (Myrdal 1944, 1962 edn: xxviii). Indeed, the classic sociological models of development and the concomitant rural to urban transition describe a complete redefinition of social roles as the population shifts from rural to urban livelihoods. For example, social status based on ascription (e.g., inheritance) eventually gives way to achievement-oriented, meritocratic norms that leave little space for a significant function being assigned to ethnicity in class determination (Parsons 1954; Weber 1947). Seen from another aspect, economic development typically brings universalization of education, while, simultaneously, discrimination against lowstatus ethnic minorities loses legitimacy among dominant majorities. Hence growth and urbanization may remove the major obstacles to SRELIM achievement of parity. In a narrower context, economic analysis of the long-term development of labor markets also supports the thesis that rapid growth eventually leads to reduced ethnic disparity. Nesiah discusses one reason why race/caste segregation is likely to be less pronounced in industrial and urban centers:

A mobility model for SRELIM

27

urban labor may have more options, and may enjoy greater mobility than agricultural labour. Urban society is unavoidably more complex and the demand for particular skills and services, e.g., those of electricians, teachers, nurses, plumbers, bus-drivers etc. cannot await the availability of surplus manpower within the appropriate ethnic group. Considerations of efficiency and profitability, even from the perspective of the elite group, may encourage the upward mobility of the best talent, irrespective of race or caste. (Nesiah 1997: 230) Hiestand analyzed the operation of US labor markets and concluded that the occupational and income position of minorities improves significantly relative to whites only in periods of very full employment … In the absence of a buoyant job market, there are fewer opportunities for new hires and promotions and majority group workers fight for and tend to win those which become available. (Hiestand 1964; Hiestand 1973: 176) This effect may be temporally symmetrical. In the United States the mean black-to-white wage ratio decreased in the 1970s and 1980s, a regression that caused much concern since closing the black/white wage gap has long been seen as a key indicator of black socio-economic progress. The deterioration in the black/white wage ratio that began with the 1974–75 recession reversed during the long expansion following the recession of 1979–83 (Welch 2003). More generally, rapid economic development also implies rapid growth in the middle classes because growth typically leads to economies in which the declining share of subsistence agriculture is paralleled by an increasing share of middle-class jobs in total employment. Van den Berghe stressed this restructuring as the primary determinant of socio-economic mobility in industrial economies: the high rates of social mobility characteristic of rapidly industrializing societies are much more the consequence of the great bulge around the middle of the stratification pyramid which affluent societies develop, than of any supposed trend toward democratization and equality of opportunity. (Van den Berghe 1978: 165) In other words, size distribution of incomes in economies that have become largely urban and developed, typically have a large proportion of families with nearly equal incomes and status while the number of families with very low incomes decreases as traditional subsistence farming disappears. With respect to income and status, a great virtue of rapid economic development is that it is not a zero-sum game but strongly net-positive.

28

A mobility model for SRELIM

But labor supply also has to be “tailored,” to effectively respond to increased labor demand, for example, in middle-class occupations. Van den Berghe (1978) and many others (sociologists, economists, etc.) have long pointed out that the individual’s occupational level is to a substantial degree determined by the level of educational attainment. Moreover, growth per se brings very large increases in government revenues and household incomes that are usually allocated in part to increasing the aggregate supply of education. So growth increases demand for education but also generates the surplus that makes educational expansion feasible. Hence, growth generally entails increased mobility. An additional effect of rapid development is its likely association with declining resistance to the notion that SRELIM and other minorities should achieve socio-economic parity, and general acceptance of the desirability of equality of opportunity. In polities of slow growth, such as traditional subsistence economies, there is deep, traditional and widespread acceptance of the notion of economic life as a zero-sum game: some can gain only insofar as others lose. Under such circumstances minority advances are seen as far more threatening to members of the majority than in polities where rapid growth has largely destroyed this mindset. Chapter 4, the Dalit case study, dramatically illustrates this assertion. In short, rapid development and the gradual universalization of education and preponderance of urbanization bring unprecedented economic opportunities for SRELIM as a result of reduced discrimination, increased access to education, and improved job openings. This reasoning suggests a rank ordering of countries. To the degree that GNP per person is a marker for the degree of development that leads to reduced disparity between SRELIM and dominant groups, then progress of SRELIM to economic parity with the majority should be least for India’s Dalits, followed by Bolivia’s Quechua and Aymara peoples and then Cuban blacks, while Japan’s Burakumin and US blacks should be in the lead. Actually, the research shows that Cuba’s blacks made more rapid progress than the other groups and indeed had largely achieved economic parity with the Cuban majority by the 1980s. Why this occurred is discussed later. Cuba’s experience may well be the exception that “proofs,” or tests, the rule that rapid growth is necessary if SRELIM are to move into the economic mainstream.

Cultural endowments Even where the parameters for economic discrimination, educational access, and employment opportunity have been auspicious, many members of SRELIM have been unable to react favorably, presumably in part because they are constrained by their cultural endowments. Human-capital models similar to those pioneered by Gary Becker clarify this outcome. In one version of Becker’s model, capacity to learn or to capitalize on schooling is determined by the individual’s “earnings endowment,” defined as those parts

A mobility model for SRELIM

29

of the individual’s combined genetic and cultural endowment that affect her ability to acquire human capital (Becker and Tomes 1993: ch. X). Genetic endowment is inherited from parents. However, since we are analyzing and comparing groups, it is not necessary to consider the causal impact of genetic factors. Although genetic factors have variable impact on individuals, the differences largely “wash out” between groups. Much of the individual cultural endowment is also “inherited,” from parents (or care providers), as it is passed from one generation to the next. Cultural endowments include beliefs, values, and norms about the “rules of the game” for social and work life and individual behavior, and the habit of adhering to those rules. Individual identity, attitudes, values, and norms are acquired through family culture but also from the social environment in which children grow up, above all, peergroup culture. The degree of self-esteem, kinds of aspirations, motivations, and habit formation are also important facets of the cultural endowment, in a mobility context. Consistent with the earlier hypotheses about SRELIM behavior, this fourth variable, the quality of the individual’s cultural endowment, is important because of the postulate, in this research, that certain behaviors associated with cultural traits are similar across the many different SRELIM groups and often check their learning efficiency. For example, family-influenced work habits are less economically productive than those of the majority. As with low-status families in general, among SRELIM preschool children, cognitive skills such as familiarity with numbers, geometric patterns, language fluency, and so forth are less encouraged by parents and therefore less developed. Moreover, as indicated earlier, in reaction to the history of traumatic victimization, there is evidence that SRELIM may have evolved values and norms antagonistic to majority culture that may reduce mobility. Since the older generation raises the younger one, these defensive beliefs and behaviors may persist over generations and may distinguish SRELIM from many other poor people. Indeed the presence of these traits and attitudes within the family tends to short-circuit the impact of schools in teaching and in molding propensities to learn in ways that permit children to become good students. These same cultural disadvantages (a consequence of the heritage of traumatic victimization and ensuing durable discrimination) also reduce prospects of SRELIM individuals finding attractive work and may hamper their on-thejob efficiency. This line of reasoning leads to another hypothesis, namely that SRELIM individuals frequently remain in poverty over generations where such cultural traits are most strongly expressed. The hypothesized impact of family culture per se on the capacity to learn merits further clarification. Most human capital takes the form of formal education. But what might be called the initial dose of human capital is provided by the family (or other care providers) to the child. Such “homegrown” human capital involves parental preschool instillation into the child (not necessarily consciously) of skills, knowledge, habits, etc. that may facilitate absorption of education. It includes elements like language competency,

30

A mobility model for SRELIM

capacity to listen attentively, the inculcation of ideas of right and wrong, capacity for delaying gratification, emotional intelligence and emotional skills, etc. Together these qualities and inchoate cognitive skills provide the child with a capacity to learn. The point here is that the quality and magnitude of human capital embedded in the individual depends not only on the education supplied but also on the pupil’s capacity to learn, i.e., the quality of individual learning processes used by the child to assimilate education and acquire human capital. As discussed below in this chapter as well as in the US case study, there is strong evidence that the acquired capacity to learn varies not only by individuals but also across groups.4 There is also evidence that parts of cultural endowments (sometimes described as cultural deficits) may reduce the propensity to learn. So there is widespread acceptance of the importance of cultural endowments in determining people’s roles in society. There is probably far less agreement concerning the question of how rapidly cultural endowments can be substantially modified. This study concentrates, in part, on means to promote upward mobility of SRELIM. Simultaneously it makes the content of individual cultural endowments a determinant of whether upward mobility is feasible. So the question of whether and how quickly cultural endowments can be transformed is pertinent. Some sociologists (notably William Graham Somner) and some economists (notably Thomas Sowell in Race and Culture) have stressed the stability of ethnic cultures. An extreme example of cultural stability is provided in one of the five case studies of this volume: the Indian caste system is now in its third millennium as a set of institutions or folkways that deeply affect the behavior of the entire population of India, notwithstanding strong, concentrated efforts since Independence (1948) to substitute an individual rights-oriented, meritocratic, and democratic republic in its stead. In contrast, the work of Cornel West, an African American social scientist, implies that culture can be rapidly transformed in discussing how the behavior of US “corporate market institutions” affects basic values, moral codes, and aspirations by presenting “models of the good life principally in terms of conspicuous consumption and hedonistic indulgence.” Culture is “rooted in institutions such as families, schools, churches … and communication industries (television, radio, video, music)” (West 1993: 36, 12). He continues: The latter “have helped create a seductive way of life, a culture of consumption … ” through programs, advertisement and other means that promote pleasure as a basic goal in life, defined in terms of “comfort, convenience, status, and sexual stimulation … Pleasure, so defined, has little to do with the past and views the future as no more than a repetition of a hedonistically driven present.” And he concludes that this “market morality” is especially destructive of the culture of poor African Americans:

A mobility model for SRELIM

31

a people bereft of resources in confronting the workings of US capitalist society. … Like all Americans, African Americans, are influenced greatly by the images of comfort, convenience, machismo, femininity, violence and sexual stimulation that bombard consumers. These seductive images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out non market values — love, care, service, to others—handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward off self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America (ibid.: 16–17). Consumerism and hedonism promoted by mass culture have resulted in new kinds of personal turmoil and existential meaninglessness in black America. There are few if any communal resources to help black people cope with this situation.5 (ibid: 7) Support of the view that fundamental changes in behaviour can be “engineered” within a generation also comes from the case study of the AfroCuban SRELIM. Afro-Cubans have experienced radical improvement in education, occupation and social status since the Revolution of 1959. Indeed, almost the entire status and income gap between Afro-Cubans and dominant groups in Cuba had been closed by the 1980s, although it has greatly widened since then. In the other four cases, substantial disparity in status and income persists between the SRELIM and their corresponding dominant groups, notwithstanding many decades of private and public efforts to close it. It is illuminating to contrast West and current thinking in the social sciences, which stresses the dependence of human development on education and other cultural factors, with the moral determinism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. Rather than human-capital theory, the then dominant theory among the upper classes emphasized the natural depravity of the lower classes such that education was seen not as a cure but as “a dangerous thing” that reinforced their “dysfunctional traits.” The historian, Edmund S. Morgan, described views of the English elite and many English scholars in the late seventeenth century as follows: ‘[T]he English poor were ‘vicious, idle, dissolute.’ They were addicted to ‘Laziness, Drunkenness, Debauches and almost every Kind of Vice’ … Work was the proper cure for all, and it could best be administered by incarceration [in workhouses]. … The proponents of workhouses generally saw them as educational institutions in which the poor and especially the children of the poor would learn habits of work. … The idea was to ‘inure’ children to work, get them used to it at an early age so that when they grew older they would be unable to think of anything else. William Temple would have them set to work at four years, John Locke at three … the English economists tended to agree … that learning was a

32

A mobility model for SRELIM dangerous thing. It bred not only sedition but laziness if acquired by the children of the poor, ‘for few that have once learnt to Write and Read, but either their Parents or themselves are apt to think, that they are fit for some Preferment, and in order to it, despise all Labouring Imployments and live Idle rather than disparage themselves by Work.’ By the next century [the eighteenth] Bernard Mandeville maintained that regular schooling was only another form of idleness for the poor. … most of the self-appointed economists were convinced that laborers would work only when hungry. Higher wages or cheaper food would only mean more time lost in drunkenness. ‘Every one but an idiot knows,’ said Arthur Young, ‘that the lower classes must be kept poor or they will never be industrious.’6

As pointed out in the case studies that follow, dominant groups inevitably justify their exploitation of SRELIM in terms of the latter’s innate deficiencies, in morality, character, and intelligence. This similarity with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought in Britain concerning the shortcomings of the poor is striking.

Refining the definition of income parity Throughout the book I postulate that differences in income between SRELIM and their dominant groups are caused by discrimination, insufficient education, and oppositional subcultures. However, eliminating these presumptive causes of inequality would not completely eliminate income parity gaps. Even in a world of full equality of opportunity substantial group and individual differences in incomes would remain since people’s “tastes” vary. There are strong differences in desire for economic security, risk-taking, education, leisure, etc. Some people want to get rich quick; others want a life of academic pursuits. Some want job security; others are entrepreneurial. Some inherit a culture or even a business that fits them out as specialists in specific occupations; e.g., building pianos, producing wine, commerce, religious work, farming, and so forth. Some prefer going to school and increasing their earnings later; others prefer to start work as soon as possible. Some retire young; others do not retire. Some like mathematics; others major in English. Given the same schooling and similar jobs, people vary in productivity and some are paid more than others. Table 3.1 suggests that the these differences in tastes, habits, etc. substantially cancel each other out on variables other than education, when averaged across groups within an economy where the groups are all close to equal in opportunity, i.e., have similar opportunity sets as concerns jobs, as well as similar quality of family environments and access to education. Nevertheless, group differences in incomes are here to stay no matter how close nations move toward equal opportunity. Table 3.1 shows the amount of college education and the relative family incomes of US-born members of 20 different ethnic groups. In 18 of the 20

A mobility model for SRELIM

33

Table 3.1 Education and family incomes of native-born members of selected ethnic groups, 1990

White Black Armenian Cajun Chinese Cuban English French Canadian German Greek Irish Italian Japanese Latvian Mexican Polish Puerto Rican Scottish Slovenian Swedish

College Graduates

Family Income

Percent

Index

Median

Index

22.0 11.3 38.1 11.8 51.0 26.5 28.6 17.2 22.1 32.8 21.3 21.9 34.2 49.6 8.6 23.4 9.4 36.2 22.6 27.5

108 56 188 58 251 131 141 85 109 162 105 108 168 244 42 115 46 178 128 135

35,975 20,209 51,614 28,640 56,762 37,452 40,763 39,171 38,171 45,356 38,022 42,618 52,728 54,806 26,766 41,943 21,945 43,330 39,986 40,158

101 57 145 81 160 105 115 110 107 127 107 120 148 154 75 118 62 122 113 114

Sources: The table is taken from Thernstrom and Thernstroms 1997: 542. Its data are those of the US Bureau of the Census including Current Population Reports. The Thernstroms provide a detailed statement of sources. Note: College education is for all persons 25 or older. Income is measured in current dollars. The index for both education and income is the amount for the group in question divided by the total population amount (20.3 percent college graduation and $35,508 median family income).

cases, incomes are less than 30 percent below the overall relative median income for the United States (100 in the table). The two exceptions are Blacks and Puerto Ricans. In both the high- and low-income outlier cases the income differences are partly explained by large differences in higher education: low incomes are matched by low educational achievement and vice versa. What this suggests is that comparing SRELIM incomes, with those of mainline, integrated groups can be used to indicate possibly inequitable lags and social exclusion in cases of shortfalls in income and education by say more than 30 percent. One could also presume that a SRELIM had caught up with its dominant group, if its income and education were within 30 percent of the latter. With sufficient qualification, the income parity gap can be a useful tool in the mobility model. In closing this section, it is helpful to restate its main postulate: differences in the degree and pace of economic development in interaction with the other

34

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three independent variables cause a significant part of the gaps in incomes and other measures of socio-economic status between SRELIM and their corresponding dominant groups. Some of the work that corroborates this conclusion is reviewed in the following section.

Research supporting the mobility model Pertinent research is broad-ranging in the kinds of techniques and methods used and the large variety of social-science disciplines represented. The material reviewed is also drawn from a number of countries, although the United States predominates. Empirical studies of early-childhood development Much recent work on early-childhood development by social scientists and on the early development of the brain by neuroscientists supports the hypothesis that the home environments of infants and toddlers, and the cultural endowments that result, have critical impact on future performance in school and eventual class destination. Mustard (2000) reviewed work in several areas: biological (neuroscience, neuroendocrinology, neuroimmunology), animal studies (rats and primates), cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of human development, randomized trials of interventions to improve early-childhood development, and observational studies. These sources found that highly variable “proto-influences” on brain development of infants and toddlers, as well as the prebirth uterine environment, lead to substantial but variable gaps between genetic potential and actual outcomes as measured by scholastic achievement. He concludes that these early influences are routinely underestimated in attempts to explain differences in socio-economic status in large human populations. In this work, the intelligence quotient has a strong environmental component (Mustard 2000; see also Willms 2000). A fundamental policy prescription from this work is the need to intervene during the preschool years with both child and parent, beginning as early in life as possible to “short-circuit” the development of inadequate cultural endowments that may impinge on brain development. Economist James Heckman has a track record of theoretical and empirical statistical and other studies that stress the role of “family environment” (or family cultural endowment) in determining the production of non-cognitive skills that greatly facilitate the production of cognitive skills. Both skill sets are necessary for school and labor-market success. Most recently, he produced an up-to-date synthesis of his work on this topic as a working paper. In the paper he discusses non-cognitive abilities in shaping adult outcomes, the early emergence of differences in these abilities between children of advantaged and disadvantaged families, the role of families in creating the abilities, and the effectiveness of early interventions in closing the ability gap of disadvantaged children (Heckman 2008: 2).

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The paper concentrates on factors in family cultures that largely determine the path and development (or non-development) of the two kinds of abilities. In laying out his findings Heckman reviews a broad spectrum of recent work in natural and social sciences including empirical studies and social experiments. He emphasizes the complementarity of non-cognitive abilities in acquisition of cognitive skills. These non-cognitive “socio-emotional skills” include “motivation, the ability to work with others, emotional regulation, ability to focus on tasks,” capacity to defer gratification, etc. (ibid.: section III). His work stresses the importance of development of the two kinds of skill sets from infancy onward. It also indicates the very large role of maternal education as a marker for cognitive and socio-economic abilities of the mother that facilitate parenting which embeds similar abilities in her children. He notes that the poor progress of disadvantaged families in acquiring the desired skill sets explains not only weak academic progress, but also much of their high levels of social deviance including unemployment and teen pregnancy. Heckman believes that social policy should be more active in attempting to recast non-cognitive traits especially for children from disadvantaged environments. Much of the paper discusses how this should be achieved. He finds that the earliest interventions by the community to facilitate acquisition of the needed skill sets for the disadvantaged yield far higher returns than later interventions because in many ways, early acquisition of the skills in question are prerequisites for later acquisition. Further, to avoid “fade out” in later years after intervention, it is necessary that “effective early interventions” be followed by “continued high quality learning experiences.” Moreover “programs with home visits affect the lives of parents and create a permanent change in the home environment that supports the child after center-based interventions end” (ibid.: Section VIII). He also concludes that “remedial interventions for disadvantaged adolescents who do not receive a strong initial foundation of skills … are difficult to justify on the grounds of economic efficiency and generally have low rates of return” (ibid.: SectionVII). Empirical studies of educational attainment The assertions made in this chapter concerning the reduced demand and supply for schooling of SRELIM are in effect reviewed and conclusively shown to be valid by virtue of a very large amount of recent empirical research reviewed in Lewis and Lockheed (2006: 49 ff, passim). The focus of their book, Inexcusable Absence, is the large gap in educational enrollment among girls in elementary school. They find that more than 70 percent of girls aged seven through 12 who are not in school (60 million in total) are from excluded groups who account for only 20 percent of the world’s population. (They define the total excluded population as consisting of both ranked and unranked ethnic minorities.) Although they focus on the plight of girls, much of the empirical data that they cite concerning disadvantaged minorities pertains to both genders.

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Intergenerational statistical studies of earnings and education The human-capital model is consistent with statistical studies that relate measures of socio-economic status to educational attainment. Earlier in this chapter I posited that parents in effect “produce” much of their children’s cultural endowments, which in turn affect the capacity of children to learn and, thereby, to generate human capital. Empirical statistical studies of family income distribution and economic mobility indicate that higher-income parents help produce more and better-quality human capital in their children both at home and by investing in formal education for their offspring than do poor and/or uneducated parents. Similar statistical studies also show both that on average an individual’s human capital in large part determines individual earnings and that there is substantial positive correlation between parents and children’s income.7 Empirical work also shows that families with higher incomes spend more on their children’s education, i.e., human-capital formation. This suggests that, to some degree, children’s human capital is an economic good “consumed” by their parents, which is consistent with the human-capital model. The human-capital model is also consistent with the many empirical findings showing that poorer children on average acquire lower human capital than those of the better off. They do less well in school and stop schooling earlier. Presumably, this is, at least in part, because on average they embed poorer-quality cultural endowments early in life. Haveman and Wolfe (1995) reviewed a recent set of studies of US statistical relationships between educational attainment and earnings, as well as adolescent fertility. They provide a taxonomy of the variables, methods, and results of these studies. Most of the studies apply human-capital models. As usual, the strong relationship between parental socio-economic status and children’s educational attainment is confirmed. The studies employ a wide range of methodologies and data, including longitudinal panels, government-produced socio-economic statistics, and sample surveys. Some of the studies supplement the core human-capital model with a concentration on additional variables that may affect children’s cultural endowments and therefore their educational attainment. These include family structure (two parents or one; working mothers or not), differential “impact” on educational attainment of welfare income as opposed to earned income, and neighborhood effects (impact of average education levels of neighbors, their frequency on welfare, and unemployment rates) (Haveman and Wolfe 1995). Notwithstanding the positive intergenerational income correlation in all empirical studies, there is also substantial intergenerational income mobility, that is, intergenerational shifts in the position of children relative to parents in the rank distribution of income. At the extremes, such income shifts always involve positional regression to the mean. In the Becker/Tomes model the shift is explained in part as the result of limited “hereditability” of earning endowments so that the propensity to learn regresses to the mean over several generations.8

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For any large population there is substantial variance in the scores for aptitude and achievement tests of children with parents of equal incomes. Much of this variance in test scores can also be explained by differences in cultural endowments and “homegrown” human capital. Currently, in the United States, for example, on average, children of recent East Asian migrants acquire more human capital and income than other children whose parents have similar incomes. The culture of immigrant East Asians explains this disparity: East Asian immigrant children receive substantial homegrown human capital and strong earnings endowments. The latter include, inter alia high value given to economic achievement; belief that high achievement is feasible through educational attainment; strong belief that discipline, work, and reliability will pay off in educational attainment; and behavior consistent with these beliefs.9 As discussed below, in general the children of voluntary immigrants perform better on tests than those of involuntary minorities, such as those of this research, presumably in part because the latter have less effective cultural endowments. The exhaustive and methodical assessment of affirmative action primarily on behalf of African Americans and women in US labor markets by Holzer and Neumark provides further evidence for these conclusions. Their focus is primarily labor-market discrimination, but they also take note of research that concentrates on “societal discrimination,” which limits the abilities of minorities to develop their human capital and hence to compete on an equal footing in the labor market. The work includes several empirical studies that “document that family background and neighborhood characteristics adversely affect the test scores obtained by young blacks” (Holzer and Neumark 2000: 499). Work by psychologists The work of psychologists is also pertinent in demonstrating that emotional intelligence or emotional skills (partial determinants of the capacity for learning) are significantly determined by the home environment before the child enters school (Goleman 1995: passim). Emotional skills are an important cause of success in school. Dealing with anger constructively, impulse control, empathy, cooperation, avoiding depression and limiting anxiety, in short, managing one’s emotions constructively, require skills, attitudes, and knowledge that vary substantially across families and classes. By adolescence the specifics also include behavior that avoids bullying, substance abuse, obesity, early pregnancy, and criminal activity. But children in poverty have the worst record on indices of emotional skills. … poorer children at age five are already more fearful, anxious, and sad than their better-off peers and have more behavior problems such as frequent tantrums and destroying things, a trend that continues through the teen years. (ibid.: 233 and 256)

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SRELIM usually have the highest incidence of poverty and presumably, emotional intelligence is another component of cultural endowments that affects the capacity to learn where SRELIM appear to be disadvantaged. Hart and Risley confirm a dimension of homegrown human capital in their study of word acquisition by toddlers, namely “intractable differences in rates of vocabulary growth” by toddlers of different socio-economic status (SES) (Hart and Risley 1995: 191). Their work involved 42 toddlers (from 42 families) whose parents ranged from children of professors (13), to those of welfare mothers (6), with 23 middle- and lower-SES children in between. Each child was observed in the home for an hour per month for the first two and a half years in which she/he spoke in understandable words. For each observation hour, the observers recorded the production of spoken words by the toddlers and that of the mother, and others, speaking to the child. They also recorded spontaneous speech of the 42 toddlers during 15-minute free-play periods in preschools. From these records they derived a cumulative list of words used meaningfully by each child over about the entire observation period. By age three, when observation was completed, the number of words of each toddler’s “dictionary” varied enormously. The top learners (mostly but not entirely the children of professors) were acquiring new words at rates several times higher than the slowest learners. They found that frequency and length of utterance, plus growth rate of cumulative vocabularies was strongly correlated with socioeconomic status. There was also a strong correlation between the volume of parent-initiated speech addressed to the child per observation hour and dictionary size. They found that size of vocabulary and its rate of growth was strongly correlated with the child’s language production per hour as well: … by the time the children were 3 years old, parents in less economically favored circumstances had said fewer different words in their cumulative monthly vocabularies than had the children in the most economically advantaged families in the same period of time. (ibid.: xii–xiii) Their work “seemed to predict findings of school research: that in high school many children from families in poverty lack the vocabulary used in more advanced textbooks” (ibid.: 11). Another remarkable finding: in interactive speech, the professor parents were at least several times more likely to encourage the child’s utterances by affirmations that approve, repeat, and/or expand the child’s utterances than welfare or working-class parents. The pattern was inverted for discouragements: welfare parents had the highest rate, and professionals the lowest rates of discouragements (ibid.: 253). Research of anthropologists and sociologists Some anthropologists and sociologists have concentrated directly on socioeconomic mobility and cultural inheritance. Oscar Lewis conceptualized a

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“culture of poverty” to explain why many low-status groups remain in poverty as a way of life “passed down from generation to generation along family lines.” Lewis found that this occurs with greatest frequency in economies that persist in a “high rate of unemployment and under employment for unskilled labor.” Some of the poverty group characteristics that he emphasized include low self-esteem, low levels of aspiration, time orientation limited to the present, reluctance or inability to defer gratification. He concluded “By the time slum children are six or seven they have usually absorbed the basic values and attitudes of their subculture and are not psychologically geared to take full advantage of changing conditions or increased opportunities which may occur in their lifetime” (Lewis 1965: xlii–xlv). In the United States, explaining low upward social mobility in terms of a group’s culture, as does Oscar Lewis, competes with explanations that emphasize the dysfunctional behavioral incentives induced by the social environment. Thus ongoing discrimination and resulting barriers to progress (including limited access to education and good jobs), that impede underclasses are seen as “structural” elements that also cause most of their social deviance. Many US “structuralists” discredit and dismiss Lewis as “blaming the victim.” Other writers emphasize that the two approaches are complementary (Waters 1999: 99 and passim). In this study, the oppositional culture of SRELIM (see below) is seen as an important determinant of dysfunctional behavior, but the study also postulates that today’s oppositional culture is largely a product of past traumatic victimization, not a moral judgment. The mobility model is also consistent with the work of the anthropologists Ogbu, Gibson, and their associates who, in effect, emphasize how highly disadvantaged social environments affect cultural endowments. They explain the very different mobility experience of voluntary immigrants compared to that of involuntary minorities (in their definition, groups exploited for generations via outcast, slavery, or colonization status) by “cultural models [that] shape attitudes, knowledge and competencies.” Voluntary immigrants have a frame of reference that entails comparing their present situation with … “back home” [which leads them to believe] that they have more and better opportunities in their host society for themselves or for their children. … the immigrants think that even if they are allowed only marginal jobs they are better off in their host society than they would be in their homeland. In contrast, involuntary minorities “tend to interpret the discrimination against them as permanent and institutionalized” (Ogbu and Gibson 1991: 11–17). Writing 19 years ago, Ogbu found, for example, that black Americans are ambivalent about education as the way to get ahead, because of the exclusion of US blacks from high-status occupational categories. Moreover, “Crossing cultural boundaries, behaving in a manner regarded as falling under the white American cultural frames of reference, is threatening to their minority identity

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and security, but also to their solidarity” (Ogbu 1990: 155). Ogbu concluded that the low capacities of involuntary minorities to learn in school are largely a consequence of their heritage and their current experience of exploitative economic relations and their belief systems. The work of George De Vos (1992), psychologist and anthropologist, on low-status ethnic minorities (including Koreans in Japan, Italians in the US, and Japan’s Burakumin) parallels that of Ogbu and Gibson in its analysis of minority identity and its findings of how identity molds behavior that may not be conducive to upward mobility. His work is based on sample surveys and extended interviews of minority members. His findings with respect to minority self-image, including weak self-esteem, impact of various minority subcultures on self-discipline, attitudes toward the legitimacy of authority, and “oppositional identity” are largely consistent with Ogbu’s model of minority behavior. De Vos is illuminating in discussing the consequences of negative identity per se. He notes that: There are severe inner problems with developing a conscious negative self-image; but a developing negative self-image is not always conscious. [161] [Moreover,] social discrimination tends to induce expressive forms of deviancy in individual behavior … [For] minority-group members there are also active inducements to flout the rules of majority society either symbolically or actually. A basic defensive maneuver is to find methods of trickery to “outwit” the authorities. By so doing, the minoritygroup member salvages some self-esteem and “gets back” at an authority structure which is perceived as operating to maintain degradation or to hinder freedom rather than to benefit the individual. [164] … although a number of individuals from minority groups nonetheless have the strength of purpose and the ego capacities to survive in spite of discrimination, a goodly number react with general apathy and lack of involvement with the educational process. In other words they become relatively impermeable to the educational experience afforded them in public schools. … The IQ findings we reported are not measuring inferior biological intelligence. They are measuring the massive resistance, both unconscious as well as conscious to the educational efforts directed toward them by the majority community. (De Vos 1992: 161, 164, 165) De Vos also emphasizes that peer-group dynamics may reduce the propensity to learn of many of their members. He notes that in many situations of adultstatus degradation, the family moral authority of socially alienated parents has itself been replaced by a defensive peer-group orientation: In a plural society, minority peer groups [usually a group of fellow pupils of the same age] not only resist the demands of the dominant society, they sometimes prepare their members for a sense of coming failure. Collectively

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maintained defensive attitudes both prevent attempts to succeed, and prevent any crucial self-examination for unsatisfactory life circumstances. The group collectively helps place blame for any personal failure on majority prejudice. (ibid.: 238–42) De Vos concludes that because of these “defensive attitudes,” the young person may be only “selectively permeable” to school learning because it conflicts with the culture (attitudes, values, customs) of the peer group. He provides a good illustration of this conclusion in discussing discrimination against Koreans in Japan: Korean children in Japan seem to do relatively poorly in school for similar reasons found to operate in some American minorities, such as among African Americans or Mexican Americans … . Individuals do not identify or internalize standards and expectations set for them by members of the external majority. [Rather], The peer group … becomes the arena for demonstration of prowess and competence, the source of appreciative judgment from other youth. [Hence] the peer group becomes the principal source of affiliative gratification, discouraging acquiescence and conformity to the school as an institution. (ibid.: 198) Work on black oppositional culture in the United States The US has a large and diverse literature on oppositional identity and how it affects cultural endowments, including the capacity to learn. It is profuse with respect to the cultural impact of the history and current experience of exploitation by African Americans. A major theme is issues of identity, including the frequently destructive impact of neighborhood and peer culture on young black people. Daniel Moynihan, for example, sounded the alarm in the 1960s at the consequences of fatherless families and also the “tangle of pathology” immersing the poorest black children (Moynihan 1965). Recent work by John McWhorter, a black academic, directly builds on the persistence of “oppositional identity” and disparages the “cult of victimization” among middle- and upper-class blacks that encourages black children to value education as means to social betterment, but to distrust or even scorn it as a basic value. He notes that blacks distrust “white culture,” because they continue to perceive themselves as victims of endemic racism that checks many attempts at black betterment (McWhorter 2000). Most recently, two black leaders, Bill Cosby, the humorist, and Alvin Poussaint, professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, put out a book for the African American public that takes as its point of departure the consequences for black boys of growing up fatherless. The two authors emphasize the need and describe the means to overcome the forces of self-destruction within the African

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American community. Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors (2007) is in part close to a handbook for parenting, particularly in America’s inner cities. In the US immigration literature, the classic path to social integration for voluntary immigrants is a process in which the upward-mobile third generation is fully integrated into mainstream American culture, and has discarded nearly all of the pre-immigration culture of the forefathers, including language, customs, and norms. More recent theorizing stresses that rapid and full integration is not a necessary outcome. Some stress “linear ethnicity,” in which children of immigrants retain parentally transferred ethnic attachments and identities; e.g., among the very mobile immigrants from East Asia. As noted above, voluntary immigrants “take in stride” low status and discrimination, but frequently stress work, saving, and education as means to upward mobility. In contrast, Ogbu notes that African Americans do not see discrimination against them as temporary barriers to be overcome. Instead, “recognizing that they belong to a subordinate, indeed, a disparaged minority,” they compare their situation with that of their white American peers. The prejudice against them seems permanent, indeed institutionalized (Ogbu 1990: 152). Mary Waters carried this analysis further in her work on the mobility paths of recent West Indies immigrants to New York City, in contrast to those of the traditional, “involuntary” US African American population: This understanding of their situation leads the involuntary minorities to conclude that solidarity and challenges to the rules of the dominant society are the only way to improve their situation … . These “oppositional identities” mean that involuntary minorities come largely to identify themselves in their core identities in terms of their opposition to the dominant group. For blacks in America, Ogbu asserts, the very meaning of being black involves not being white. A strong value is placed on solidarity and opposition to rules perceived as being against them. (Waters 1999: 142) In other words, the way to self-respect and to “start acting real” is rejection of majority cultural norms and the requirement to “act white.” For many innercity African Americans, acting white betrays group solidarity. The upwardly mobile young man may come up against peer-group pressures and feel disloyal to his group. Many blacks stress collective effort and affirmative action as the only way to get ahead. Ogbu’s work shows that that such “cultural inversion” involves “the tendency for members of one population … to regard certain forms of behavior, events, symbols, and meanings as inappropriate, precisely because they are characteristic of members of another population” (Ogbu 1990: 148). For similar reasons, certain kinds of behavior may be highly prized. The use of “black vernacular” in the United States has these effects. A young woman

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from New York City describes some of the reasons why it was so pervasive in Harlem, where she grew up: “We feel more unified. We have our own thing … . It makes us feel stronger altogether—the fact that we can talk in a way that other people wouldn’t understand.”10 Racial social cohesion norms and attitudes are also brought to bear by groups and individuals within the black community in judging the behavior of their compatriots who have most successfully integrated into mainline US society and have achieved high status as writers, entertainers, political leaders, academics, or business people, etc. Some of these “success stories” have been stigmatized as turncoats or race traitors, and ostracized for one or another failure to conform to group expectations (Kennedy 2008). Clarence Thomas, the first black Justice of the US Supreme Court, affords an example. He is routinely maligned and defamed by prominent African American civil-rights leaders, ministers, journalists, etc. as “a sell out” to interests destructive of black American advancement because of his opposition to affirmative action (ibid.). Two economists, Akerlof and Kranton (2005), have developed a theory of labor productivity consistent with the oppositional-identity thesis that yields insights into SRELIM behavior. They posit a world of firms which hire either “Insiders” or “Outsiders.” Further, employee work effort is determined by degree of worker identification with the firm. Workers who identify with the firm’s mission and goals are Insiders. All other employees are Outsiders, who are in the firm solely for the monetary wage. Insiders make strong efforts in their work; Outsiders “slack off.” Insiders derive “identity utility,” from performing at an ideal high level while Outsiders derive identity utility from working at an ideal low level. Both insiders and outsiders suffer disutility from failure to perform at their respective ideal levels. The wage necessary to elicit high-level performance from Outsiders (if such performance is desired by firm management) includes a component which offsets the disutility to Outsiders of high-effort behavior dissonant with their low-level ideal. Firms may find that hiring only Insiders, or providing training that converts all employees to Insiders is more profitable than employing Outsiders at the going wage. Akerlof and Kranton describe cases where all hires become Insiders, e.g., officers of the US Army; and cases where firms hire individuals who remain Outsiders (2005). They do not address the question of the factors that lead to employees becoming either Insiders or Outsiders. Obviously, Akerlof and Kranton present an exaggerated theory of realworld behaviors. It is clear, however, that employees imbued with the oppositional culture that results from SRELIM identity may in some degree approximate Outsider identity. Many SRELIM individuals may find it difficult to work as Insiders at a high level of effort. It is tempting to inflate this entire argument to general group dynamics. For example, in the US case, to become Insiders, “to become fully assimilated into white America, blacks must … identify with people who have humiliated and oppressed them for three hundred years. Under these circumstances ‘assimilation’ is likely to be extraordinarily difficult” (Jencks 1992: 129). Similar beliefs, attitudes, and emotions exist

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among other SRELIM. These considerations suggest that SRELIM are likely to be alienated Outsiders, as defined by Akerlof and Kranton, and less amenable to employer training to convert Outsiders into Insiders. What appears at first glance to be an employer’s “taste for discrimination,” in Becker’s famous phrase, may actually be profit-maximizing behavior. The employer may consider SRELIM identity to be a marker for Outsider identity, providing a means to identify prospective employees of low productivity.11

Caveats This chapter conceptualizes an important role for cultural endowments, and in particular the role of oppositional identity, in slowing SRELIM economic progress. Nevertheless, worldwide, most of the SRELIM plight is not a consequence of cultural endowments per se, but the outcome of the causal interactions among the four independent variables of the mobility model: ongoing discrimination, poor access to education, slow economic growth, and, finally, cultural endowments. A second caveat is in order. My version of the theory of oppositional identity and the behavior that it engenders abstracts from the reality of substantial variation and fluidity in identities and other aspects of culture in general and among individuals of any given SRELIM in particular. Cultural endowments change. Adults differ from their parents in identities, motivations, values, etc., and many members of the five SRELIM studied in this book have earnings endowments that have helped them move out of the lowest classes. Many of the upwardly mobile within any SRELIM do not see the dominant majority and its institutions as inexorably destructive of minority mobility. Presumably many SRELIM individuals perceive majority behavior and institutions as a mixed bag so that strong oppositional identity and all that it implies is by no means universally present among all minority members.12 Nevertheless, taking any SRELIM as a single entity, the putative average group scores on degree of oppositional culture are postulated to be sufficiently high so as to significantly compromise the SRELIM’s upward mobility. A third qualification involves appreciation of complexity and change. Social-science analyses of causation inevitably and enormously simplify reality to arrive at theories based on an analytically manageable number of primary causal factors. I believe that this is the case in the SRELIM model. The four explanatory variables account for most of the variation in SRELIM socio-economic mobility over time and place. But other important factors are probably also at work, notably the constellations of political forces that determine government behavior and policies. These are very important in any given polity, but also highly variable and difficult to hypothesize both in a manner that applies universally and permits application of quantifiable techniques. Further, the relative impact of the individual variables in the model as well as the manner in which they interact with each other and with pertinent

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political variables no doubt differ substantially from SRELIM to SRELIM, across countries and over time. The mobility model is a pioneering first approximation. It is intended to advance analysis and policy formulation, but it is not the whole story. Even without including government behavior as an independent variable, the model is a long way from testable in any quantitative sense. Part of the problem is definitional. Economic mobility is quantifiable as are two of the causative variables (educational attainment and degree of economic development). But measuring the degree of economic discrimination presents substantial difficulties, while the quality of family cultural endowments is far too complex to be quantifiable. Finally, work in the genetic sciences proceeds at a rapid pace. It is redefining our ideas about how nature and nurture interact. In the next decade or two, the social-science approach to analysis, in which behavior of individuals and groups is interpreted in terms of cultural phenomena of one kind or another while genetic factors are ignored, may give way to a viewpoint of complicated interactions involving both culture and genetics that could lead to substantial revision in social-science theorizing concerning the role and formation of family cultural endowments.

4

The Dalits and human rights The Indian dilemma

We Brahmins and other castes are instruments. God uses us as His instruments in order to impose on the untouchables the punishment that their karma has earned for them.1 (Brahmin Temple Trustee)

Overview The world’s largest SRELIM, India’s Dalits (the former Untouchables) remains unambiguously near the bottom of India’s caste system as measured by status and income2 despite a substantial reduction in disparity since Independence in 1947. Today there is a Dalit urban middle class, (although few are in it, perhaps less than 5 percent of the Dalit population), which simply did not exist before Independence. A more basic indicator if it is literacy: at the mid-nineteenth century, Dalits were close to totally illiterate. Today, half of adult Dalits can read and write. Above all, India has in place what might be called the “basics of Dalit emancipation.” These include constitutional stipulations formally prohibiting Untouchability and its entire works while providing broad-reaching preferences. In addition, there are strong national antidiscrimination laws (although weakly enforced) plus militant and diverse private organizations promoting Dalit mobility and human rights. Nevertheless, in many ways the current situation resembles India’s pre-Independence caste status quo. Most Dalits are still in their traditional occupations and antagonistic rural roles, in which they continue to be victimized as a consequence of India’s traditional rural values, customs, and norms. In India, human-rights ways have yet to trump folkways. Dalits also continue to be divided by language, customs, religion, and their own informal class hierarchy. These divisions limit their political “muscle,” notwithstanding their weight as a sixth of India’s total population. India has spectacular achievements in growth rates, atomic energy, information technology, democratic politics, the arts, agriculture, etc. Yet for the majority of the population, the nation is still a lowincome, mainly traditional, rural country at an early stage of economic development. The limited degree of social change explains to a large extent why

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most Dalits remain in their millennia-old, traditional, stigmatized, subaltern, low-status, involuntary position relative to the Indian majority. That said, it is also important to add that in addition to the basics of Dalit emancipation, the central government has taken a very strong stand against untouchability by introducing the most extensive system of preferences in the world in an attempt to bring Dalits into the mainstream. This is complemented by five impressive statutes designed to uproot the most destructive and obvious institutions of untouchability, as well as a string of commission reports and reviews assessing results and providing strategic approaches and other recommendations. Most effort and resources have been put into the system of reservations of public-sector jobs and higher school admissions for Dalits as the main mode of eliminating Dalit disadvantage and exploitation. Results, however, have fallen short of aspirations. Reservations have many shortcomings and may not be a promising approach for dealing with the caste system, which is by far the biggest obstacle to Dalit mobility. In terms of the mobility model discussed in Chapter 3, entrenched prejudice, discrimination and above all, India’s history of slow growth before the 1980s, explain why most Dalits still remain in the traditional rural setting, subject to an age-old caste system, notwithstanding what can be described as heroic efforts at the national level to transform their reality. For the five case studies of this volume, India has the lowest parameters for the four independent variables that affect Dalit progress to parity because: 1 With most of the population still living in rural areas, it is at an early stage in development. As a result India’s caste system is still intact. It is probable that development to the point where nearly half the population has urban residence is a necessary condition for sufficient disintegration of the caste system to permit Dalit integration into the mainstream. 2 Discrimination against the Dalits is particularly high in part because it is actually encouraged by religious precepts that underpin caste institutions. 3 Dalit access to adequate education is limited. 4 Profound stigmatization and humiliation, low levels of education, and narrowly circumscribed rural life probably all help produce Dalit cultural endowments that are not conducive to upward mobility. The Dalits are still at a very early stage in their long struggle for socio-economic parity. Nevertheless, if India’s current rapid economic growth persists (8 percent or more annually), the next half century will no doubt bring a sea change not only to India, but also in the role and status of the Dalit in the economy and social system of India. So much has been written and discussed about India’s outcastes in minute detail and with great perspicacity that one hesitates to go over such welltrodden and plowed ground. Nevertheless the “Dalit story” is in many ways the most telling of the five case studies in its confirmation of the theoretic apparatus, its long and diverse history of remedies tried, and its magnitude of

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atrocity, exploitation, humiliation, and misery. Moreover, within the entire set of SRELIM, India’s Dalits represent the largest single SRELIM on the planet (about 180 million individuals). They are also by far the most hard-core of the five SRELIMs studied in this volume as they have had far fewer opportunities to escape from SRELIM identity than the others. The chapter begins with a statement that explains the sense in which Dalits are SRELIM, sketches out how they are victimized and exploited, and then reviews comparative indicators of their status and well-being. The second part of the chapter considers how the national government, the Dalits themselves, and other groups attempt to deal with the Dalits’ plight, and with what results. It concludes with an analysis of proposals to extend preference policies to India’s modern private sector. At the outset it is well to discuss what this chapter necessarily excludes. India’s total population (more than 1.1 billion in 2007) accounts for a sixth of the planet’s total, which is more than the entire population of the Western Hemisphere. Four of India’s 28 states have populations that exceed 80 million. Uttar Pradesh, the largest, has a population of 180 million. Notwithstanding an impressive degree of cultural uniformity throughout the country, there is substantial diversity in language, ethnicity, political organization, ideology, intrastate social cohesion, and degree of industrialization. Some 22 languages are officially recognized (every state has the right to name its own official language), although probably more than half the population speaks a native tongue that is Hindi or fairly close to it (e.g., Punjabi or Urdu). Both Hindi and English are used officially in central government administration. About 50 million predominantly urban, middle-class Indians speak English fluently. For many of the variables of interest, there may be more diversity in India than in Europe. Given the dimensions and diversity of India, the chapter is necessarily eclectic. It concentrates on the fundamentals and on the major efforts to remedy Dalit disadvantage. It turns out that major efforts of a public nature are concentrated in the national government (executive, judiciary, and legislature) as the principal complex of public institutions in India taking a nationwide perspective. This concentration is not surprising given that “nationwide” in India, means “concerning a population of 1.1 billion people.” Hence my focus is mostly limited to analysis, measures, and policies that are national in scope, notwithstanding many instructive and valuable undertakings in the states. Kerala, for example, has carried out a land reform in which Dalits were a major beneficiary and has eliminated the most exploitative form of Dalit abuse, i.e., that of cleaning latrines. Were I writing a book on the Dalits, rather than a chapter, it would also be feasible to unravel the contributions of India’s numerous, large, and diverse nongovernmental organizations, national and international, that are dedicated to improving the Dalits’ lot. Numbering in the tens of thousands, many are active as economic developers, providing the village schools, basic medicines, and arts and crafts livelihoods that the Indian state fails to deliver (Luce

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2007: 41). They are also militant advocates of and lobbyists for Dalit human rights, often active in exposing terrible Dalit victimization. Many of these organizations also support litigation on behalf of Dalits. They include “think tanks” and researchers who produce a wide range of analysis and publications concerning Dalit disadvantage. I refer to some of these nongovernmentals in several contexts but perforce can go no further. Much facilitated by the internet, their overall impact is important. The chapter would benefit from a comprehensive assessment of their role, which is, unfortunately, beyond my capacity. In the 1940s, Gunnar Myrdal contrasted American conceptions and ideals of equality for all with the persistence of horrendous Black exploitation and subjugation, labeling it the American Dilemma. A somewhat similar conceptualization gives us the Indian Dilemma, namely the reconciliation of the moral ideas and laws of an ancient, deeply embedded, cruelly stratified, and brutally exploitative caste system with the constitutional ideals of equality, fraternity, liberty and justice of the new India. Clearly, this clash between the constitutionally enshrined ideology of complete equality and the reality of the social order with its ubiquitous and relentless stratification is among the deepest contradictions in daily life in modern India.

The Dalits’ plight Who are the Dalits? India’s former “Untouchables,” or in government parlance “Scheduled Castes, (SC)” are now universally described as Dalits (i.e., Broken or Oppressed People in Marathi3). They are religiously sanctioned outcastes, forcefully and consciously excluded from the social life of their communities for millennia. To the present, perhaps a majority of India’s upper-caste Hindu population considers Dalits unclean and polluted by earlier morally reprehensible lives. Historically segregated in unattractive areas outside of villages and rigorously denied access to education, they were excluded from any activity that involved interaction with other castes, other than certain demeaning but necessary economic functions. Because their presence was considered polluting, before the 1950s they were barred from most Hindu temples and denied use of public markets and wells; they were not allowed to read the Vedas (Hindu sacred texts) and were even prevented from hearing them read. (This exclusion was visited on the entire lowest caste of shudras, or farmers, as well.) If allowed to attend a public meeting or other function, they were segregated away from others. Even the shadow of the Dalit that touched the high-caste Hindu was offensive, a criminal act that merited punishment. To avoid such outcomes, Dalits were at times required to wear bells in public that announced their presence to all and sundry, or in some situations to walk backwards, sweeping their footprints as they moved, to leave no trace of their progress. In a word, the outcastes were “untouchable.” Both touch and shadow were polluting.

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The Dalits and human rights

A fortiori, physical contact of any kind between Dalit and caste Hindus was prohibited. Hence Dalits could not use common drinking utensils or tools. Obviously endogamy was the rule. Inadvertent contact of any kind typically required an elaborate ritual of purification, particularly to the now temporarily polluted upper-caste Hindu. Among the dominant castes, the belief that Dalits have limited mental capacity has also often been widespread. Mahatma Gandhi, the great champion of Dalit rights, who dedicated most of his adult life to their emancipation, once requested a Christian missionary to pray for the Harijans (Children of God, Gandhi’s euphemism for Dalits) “but do not try to convert them as they did not have the mind and intelligence to understand what you talked … . Would you preach the Gospel to a cow?” Gandhi was taken to task for this statement and replied that no ill will was intended; for him the cow was a symbol of gentleness and patient suffering. The historian, Eleanor Zelliot, reproduces this exchange and concludes that “it was clear … in Gandhi’s concept of service to the suffering Untouchables, there was little room for the educated, politically conscious Untouchables pressing for civil rights” (Zelliot 1992: 170). Economically, the situation of the Dalits has been desperate. Prior to Independence they were barred from most schools and from owning land or engaging in business. They were forced to derive their livelihood from occupations that kept them in abysmal poverty and complete dependence on the upper castes. Today, about 80 percent of Dalits still live in rural areas, most as landless farm laborers or tenant farmers, although by the 1990s many also owned some land. (See Table 4.1.) In some states, the landless survive as seasonal migrants as determined by the annual agricultural cycle. There is also substantial migration to the cities, where many literally live on the streets (in some cities paying rent for the right to sleep on the public sidewalks) and continue in traditional occupations or survive as casual laborers. In the rural areas, many, perhaps most of the remainder survive by work in polluting occupations (e.g., animal slaughter, skinning, tanning and leather work, disposal of the bodies of the dead, the feces of the living, and the umbilical cords of the newborn). But the notion of impure and polluting occupations also extended beyond the obvious realm of work that involved death, feces, and blood to include occupations such as rag-pickers, shoe-shiners, clothes-washers (always outdoors and often working in polluted streams), streetsweepers, shoemakers, gravediggers, and quarry workers, frequently women who produce gravel by breaking boulders by hand with small hammers, etc. In the circular logic of untouchability, these tasks are “impure because they are performed by Dalits, and Dalits are impure because they perform the tasks” (Shah et al. 2006: 106). Because incomes are very low, Dalits also have very high rates of child labor. They account for the majority of the millions of debt-bonded farm laborers. These latter are one step removed from slaves in that they rarely earn enough to work off a debt that is inherited from one generation to another within families.

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Before Independence, in village India, there was little possibility for Dalits to escape either forced exclusion or inclusion. Forced inclusion was true in both a physical and psychological sense: the Dalit out of his village setting had little opportunity to find an alternative livelihood short of becoming an outlaw. Psychologically, the Dalit castes (like every other caste) brought an identity and a social role that molded, constrained, and defined the individual’s role in the family, society, etc. In general, in caste-dominated, rural India, once one is out of the caste of one’s birth, there is little possibility of finding a “home” elsewhere. This explains some of the tendency of scholars to consider the individual castes as forming ethnic groups. It is also consistent with the conclusion that in traditional India, upward mobility for the individual was possible only insofar as his entire caste advanced together. In common with SRELIMs elsewhere, in Hindi there is a menu of stigmatizing names for Dalits, including terms that mean “evil people” (durjan), “untouchable” (achhoot) “below the lowest caste” Ati-Shudra, “alien” (mlechha), “slave” (dasyu) etc. (Nesiah 1997: 43). In addition to “generic” names, there are also individual names for the hundreds of separate castes that together make up the Dalit population. These castes (jatis) typically are associated with an occupation that was and, in rural India, usually still is a defining characteristic of the caste group in question. (The same taxonomic principle is used with respect to the thousands of jatis of the other castes.) As a result, the name of the jati also becomes the name of the occupation.4 In contrast to the upper castes, the names of the various Dalit jatis, e.g., gravediggers, tanners, manual scavengers, cobblers, sweepers, etc. are frequently very pejorative and carry a humiliating, stigmatizing emotional “charge.” To the present they are engaged to insult and intimidate Dalits, although such use is now a criminal offense (Shah et al. 2006: 22). To be an outcaste was and still is to be inherently vile, morally and physically impure, and for these reasons also despicable and contemptible. This was commonly believed among non-Dalits and is today still largely true throughout India. Caste, karma, and modernization Much of the scholarship addressing the Dalit plight addresses two questions: how did India’s caste system arise and establish itself throughout the subcontinent? And how has the system endured for more than two millennia? There is no consensus concerning the nature of events that led to the present system. Most explanations stress Aryan invasions from the north, more than two millennia past, by groups who succeeded in conquering and enslaving the subcontinent’s then existing peoples, and eventually producing Dalits and other low-class groups. Less dramatic theories surmise that the progenitors of today’s Dalits were family and village slaves. Some believe that those born of miscegenation among the four varnas (the four basic kinds of castes) were cast out. Conspiracy theories contrast with these: “to control and enslave the ‘natives’ the Aryans ‘produced many spurious religious tracts and claimed to

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have received them directly from the God as revelations’” (Shah et al. 2006: 26, quoting a nineteenth-century leader of the “anti-Brahmin movement”). In addition to the speculative literature on actual origins, there exist demands to describe the various Dalit castes or jatis as distinct “ethnic” groups that reject the Hindu caste credo. Ambedkhar provides a prominent recent example. As the leader of the Dalits at Independence, he struggled to define the Dalits as a singular, ethnic group with its own electorate and religion (Nesiah 1997: 45). India’s caste system has endured for more than 2,000 years. In world historical perspective this is highly anomalous. No doubt, those who first became Dalits had entirely lost control of arable land, if they ever had it. Many of them may have been hunter-gatherers or itinerant cultivators who were overrun and eventually forced into a new order which has persisted to the present. It persisted in the past as now, because upper castes controlled access to the most productive land. Such control also means that they controlled access to employment and the food production that employment made possible. Over the centuries, Dalits who “misbehaved” suffer many forms of retribution, including pogroms, massacres, and so-called “social boycotts” led by the upper castes in which the non-Dalit population of the village refuses to employ revolting Dalits, as well as bans them from water sources, grazing lands, and, recently, ration shops. Today, however, Dalits at times succeed in escaping domination by moving out of the countryside, purchasing land, gaining education, and developing new occupations. In general, however, Dalits still accept their subordinate and ignominious status by working for the upper castes mostly on the latters’ terms. In this respect India’s history is typical: worldwide, landowning elites in pre-industrialized polities have been able to subjugate and exploit SRELIMs because they monopolized access to productive land. The subcontinent is also unusual in that religious dogma aggressively reinforces and rationalizes SRELIM exploitation. The Hindu religion may also be an important determinant of the extraordinary stability of the caste system. To convey this, a brief account of India’s basic caste institutions is needed. As noted, to be Hindu is to be a member of one of thousands of different jatis traditionally defined in terms of occupation, location, and language. Urbanizing modernity and its many new occupations, the constitutional prohibition of untouchability, and the tentative slow incorporation of meritocratic and egalitarian values into people’s “minds and hearts” have weakened this association of caste with occupation.5 But about 80 percent of the Dalits and over 70 percent of the total population are still rural (Table 4.8) and, in the majority, live lives in which caste institutions (beliefs, norms, customs, values) persist as fundamental determinants of how people behave occupationally and in other respects as well. In rural India, the majority of castes or jatis have maintained their traditional occupations, e.g., priests, moneylenders, artisans, etc., and the whole spectrum of agriculturalists, from large landowners to indebted landless laborers, who together still account for more than half the population of India (Table 4.4).

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The taxonomy of this traditional caste system involves not only the thousands of jatis.6 It also involves a religiously sanctioned distribution of all jatis into five tiers from highest to lowest consisting of the four varnas (i.e., classes; literal meaning is “colors”) plus the fifth group, the outcaste Dalits. In theory every jati is unambiguously ascribed to one of these five tiers: first the four varnas: Brahmins (priests, philosophers, scholars); Kshatriyas (warriors, rulers); Vaisyas (traders, clerks, landowners, etc.), shudras (farmers, laborers, artisans, etc.) and, finally, the non-varna outcastes, the Dalits. The shudras account for about four-fifths of the caste Indians of the four varnas. A substantial range of occupations are included within each varna. (The word “caste” is used, unfortunately, to mean both varna and jati. Some writers get around this difficulty by defining varnasas the four basic classes and reserve the use of caste to mean jati. Like most writers defining varnas, I use caste to mean either varna or jati in the expectation that context makes clear which is being addressed.) In practice, there are substantial differences of opinion over which jati goes where, including much overlap and shifting between the varnas, as well as the Shudras and Dalits. Moreover, within the larger jatis there are subcastes which are also ranked by the members of the jati in question. There is no central authority for jati classification. Rather, classification (and thereby ranking) is by custom and tradition, supported by Brahmin pronouncements and intercaste power relationships. Rankings are informal and undocumented. Among the caste Indians, however, there is a consensus on exclusion of the Dalits as polluted, unclean, and low. One of the names for Dalits is Ati-Shudra, i.e., “below the shudras.” As a rule, each jati assigns itself a higher status than other jatis assign it. Each jati has also developed its own myth (purana) to explain origins. For the shudra jatis, origins are not based on purity or pollution, but rather the result of lost wars, or deception by kinsmen or even the behavior of the gods. With the exception of some Dalit jatis, each jati generates patriotism, loyalty, and pride in the jati identity among its members. No jati wants to amalgamate with a second jati. Jatis that have a low position religiously may have a high one economically, or be politically very successful. The intercorrelations of economic, political, and religious positions are far from perfect (Gupta 2000: passim). Long-established relative positions of jatis may change, typically over several generations, depending on the behavior and ambitions of members. In the past there were also cases of successful leaps into the upper ranks as a result of conquest by what started out as a shudra jati. A caste that had achieved great economic success and a newfound pride in its prosperity might turn to so-called Sanskritization in an effort to move up in the caste hierarchy. This usually involves imitation of upper-caste behavior, with respect to diet, rituals, forms of recreation, clothing, etc. (ibid.). Currently, political action is another way in which jatis attempt to improve their lot and much of Indian political life concerns maneuvering and interaction among castes and other groups intent on winning elections and patronage. As discussed later in the chapter, numerous jatis or “ethnic groups” (Weiner and Katzenstein 1981)

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compete politically for privileged access to a wide range of public goods (school admissions, government jobs, various privileges) essentially by winning elections. Historically, individuals could not escape their caste, but over the centuries a few jatis have been able to move up in the caste hierarchy. Today, wherever India has experienced substantial economic development individuals do escape their caste. (See the section on intercaste marriage at the end of the chapter.) Migration out of the countryside into cities greatly reduces the caste bond, even in those cases where individuals move to neighborhoods of their own caste and there is still substantial adherence to the old system. Urban occupation, for example, is usually different from the traditional caste-determined role. The basic underpinnings for the five-tier caste structure (varnas plus outcastes) are found in descriptions and religious writings in the ancient Vedic scriptures, e.g., Bhagavat Gita, Manu Smitri, etc. Written in Sanskrit some 2,000 years ago, the Manu Smitri has long been accepted by the orthodox priesthood as a classical statement of Hindu moral law that justifies the ranking of the varnas. Nesiah (1997: 38) cites brief excerpts from the Manu that convey some of the beliefs and attitudes that buttress the ranking: Manu advocates the subordination of Vaisyas to both Brahmins and Kshatriyas and the total lifelong subjugation and exploitation of shudras and Untouchables by caste Hindus. For example the laws decree that a shudra who has acquired wealth gives pain to Brahmins (Manu Smitri X: 129) and that a Brahmin may take possession of the property of a shudra with perfect peace of mind (Manu Smitri VIII: 417). Untouchables are singled out for the most demeaning and malicious treatment. Manu decrees that the dwelling of Chandals and Svapakas [Untouchable jatis] shall be outside the village, that they must be made apapatrras (outcastes) and that their wealth shall be dogs and donkeys (Manu Smitri X: 51). Their conditions of life are to be as humiliating as possible, they must wear the garments of the dead, use only broken dishes, and any ornaments must be of iron (Manu Smitri X: 52). Integrating and rationalizing the entire arrangement is the law of karma, a central tenet of Hinduism: human death is followed by reincarnation in a new body; one’s position in this life is the result of physical and mental actions in past incarnations as well as the present and one’s actions in this life determine one’s destiny in future incarnations. Reincarnation is not necessarily to a human body. One may be reborn an animal or as a worm or insect, or even an inanimate object. Karma is an impersonal, natural law of moral cause and effect. The only way out of this long sequence of birth, reincarnation, and death, is to live a life of exemplary virtue (as defined by one’s caste) so as to move up the caste hierarchy in successive posthumous reincarnations until the cycle of birth and death finally ceases as one fades into a nirvana of personal extinction and transformation:

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The Hindu studies the universe to discover whether he can apprehend and become one with the mysterious will that governs it. Only in spiritual unity with Infinite Being can he give meaning to his life and find strength to suffer and to act. Thus in isolation, oblivious of men and the world, the individual attempts to move directly toward final salvation and bliss. (Cox 2007: np) The law of karma implies that individuals born to high positions of spiritual well-being are reaping the rewards for good lives past. Those who are reborn to a low caste or as an Untouchable are so in consequence of evil behavior in earlier incarnation(s).7 They are getting their just deserts. Since such individuals are worthless, impure, and polluted, they must be shunned.8 Hindus typically consider the situation and treatment of the Scheduled Castes by the Hindu majority as just: “We Brahmans and other castes are instruments. God uses us as His instruments in order to impose on the untouchables the punishment that their karma has earned for them” (Brahmin, Temple Trustee, by Eleanor Zelliot, 1992: 161. The full text of this interchange between Mahatma Gandhi and a temple trustee is included as an annex to this chapter.) The scriptures emphasize that the way to rebirth into a higher caste lies in meticulously following the moral precepts of their existing caste. To be reborn, say, one step up, the shudra must be a perfect shudra in this life. Although excluded from the varna hierarchy, the Dalits too are subject to the law of karma and rank below the shudras. The impact of karma converts India’s apparently extremely highly ascriptive caste system into a kind of intergenerational meritocracy where values are produced according to incentives that punish and reward with multigenerational lags: what appears to be ascription becomes a lagged-response moral meritocracy. The Scheduled Castes emphatically reject this catechism and moral philosophy. Ambedkhar was vitriolic concerning the Hindu scriptures used to validate caste relationships. On one occasion in public discussion with Mahatma Gandhi, he stated: “we should burn all these scriptures … . Truly these scriptures are an insult to people. The government should have confiscated them long ago” (Zelliot 1992: 163). Shah and his co-authors9 insist: Dalits are not passive victims who accept that their station in this life is due to their karma in previous lives … Dalits, whether they are Buddhist, Christian, Muslim or even Hindu … do not believe that their present status as untouchables is due to sins committed in “previous” births. Nor do they wish to wait for the next birth to improve their status. Their quest to establish dignity and equality is in the present. Dalits understand that their status at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy is because of the dominance of Brahmins and other upper castes, and the power of the shoshak (exploiter) classes. Dalit resistance to injustice takes many forms, from passive resistance to militant retaliation. Their ability to articulate their aspirations and secure their rights depends on the relations of power

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The Dalits and human rights between them and dominant castes, and the availability of institutional space and supports for Dalit collective action in the public domain (Shah et al. 2006: 144)

Gangadhar Patawane, a Dalit writer, completes the picture: Dalit is not a caste. Dalit is a symbol of change and revolution. [A] Dalit believes in humanism. He rejects existence of God, rebirth, soul, sacred books that teach discrimination, faith and heaven because these have made him a slave. (cited in Das and Massey 1995: iv) Consistent with this stance, Dalit individuals and jatis have developed alternative histories (purana) that explain their current situation without invoking karma and disgrace. Dalit authors assert that they were the original inhabitants of the subcontinent who ruled in India until the Hindus subjugated them. Ambedkhar,10 the distinguished Dalit leader and attorney who drafted the constitution, insisted that shudra kings long subjected the Brahmins to many tyrannies and indignities. In response the Brahmins refused to perform basic religious ceremonies for the kings. The kings declined and eventually evolved into the lowest varna, the shudras, from whom the Dalits descend. Others claim Kshatriya roots for their jatis that once prevailed against aggressors and invaders but were brought low by Brahminical subterfuge, a version largely consistent with that of Shah et al. (2006: 25). Most Dalit jatis claim descent from a god or great saint. It is noteworthy that caste hierarchy carries over even into the internal organization of religious groups professing creeds that were established as an alternative to the Hindu religion and caste. The leaders of India’s Christian and Muslim religious minorities are typically high caste, while the rank and file are most likely to be Dalits or members of backward castes. Christian cemeteries are frequently segregated by caste. This completes the description of the caste system and the role of the Dalits in that system. In the next section I show how the system operates to victimize Dalits, including the clash between ancient folkways and current concepts of crime and human rights. Untouchability violations and violent atrocities Caste hierarchy is an ascending scale of hatred and a descending scale of contempt. (Bhimrao Ambedkar)11

Throughout India, atrocities and other untouchability offenses are commonplace and unpunished although they have been direct criminal violations of statute law and of the constitution for more than half a century. Since

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Independence, tens of thousands of Scheduled Castes have been killed in communal violence, frequently as a result of attempting to exercise legal rights. Indeed, each year caste Hindus rape and murder hundreds of Dalits with impunity. India’s attempt to legislate elimination of outcaste and Untouchable status has been overwhelmingly defeated by the behavior of the majority, which continues to exclude and punish Scheduled Castes in many ways. There is a large literature which concentrates on exposing and protesting against the most serious atrocities suffered by Dalits. Less violent violations of the untouchability statutes have received less attention. A systematic general survey of routine untouchability infractions, however, was undertaken in 2001–2 and the results published in 2006 as a volume by five co-authors (Shah et al. 2006). Field teams recorded behavior for a sample of 565 rural villages in 11 states, accounting for about 77 percent of all Dalits in India (Shah et al. 2006: 49). Following several days of training, two-person teams visited and remained in each selected village for four to seven days. The teams used three techniques to generate their data: direct observation, interviews, and focus-group discussions. ActionAid and other non-governmental organizations provided logistical, training, and other support for the undertaking (ibid.: 48–61). I have brought together results of this work in two tables that list some of the restrictions imposed on Dalit behavior and the frequencies with which they were practiced during the survey. The study group eliminated ambiguous and otherwise uncertain outcomes from their calculation of frequencies. (Due to ambiguous and non-applicable situations, the total sample of villages varies from offense to offense.) In Table 4.1, “economic restrictions” refer to practices that reduce Dalit labor income and other sources of income; e.g., restrictions which affect individual capacity to work outside the village, or buy and sell outputs and inputs. Many of these restrictions have long been customary although this does not make them legitimate. The “consumption restrictions” in Table 4.1 have limited impact on income-generating capacity but impinge seriously on Dalit welfare. They represent a small sample of traditional mores in action. Although not included in the table, the prohibition against Dalits entering the residences of others is still very widespread. The dominant-caste push to stigmatize, insult, and humiliate Dalits appears to be among the primary causal factors underlying the third section of the table. The survey volume also explains that the universal segregation of Dalits in remote and undesirable areas of villages brings economic disadvantages including more difficult access to water, electric power, police protection, transportation facilities, etc. In Table 4.2, I have listed those violations that the authors of the untouchability Survey consider most heinous because they directly implicate the state itself, supposedly the prime mover in efforts to erase the chasm between Dalits and the dominant classes: … untouchability is not just an expression of cultural prejudice or preference, but also an unacceptable form of exploitation and injustice that violates the fundamental right to life and livelihood of the Dalits. While

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Table 4.1 Village Untouchability offenses in 11 states, 2001–02 Economic Violations

Percentage of Villages in Violation

Denied sale of milk to cooperatives Denied sale of other products in local market Denied access to public transport Restricted access to public transport (last seat(s) if any are vacant) Denied passage/access on public roads No access to common grazing or fishing grounds Denied access to water of irrigation canals Denied work as agricultural labor (last hired/first fired) Paid submarket wage (lower wage for same work) Denied right to negotiate wages (no contract) Refusal to employ in house construction (to avoid polluting house)

45–50 30–40 9 10–15 15–20 20–25 30–40 30–40 20–25 30–40 25–30

Consumption Violations Denied entry into places of worship (mainly Hindu temples) Denied access to wells and other water facilities Denied entry into village shops Denied entry into private health clinics

50–?? 45–50 30–40 20–25

Stigmatization and Humiliation Violations Ban on marriage processions Segregated dining in schools Separate seating at village council (panchayats) meetings Prohibition on wearing new and/or bright clothes Shops: no touching in transactions, e.g., in paying Ban on use of umbrellas in public Ban on wearing dark glasses, smoking, etc. Compulsory standing required in presence of upper–caste men Requirement of dominant–caste approval of marriages Prohibition on wearing sandals (chappals) on public roads

45–50 30–40 25–30 15–20 15–20 15–20 10–15 25–30 ?–10 ?–10

Source: Derived from Shah et al. 2006: 62 ff. Note: Data are presented by the above frequency intervals in the source publication.

its presence anywhere is unacceptable, clearly the practice of untouchability in the provision of state services constitutes the most serious failure of not only society but the state itself. Given that untouchability has been explicitly outlawed in law and the Constitution, its prevalence within the domain of state services points to the fact that the state itself is violating the law. Moreover, it is violating not just a minor or obscure law, but one that refers to the most fundamental obligation of the state, namely to safeguard the right to life, liberty and livelihood for all its citizens, above all that of the weaker sections. (ibid.: 70) The authors then clarify consequences of denial of access to police stations, ration shops, polling stations, etc.:

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The police force legally mandated to assure basic support to victims by statutes and state mechanisms, and supposed to extend support to Dalits who wish to fight discriminatory practices was itself engaged in the offense. In almost 28 percent of the villages surveyed, Dalits cannot even enter police stations because they are untouchables! This is a telling commentary on the pervasiveness of the practice and the difficulties involved in seeking redress. In the same way, food is the most basic need of the poor, and every available data source tells us that Dalits are heavily over-represented among the poorest of the poor. Nevertheless, in almost 26 percent of the villages surveyed, Dalits cannot even enter the Public Distribution System ration shops … . It is … shameful that in more than 12 percent of the villages surveyed (53 out of 431) Dalits are not permitted to exercise their most basic right of franchises. Further, the data presented … clearly show that untouchability continues to be practiced in every kind of state service relevant to the rural poor, from the postal system to the use of public roads, to the health care system and the village councils. In no sphere of its activities (relevant to the rural poor) has the state managed to eradicate the practice of untouchability within its own structures, leave alone in society at large. (ibid.: 71) Tables 4.1 and 4.2 suggest that there may have been substantial reduction in the frequency of untouchability infractions since Independence. For example, before the banning of untouchability, Dalits, presumably, did not have the right to access the premises of any police station, let alone complain about the infractions listed in Table 4.1. The frequency of some of the practices listed in the tables, which presumably were once nearly universal and accepted behavior, has dropped to less than one village in four while few of the infractions have a frequency of more than half.

Table 4.2 Denial of access to government services, 2001–02 Villages where Infraction is Practiced

Entry into police station Entry into low-cost food ration shop Entry into post office Access to public roads/right of passage Entry into Primary Health Centre Entry into village-council office Entry into polling booths

Percentages

Number

28 26 19 18 18 14 12

109 129 82 90 68 72 53

Source: Derived from Shah et al. 2006: Table 2.2, p. 70 Note: Data exclude villages where it is unclear whether infractions occurred or where the site (office, etc.) is absent.

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Nevertheless Tables 4.1 and 4.2 show that stigmatization, humiliation, and exploitation of Dalits continue at a high level in the countryside. Table 4.2 also suggests that the police forces are a weak agent in implementing the untouchability laws. Rather than guaranteeing access of Dalits to the sites of public-service provision, Dalits frequently are unable to access them, and, indeed, are frequently prohibited from even entering police stations. As concerns the economic exploitation signaled in the tables, some of the violations may seriously reduce Dalit incomes, notably limiting access to irrigation water and various restrictions on Dalit movement to possible job and business sites. The status, income, and psychological gaps between Dalits and the dominant castes are still gaping and government continues to perform poorly in carrying out acknowledged policy. The implications of the restrictions on entry into ration shops and health clinics can be catastrophic. Parents with seriously malnourished children because of insufficient income may be eligible for free milk at some clinics and certainly are eligible for grains at submarket prices. Dalits who could not gain entry to such facilities have suffered the death of their children to malnutrition and disease as a consequence.12 Dalits are also victims of “regular’ crimes and violent atrocities, e.g., situations in which Dalits are bludgeoned to death, burnt alive, raped, rendered homeless, etc. Table 4.3 provides the official police registration of crimes against Dalits for a two-year period spanning 1994–96. The total number of violent crimes defined as murders, plus rapes, assaults, and offenses reported under the anti-atrocity act summed to 56,628, or 28,314 per year. Nevertheless, this is a large underestimate of actual crimes (violent and nonviolent) committed during the period. There is a consensus that most crimes against Dalits go unregistered because the victims do not report them (Shah et al. 2006: 134–36) One reason for not reporting is police behavior that strongly resists reporting and discourages Dalits. A second reason is the backlog of lawsuits which, according to Luce, is “27 million cases.” At the current rate of hearings, this is a backlog of centuries. Filing a complaint

Table 4.3 Police registration of crimes against Dalits, 1994–96 Types of Offense

Total Number

Offenses reported under the Prevention of Atrocities Act Murders Rapes Grievous hurt/assault Other “untouchability” offenses (robbery, arson, abduction, etc.)

38,483 1,660 2,814 13,671 41,711

Total

98,349

Total cases registered as crimes against Dalits, 1990–2000 Atrocity cases pending in the courts, 2000

285,871 100,891

Source: Government of India 1997; atrocity cases pending: Shah et al. 2006: 134–35.

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under such circumstances is futile. Reluctance to undergo litigation may also be at work: where litigation is necessary, even if the Dalit can find help with filing a suit and succeed in getting a hearing, the likelihood of a good outcome is low given the bias against Dalits in the larger society, the corruption of the judiciary, and the low income of the Dalit.13 The Prevention of Atrocities Act defines and covers both violent and nonviolent atrocities. To convey what is involved in violent atrocities, I include several summaries of recent cases taken from the 1999 Report of Human Rights Watch, an international advocacy organization, titled Broken People, Caste Violence against India’s “Untouchables”:14 Police and upper-caste militias operating at the behest of powerful political leaders … have also punished Dalit voters. In February 1998, police raided a Dalit village in Tamil Nadu that had boycotted the national parliamentary elections. Women were kicked and beaten, their clothing was torn, and police forced sticks and iron pipes into their mouths. Kerosene was poured into stored food grains and grocery items and police reportedly urinated in cooking vessels. In Bihar, political candidates ensure their majority vote with the help of senas (private militias). The Ranvir [landlords] Sena was responsible for killing more than fifty people during Bihar’s 1995 state election campaign. The sena was used to intimidate voters in Ara district, Bihar, during the February 1998 parliamentary elections. The police did not resist them. Dalits who have contested political office in village councils and municipalities through seats that have been constitutionally “reserved” for them have been threatened with physical abuse and even death in order to get them to withdraw from the campaign. In the village of Melavalavu, Madurai district Tamil Nadu, following the election of a Dalit to the village council presidency, members of a higher-caste group murdered six Dalits in June 1997, including the elected council president, whom they beheaded. As told to Human Rights Watch by an eyewitness, the leader of the attack “instructed the Thevars [caste Hindus] to kill all the Pariahs [Dalits] … . They pulled six out of the bus and stabbed them on the road … . Five Thevars joined together, put Murugesan [the Dalit president] on the ground outside the bus, and chopped off his head, then threw it in a well a kilometer away … . Some grabbed his hands, others grabbed his head, and one cut his head … . They deliberately took the head and poured the blood on the other dead bodies” (Human Rights Watch interview, Madurai district, Tamil Nadu, February 16, 1998). As of February 1999, the accused – who had been voted out of their oncesecure elected positions – had not been prosecuted. Those arrested were out on bail, while the person identified as the ringleader of the attack was still at large. (Narula 1999: 7)

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Both the causes and kinds of atrocities are numerous. (See below the Prevention of Atrocities Act in the sub-section Outline of acts to protect Dalit constitutional rights.) Two of those described above involved voting issues. These have become rare. Local rural elites have largely ceased to use armed gangs in attempts to coerce Dalit voting. Gangs, however, continue to be used in atrocities involving land disputes. In Bihar between 1995 and 1999, more than 1,500 were killed (mostly but not entirely Dalits) in battles over access to land (Constable 1999). In many cases Dalits fight back with varying success. Wage disputes may also end in atrocity. Other violent atrocities result from conflicts involving threats to the traditional social order, e.g., unsuspecting Dalits were recently held responsible for the death of a cow that triggered a higher-caste rampage. Many such collisions involve deliberate Dalit attempts to claim their rights, while defying the old social order. Advocacy organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have published dozens, perhaps hundreds, of accounts exposing murderous atrocities and the failure of police and other authorities to uphold the national constitution. Finally there is crime and sex. Violent sexual atrocities, including mass rape of women, occur frequently. Casual sexual banter, propositioning, and harassment are commonplace. But there is also a long history of dominant-caste men individually raping Dalit women in one-on-one situations with impunity. Even if the woman brings suit, the police accept the male’s consensual-sex defense. Protection of women from rape is one reason both for marriage of Dalit girls before puberty and for their frequent removal from school at puberty. Rape causes long-lasting trauma and profound humiliation, in addition to the risk of pregnancy. Once raped, a Hindu girl is literally ruined since she can no longer marry. Sexual contact with “impure” Dalit women was religiously banned before prohibition of untouchability but this did not prevent it then, nor does it now. Dominant-caste rape of Dalit women has several motives, including the desire to humiliate Dalit men as unable to protect their women. It is also used as retribution and retaliation against Dalits who threaten the traditional order by action such as fights to take possession of land, wage disputes, failure to show proper deference, complaints for mistreatment brought to higher authorities, etc. Hence mass rapes frequently occur during pogroms, murder campaigns, and other violent reprisals directed at Dalits (Narula 1999: Chapter IX; Shah et al. 2006: 123–26, 203). Frequent rape of Dalits and poor livelihood alternatives for raped women help explain why prostitutes frequently have Dalit origins. In addition to common prostitution, Dalit women had long been encouraged to become devadasis (Sanskrit for female servants of God) who earned their keep in being dedicated or “married” to the deities of a temple. Devadasis performed temple duties including sex with upper-caste men. When beyond their prime, they were sold to brothels. The practice is outlawed by many states and has moved out of temple precincts but continues. In southern India, poor Dalits still “dedicate” their little girls (aged five to ten) to certain deities by means of the Brahmin priests empowered to perform the required (but illegal) ceremony.

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At puberty, the girl is sold to the highest bidding gharwalli (brothel madam). The major determinant of price is the willingness of men to pay to deflower. Parents receive a very substantial payment. The girl is seen as escaping a life of the lowest poverty and gaining the blessings of a god. Devadasis value their status as “dedicated” prostitutes rather than common sex workers. Many come down with AIDS (Dalrymple 2008). Dalit women are also at greater risk than their men because of toilet functions which are usually alfresco for rural Dalits (and the majority of rural dwellers) (Table 4.10). In and about villages in India, many landless Dalit women find privacy and security primarily at night and in groups: In Punjab as in other parts of India, poor villagers use fallow land on the outskirts of the village for defecating. In many places in India, the takeover of the commons for private development has left poor Dalit women with nowhere to go. They are forced to defecate before sunrise or at night. (Shah et al. 2006: 123) Following Independence (1947) the most serious atrocities, among the thousands of transgressions committed annually, have been widely publicized. For decades the bulk of states and local governments took little action notwithstanding protest of Dalits, advocacy groups, and others. In 1989, the national government responded with the Prevention of Atrocities Act designed to implement the constitutional provisions on behalf of Dalits. The law is weakly implemented and most atrocities and other crimes against Dalits continue to go unpunished. The material in the foregoing paragraphs signals two major obstacles to Dalit progress to parity: first, the pervasive resistance of caste Hindus to uprooting traditional folkways (beliefs, norms, customs) that promote behavior causing traumatic Dalit victimization and exploitation throughout the Indian subcontinent and, second, the specific barrier of police behavior. The first comes as no surprise. Human-rights concepts are an exotic transplant into the India scene where the caste system is deeply embedded in traditional norms and mores as well as supported by religious belief and the economic interests of the exploiting castes. The police problem needs additional clarification. The paragraphs above show that police behavior is often perverse. Being able to enter police stations is the first step to being accepted by the police as a citizen with the right to help from the police, who are formally responsible for defending the lives, limbs, and property of all the citizenry. In India, even if the police acknowledge this duty with respect to Dalits, it does not follow that they will hear and register their complaints or respond to Dalit victimization. Further, even after a complaint is entered and a formal investigation initiated, in most instances the investigation is not carried through. If carried through, in many cases the police find that the Dalit complaint is without merit. In a non-trivial proportion of cases, the complaint of the Dalit is converted by the police into a complaint against the Dalit, particularly in cases of

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complaints against rural elites. The police also have a history of torture and sexual abuse of women as well as false arrest. They commit these crimes with impunity. Further, police frequently violently attack Dalits in support of dominant castes and ignore attacks on Dalits made by others.15 Police corruption is an additional barrier. In some districts, Dalits pay the police to get their complaints registered. They may even need to provide the paper on which the report is recorded. This is another reason why Dalits rarely report crimes suffered. In the few cases reported, most of the defendants go unprosecuted. Finally, in the extremely few cases adjudicated, Dalits usually lose, inter alia, because they have less money for buying the judge. A few causes célèbres, i.e., outrageous atrocities widely publicized by media and advocacy groups, are the primary exceptions to this pattern. To the present, little has been done to improve the operation of the police, notwithstanding the reform recommendations of the National Police Commission in its eight-volume report made 30 years ago. A human-rights activist emphasized the perverse incentives and culture of police institutions as reflected in the report: Subversion begins at recruitment which is rife with patronage. Promotions follow suit depending on the “reach” of lucky people. Transfers substitute for punishment as a bad egg is foisted on one community after another. At the police station, a normal young recruit enters such a strong atmosphere of routine violence that in a few years he has been molded into something quite unrecognizable. Low pay, bad housing, little insurance against the hazards of police work, absurdly long hours … and punishing demands for results, all confirm the ordinary policeman’s need for a “Godfather” to guide him through the thickets of survival. Favour for favour then ensures that the only agency legally allowed to use force against other citizens gets transformed into a powerfully armed untamed assemblage that masquerades as the law.16 (Daruwala 1998) Trends in occupations, literacy, poverty and income17 The main message in this section is that compared with the non-Dalit majority, the SC are still close to the bottom on indicators of progress and status. (Another SRELIM, India’s Scheduled Tribes, have lower scores on most indicators.) The data are also compatible with and reinforce the review above, which showed that most Dalits remain locked into their stigmatized, subaltern, outcaste role in traditional, caste-dominated, village India, although they have also experienced substantial progress as measured by several statistics. One indication of the degree of “lock-in” is given by the data on residency and occupation. India’s 2001 census found that 80 percent of India’s Dalits had rural residence, compared to 72 percent of the non-Dalit population18

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(Table 4.8). Moreover, about three-quarters of the Dalit rural population were small farmers or farm laborers (Table 4.4 and note 20). But Table 4.4 also shows that during the recent decade of high growth of the economy (1991– 2001), the movement of Dalits out of agriculture was precipitous, above all in the category of farm laborer, which declined by a fifth (from 49 to 39 percent) during the decade. Most such laborers are landless and presumably many are also bonded laborers, because of their debt to their landlords. That Dalits, particularly farm laborers, are leaving agriculture and in part “escaping” to the cities more rapidly than other citizens is also indicated by other data. The general movement to the cities is, of course, due to incomes, amenities, and above all work opportunities being more widespread in cities than rurally. Table 4.6 indicates this in that the rural poverty rate is considerably higher than the urban poverty for the nation as a whole. But contrary to the worldwide pattern, the urban SC population had a higher rate of poverty than the rural SC majority for both 1993–94 and 1999–2000. This anomalous relationship also was found for Other Backward Castes (OBCs are for the most part small farmers) and Muslims. But taken as a whole, the nonSC population fits the usual worldwide pattern: their rural poverty rate is Table 4.4 Distribution by occupation, total and SC, 1991 and 2001 (percentages) Total Population*

Occupation

1991 39.7 19.7 59.4 38.0 2.6

Cultivator^ Farm laborer Total agricultural occupation Other workers Undefined

Scheduled Castes*

2001 33.1 20.3 53.4 42.7 3.9

1991 25.4 49.1 74.5 23.1 2.6

2001 22.1 39.2 61.3 35.1 3.9

Source: Derived from Government of India 1991 and 2001. Notes: * Includes both urban and rural occupations. ^ The Census defines a cultivator as one who cultivates land (owned or held) for payments in money, share or in kind, either supervising or directing cultivation. Those that do not supervise or direct are considered farm laborers.

Table 4.5 Literacy by gender, total and SC population, 1991 and 2001 (percentages) Data Year

1991 2001 1999–2000

Total Population

Scheduled Castes

Totals Gap

Male

Female

Total

Male

Female

Total

64 75 64

39 54 46

52 65 55

50 66 53

24 42 34

37 55 44

(TP-SC) 15 10 11

Sources: Government of India 1991 and 2001; National Sample Survey 55th Round 1999–2000 inferred from Shah et al. 2006: 46.

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substantially higher than their urban poverty rate (Table 4.6). The exceptional outcome for the SC can be explained by the caste system. For the SC, village life brings stigmatization, social exclusion, discrimination, humiliating work, and possibly atrocity. On balance, village life for the Dalit, cast out but hemmed in, may be less attractive than the urban alternative even if average income in the city is lower than that earned in the rural setting. Note that in addition to escaping the heavy hand of caste regulations, Dalits in the cities may have access to secondary and even higher education, which are rare in the countryside. This picture of extreme push to leave the village, notwithstanding meager income prospects in the cities, helps explain another datum: in 2001, 28 percent of urban Dalits were employed as “casual labour.” That figure is twice the mean percentage for other urban low castes or religious minorities; e.g., 14 percent of Muslims and 18 percent of OBCs were employed as casual labour (Shah et al. 2006: 43). As some Dalits put it, “in the cities there is hope.”

Table 4.6 Scheduled Caste and total population below the poverty line by type of residence, 1993–94 and 1999–2000 (percentages) 1993–1994

Total Population* SC Gap = (SC-TP)

1999–2000

Rural

Urban

Rural

Urban

37.3 48.1 10.8

32.3 49.5 15.8

27.1 36.3 9.2

23.6 38.5 14.9

Source: Government of India 2000. Table 4.1, 422. Note: * Includes SC population of 16 percent of the total. Table 4.7 Median of monthly per capita consumption expenditure in rupees by group and residence, 1999–2000 Rural

Urban

Caste or Religion Scheduled Tribes Scheduled Castes Other Backward Castes

341 372 414

554 512 586

Other castes by religion OC Muslims OC Christian OC Sikh OC Other Religions Combined OC Hindu All Groups

406 636 822 535 515 419

543 1171 1032 1091 871 667

Source: Government of India 2000.

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Dalit scores on literacy, poverty, and income or purchasing power are as expected, i.e., always lower than those of the majority. Indicators for both Dalits and the majority tend to move in tandem. The Dalit indicators increase over time, but indicators of the majority simultaneously improve so that the percentage gap between the two groupings remains substantial, in many cases close to constant:  Table 4.5 presents two sets of data on literacy. Both sets suggest similar conclusions: India still has a very high degree of illiteracy, notwithstanding substantial increase in literacy rates since 1991. Dalit literacy increased more rapidly than the majority in the last decade of the twentieth century in that the gap between Dalit and total population fell from 15 percentage points in 1991 to 10 or 11 percentage points in 2001. Nevertheless in 2001, illiterate Dalits still made up about half of the Dalit population. Females are heavily penalized in both groups, Dalit and non-Dalit, although the intergender gaps have probably been narrowing.  In the case of poverty (Table 4.6) both Dalits and the majority have advanced substantially but the gap between them persists.19  Work by the National Sample Survey Organization (a government organization) shows a strong tandem relationship in that mean spending power of the three lowest caste groups (OBC, SC, and ST) increased by 26.7 percent, compared to 27.7 percent for the overall population for the period 1983–2004 (As cited in Economist 6 October 2007: 93) As early as the 1970s, about two-thirds of Dalit children aged six to 11 were enrolled in schools. At the national level, there were some scholarships for Scheduled Castes to cover the cost of books, uniforms, and other expenditures Table 4.8 Distribution of rural/urban population by total, SC and non-SC, 2001 (percentages) Total Population Rural/urban proportions: Rural population Urban population

73 27

Population distribution by rural, urban, SC, and non-SC: Rural population 73 Urban population 27 Total population 100

Non-SC

SC

72 28

80 20

60 24 84

13 3 16

Source: Government of India 1992. Notes: The 2001 Census estimated the SC at 166 million and 16.2 percent of the population. It estimated the rural population at 73 percent of the total; the SC accounted for 12 percent of the total urban population and 18 percent of the total rural population. These statistics were used to infer the data above. Discrepancies are due to rounding.

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needed for school attendance. For higher education there were also a few hostels in urban areas to provide lodging to Dalit students (Vakil 1985: 149). Dalits still receive these benefits. Nevertheless, many, perhaps the majority, of Scheduled Castes continue to leave school before completing the fourth grade.20 Much of this behavior is a consequence of deeply embedded, customary caste norms. In many castes, for many centuries, children have “naturally” become employed in the occupation of their parents before puberty. Many also leave school early because of the need for income and take up farm work. Still other early leavers work as pre-adolescent carpet producers, bidi-cigarette-makers, metal polishers, manual stonecrushers (producing gravel), brickmakers, etc.

Government efforts to eliminate untouchability India’s constitution and reservation policies In this section, I spell out those constitutional stipulations that are designed to restructure the entire caste system. Together they frame and underpin the central government’s programs to develop a more equal society both in terms of opportunities and socio-economic outcomes. The programs considered in this section, however, are those oriented toward reducing the disadvantage of the Dalits.21 The preamble to India’s constitution expresses the ideals that the people of India, guided by their constitution, are to secure for each other: We the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign Democratic Republic, and to secure to all its citizens Justice, social, economic and political; Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; Equality of Status and of Opportunity; and to promote among them all Fraternity assuring the Dignity of the Individual and the Unity and Integrity of the Nation … in our constituent assembly this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution. Article 38 of the constitution supports achievement of these ideals by obligating the state to: strive to promote the welfare of people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may a social order in which justice, social economic and political, shall inform all of the institutions of national life … and in particular strive to minimize the inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities, not only amongst individuals but also amongst groups of people residing in different areas or engaged in different vocations.

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As discussed above, the new nation was far from a polity where social justice, equality of status and opportunity, fraternity, and national unity held sway. Rather, the combination of extreme underdevelopment, and a social system of extreme inequality signaled that India would have great difficulty in engineering the necessary institutional metamorphosis to permit development of a democratic, meritocratic, socialist nation as the realization of the constitutional ideals. To deal with caste, India’s constituent assembly included general statements of ideals and goals. It also built into the constitution principles and measures designed to eradicate destructive caste practices and to provide those parts of the population most victimized by caste with opportunities that would facilitate their escape from stigmatization, absolute poverty, and abysmal exploitation. Some analysts described this approach as a “war on the caste system.” The constitution safeguards individual rights in the following articles: 14 Equality before the law. The state22 shall not deny any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws … 15 Prohibition of discrimination … (1) The state shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, caste, sex, place of birth … . (2) No citizen shall on grounds only of religion, race, caste … be subject to restriction with regard to a) access to shops, public restaurants, hotels … b) the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads … 16 (1) Equality of Opportunity in Matters of Public Employment. There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the state. (2) No citizen shall, on the grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, residence or any of them be ineligible for or discriminated against in respect of any employment or office under the state. 17 Abolition of Untouchability. “Untouchability” is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. Individual rights, however, are “trumped” by additional sections to the articles that generate group rights for backward groups,23 initially Dalits and Scheduled Tribes. Further, the group-rights provisions provide the rationales for three kinds of preferences that account for the state’s most basic programs to eliminate Dalit disadvantage and socio-economic disparity:  reservation of employment posts in the public services at national and state levels;  reservation of admissions to institutions of higher learning;  reservation of seats in the national and state legislatures for SC and ST. These preferences were established by separate actions after the constitution went into effect.

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All three preferences are allocated to disadvantaged groups (initially Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) in proportion to their share of total population at Independence. The share of India’s Dalits was then estimated as 15 percent of India’s total population. Consistent with the proportional equality criterion, 15 percent of public-university admissions, public-service employment posts, and seats in the state and national legislatures are “reserved” for Scheduled Castes. Scheduled Tribes receive the same benefits in proportion to their population share estimated at 7.5 percent.24 The pertinent group-rights sections and articles are: 15(4) Nothing in this article … shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.25 16(4) Nothing in this Article shall prevent the State from making any provision for the reservation of appointments or posts in favour of any backward class of citizens which, in the opinion of the State is not adequately represented in the services under the State. (The National Government defined adequate representation as implying a reservation share equal to the corresponding group population share.) 46 The state will promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people and in particular of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation. 335 The claims of members of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes shall be taken into consideration consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration in the making of appointments to services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union or of a State. 340 This article requires that the Union Government establish a permanent Commission to monitor, investigate and report to the President concerning implementation of constitutional provisions applicable to SC and ST. The Commission is also obliged to investigate the conditions of additional “socially and educationally backward classes” and to recommend steps to be taken for their advancement. In 1979, the central government appointed the ad hoc Mandal Commission under article 340 to review basic aspects of the caste system and recommend remedial measures. In its report in 1980 the Commission did not find significant erosion of the caste structure or discrimination … but recommended expansion of public service employment reservations to cover half (49.5 percent) of the positions in the public services as well as in places in scientific, technical and professional institutions under the Union.

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The additional 27 percent were to be reserved for “other socially and educationally backward classes” in addition to the 22.5 percent already reserved for SC/ST (Nesiah 1997: 63). The maximum reservation of half of the total positions is the result of a court case in 1963 (Balaji v. Mysore) in which India’s Supreme Court ruled that reservations could not exceed more than half of public employment. The court justified this ruling by asserting that reservations in excess of half would “impinge on the rights of equality guaranteed by the constitution (to which preferential rights were seen as an exception) and would impair efficiency and productivity” (Weiner and Katzenstein 1981: 150). As discussed in the following section, no action was taken on the recommendations of the Mandal Commission until a decade after they were recommended. In addition to the Commission required under the constitution (Article 340), the role of monitor and supporter for the SC and ST is carried out actively and persistently by informal coteries of SC/ST legislators in the national and state legislatures (elected under the reservation quota) who promote new policies and programs of value to SC/ST. 330 and 332 Fifteen percent of the seats in the lower houses of the national parliament (Lok Sabha) and in the state legislatures are reserved for members of the Scheduled Castes under Article 332 … . Scheduled Caste candidates stand for election to seats reserved for them under Article 330 (7.5 percent). Articles 330 and 332 also explicitly prescribe that the proportion of seats reserved for SC and ST candidates, nationally and in each state, should be equal to their corresponding population ratios. Notwithstanding the practice of allocating seats to electoral districts with a high proportion of ST or SC, in no electoral district have SC/ST voters formed a majority (Nesiah 1997: 188). Electoral reservations for SC/ST have always been constitutionally limited to ten-years terms that are routinely extended at their expiration. Reservation policy foresees, ideally, Scheduled Caste employment throughout the public sector (civil service, banks, public enterprises, public education, armed forces, medical services, etc.) in proportion to SC weight in the general population. Nevertheless a number of institutions have always been exempt from reservations: the judiciary, the armed forces, the institutes of technology (prior to 2008) atomic-energy research, etc. Article 335 put a crucial qualification on the award of reservations. Reserved positions are granted to Dalits and Tribes subject to their being eligible for them, that is they must have met the required educational standards and scored above the cutoff point for positions requiring written examinations. Before 1991, both SC and ST were unable to meet the qualifications for more than two thirds of the jobs reserved for them at the highest civil-service levels (I and II). Surplus positions were “dereserved” and filled by individuals from other castes.

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Outlines of acts to protect Dalit constitutional rights As indicated in the earlier sections, Constitutional abolition of untouchability and discrimination have had limited success in modifying traditional, although now illegal, behavior. Most states have not made strong efforts to reduce atrocities towards, exploitation of, and discrimination against Dalits. However, in the half century following Independence, the central government has responded with five statutes designed to address widespread and persistent violations in areas where crimes have been most flagrant and destructive of Dalit welfare. As indicated earlier, all five acts have been promulgated but enforcement has been weak.26 I outline the acts below: Untouchability Offenses Act (UOA), 1955. All forms of “Untouchability” were made cognizable offenses with prescribed punishments. Protection of Civil Rights (Amendment) Act, 1976. It strengthened the UOA by spelling out prohibited behaviors including denial of access to temples, shops, hotels, drinking-water sources, village council meetings, etc. as well as discrimination in schools, public health centers, the publicly supported fair-price food shops, etc. It also prohibits compelling any person to clean latrines, sweep, remove dead animals, flay animals, or remove umbilical cords. It distributes enforcement responsibilities between states and union governments. A public servant who shows “willful neglect” in investigating any suspected offense is deemed to have abetted said offense” (Nesiah 1997: 71; Shah et al. 2006: 56–57). Bonded Labor System Abolition Act, 1976. Abolishes bonded labor and voids all agreements and obligations arising out of such relationships. It cancels all debts and prohibits the creation of new bondage contracts; charges the state with rehabilitation of freed bonded laborers; includes fines and imprisonment for violations. The act prohibits valuation of crop at submarket prices; forward purchase of crops is banned as is prevention of out-migration and physical maltreatment of bonded laborers. Notwithstanding the abolition act, most bonded laborers continue in debt bondage typically to farm landlords but also in other industries, e.g., mines in Rajasthan. (They came into bondage as a result of debt contracted by themselves or a family member. The family is liable for the debt and the liability is inherited. Bonded laborers number in the millions. Their wages are generally too low to pay the debt and below the legal minimum wage. Many bonded laborers are minors or female and the majority are Dalits.) (Narula 1999: 139–40; Nesiah 1997: 187; UN Commission on Human Rights 2003). Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989. Defines 22 offenses or atrocities against SC/ST punishable under the act including forced consumption of noxious substances, excreta, etc.; dumping excreta,

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waste matter, carcasses or any other noxious substance on premises or in neighborhood of SC/ST; forced public nakedness; wrongful dispossession of land or premises; forced out-migration; forced or bonded labor; dictation of voting behavior; causing false arrest; assaults and sexual exploitation of women; corruption of water supply; burning or otherwise destroying houses; denial of rights of passage. The statute spells out how offenses registered under the act are to be prosecuted within 30 days after receipt of complaint. Victims are to receive monetary relief, plus travel and maintenance allowances during the period of investigation. Specially dedicated courts and prosecutors are to hear cases under the act (Shah et al. 2006: 134, 193–94). The original act left out violent crimes (murder, rape, assault). These were added under the Rules addition in 1995. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Rules, 1995 A large number of “Rules” were added, such as additional atrocities and monetary compensation for many kinds of offenses, including “murder, death, massacre, mass rape, dacoity (robbery) … incapacitation” etc. To facilitate enforcement at state levels, the Rules foresee calling on lawyers, medical personnel, teachers, etc., to participate in infraction investigations and ad hoc committees charged with monitoring investigations. Required police behavior and duties in case of infraction are spelled out (Narula 1999: 231). Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993. The law prohibits employment of manual scavengers (latrinecleaners) and makes it obligatory to convert dry latrines (non-flush) into “water-seal latrines.” Employment of scavengers or the construction of dry latrines is made an offence punishable with imprisonment up to a year and a fine of R 2,000 (Shah et al. 2006: 113; Narula 1999: 250–64). Experience with reservations Origins of reservations Caste-defined, government-provided preferences predate the constitution by more than a century. The British provided preferences to certain ethnic groups in recruitment to the army, the bureaucracy, and the railways. By the midnineteenth century, they had also made an effort to mitigate the stark inequality in education, employment, and income that the caste system had engendered. Under the Caste Disabilities Removal Act of 1850, they established schools for Untouchables since, out of deference to the demands of upper castes, Untouchables were excluded from existing schools (Shah et al. 2006: 45). Weiner and Katzenstein, two eminent American political scientists, noted that targeted group preferences superimposed on an all-inclusive caste structure made many Indians increasingly aware that:

74

The Dalits and human rights the existing distribution of jobs within the “modern sectors” of the labor market, especially within government, was not the result of open competition, but reflected the division of labor prescribed by the Hindu social system, the differential access to education resulting from British policies, or the preferences the British gave to one group or another in employment. (Weiner and Katzenstein 1981: 148)

Some concluded that radical restructure of labor markets via reservations was necessary to assure proportional equality in education and employment to each community (ibid.). The all-encompassing reservations established after Independence can be seen as an attempt to realize this vision. There was another reason for the constitutional provision of reservations: There was also some feeling within the Constituent Assembly that the belief in the social inferiority of the scheduled castes was so deeply engrained in Hindu society and that discrimination was still so widely practiced, that nothing short of a state policy to provide preferences could overcome the handicaps they experienced. (ibid.) Weiner and Katzenstein concluded that “An integrated and harmonious social system in the Indian view envisages a place for each group in the social order, based upon mutual respect and proportionality in the distribution of society’s benefits” (ibid.: 151). A socialist economy, as envisaged by Jawaharlal Nehru,27 a founding father of the Republic and its first prime minister, would greatly facilitate this outcome. Widespread reservations to challenge caste and class differences were seen as complementary to and compatible with this basic vision. Surge and backlash Following Independence the new reservation policy was established and implemented. Moreover: Once the principle was established that the state should provide preferences to some ethnic groups because they were disadvantaged minorities, it became only a matter of time for other disadvantaged ethnic groups to assert their claim even when they were very numerous (as in the case of other backward classes) or a majority, and even when their economic and social position was only remotely related to discrimination. As so often happens in policymaking, a decision creates a precedent which predetermines subsequent policy options. (Weiner and Katzenstein 1981: 17) In many states, the clamor of the Other Backward Classes for their own reservations was such that state governments found it in their interests to offer

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reservations that extended far beyond those initially required. In Karnataka more than two-thirds of public-sector positions are now awarded on the basis of caste identity. This occurred after low-status castes took power and were able to get themselves classified as Backwards, although they account for over 70 percent of total population (Beteille 1992: 99). Other states, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, etc. have a similar history and now reserve much more than half of government posts to some combination of OBC, Dalits, and Tribals. A number of multicaste parties have made “reservation inflation” the centerpiece of their platforms. Among the most successful of these is the BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party, People’s Majority Party), a national party, which in the last two decades has usually controlled the government of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state (190 million in 2008). Founded as a Dalit party, it soon evolved into a party that attracted members of the Scheduled Tribes, OBCs, and Muslims. Under the leadership of Mayawati, a woman and a Dalit, it won its fourth government in 2007 in Uttar Pradesh with an unprecedented absolute majority (most Indian parties win pluralities and must form coalitions to govern) in part by attracting a substantial Brahmin vote. The internal organization of Indian parties is usually an unstable combination of different castes, depending upon situational variables such as the nature of the electoral competition. Substantial shifts in the composition of intraparty components are frequent (Jaffrelot 2002: 387ff). Although reservations (jobs, school admissions, seats in parliament) are pervasive and deeply embedded in India’s institutional structure, in some states, early resistance to their implementation was also substantial. From the Republic’s first days, some state governments refused to approve the required reservations. (Vakil 1985: 45). Part of this refusal grew out of litigation: reservation of places for Scheduled Castes in the public services and in professional education was challenged in state courts and some courts decided against the national constitution (ibid.: 21). Moreover, the national judiciary has never implemented reservations, nor has the military, the atomic energy program, nor the five elite national institutes of technology (ibid.: 91–92). Nevertheless, during the first decades of the Republic, implementation of the constitutionally required reservation policy for Dalits and Scheduled Tribes was far more the rule than the exception.28 Reservation inflation in academic admissions and public-sector positions reserved for Backward Castes (OBC, SC, and ST) probably peaked before the 1990s. Even by the 1980s, attempts by some states to increase the proportion of reservations failed. In 1990, after 20 years of largely stable reservation policy at the national level, the then leading party (Janata Dal), led by V.P. Singh in a newly launched National Front Government, announced its decision to implement a substantial nationwide increase in employment and educational reservations for the benefit of “Other Backward Castes.” This decision was in accordance with the recommendations of the Mandal Report made in1980. Such increase would have brought the share of reservations to half of total national government employment and of university admissions

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(7.5 percent for ST; 15 for SC; 27 for OBC). Singh believed that this action was necessary to assure continued support from an important OBC voter bloc whose leader had abandoned his Janata Dal party. The unexpected increase triggered protest and violence, particularly from upper-caste teenagers and university students some of whom burned themselves alive. Much of the violence came from students of “forward,” castes who saw their admission into university threatened to a greater degree by the new reservations than had been the case with the SC/ST reservations. As noted earlier, SC/ST often could not qualify for reservations, in contrast the more “advanced” OBCs were capable of fulfilling the entire 27 percent quota of university and public-service places to be newly reserved for them. Most of the Indian press condemned Singh’s policy. The violence spread from the capital, Delhi, to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa. In Delhi, mass student strikes, protests and deaths continued for more than two months, whereupon the government reversed course. But it then lost the support of its main coalition partner, so that Singh and the Janata Dal lost a parliamentary vote of confidence (Austin 1995: 32; Nesiah 1997: 64–65; Parikh 1997: 184, 187–89). Similar protests took place at the state-level. In 1976, a Gujarati government commission recommended extending reservations in medical, technical, and engineering schools to OBCs. For these schools, in addition to the 22 percent of higher-education admissions already reserved for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, the commission recommended an additional 10 percent reservation to exclusively benefit 82 low-status, low-income, Backward Classes. The 10 percent was not a radical departure: Bihar and Maharashtra were already reserving 24 and 40 percent, respectively, of higher-education admissions to Backward Classes. In 1980, the government decided to implement the recommendations. Gujarat’s medical students immediately protested. A complaint was filed with the Supreme Court which quickly ruled for the Gujarat government. Although the government acceded to many of the student demands, including a reduction in reservations at the medical postgraduate level, the medical-faculty students went on strike. Joined by other students, they demanded abolition of all Backward-Class reservations, whereupon the central government shut down the medical schools of Gujarat and all schools and colleges in Gujarat’s capital city, Ahmedabad. Nevertheless the turmoil persisted. By January, 1981, The anti-reservation protests had exploded into a much larger agitation encompassing religious and caste conflicts. Over fifty people were killed. As conditions in Gujarat drew national attention, leaders from Delhi pressured their local supporters to defuse the tensions. By the middle of April, the medical students and their supporters ended their protest. (Parikh 1997: 180–82) As agreed with the protestors, Gujarat’s government set up a new commission to reconsider making additional castes eligible for reservations. The new

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commission prepared a list of 63 backward groups, using income and occupation as additional selection criteria, something which was nearly unprecedented in India. Although the report was issued in 1983 (but never publicized), the Gujarati government did not respond to it until two months before the elections of 1985 when it issued a call for a substantial increase in reservations as a proportion of the total to benefit OBCs, although it excluded the income/occupation criteria. Caste per se remained the basic selection criterion (ibid.). Again there was a furious backlash from the opponents of reservations who insisted that use of caste rather than class meant that “castes that were economically disadvantaged, but ritually higher, were denied the opportunity to improve their status through education.” Gujarat’s chief minister and his party, nevertheless, won the election. Shortly thereafter angry students and teachers rioted, calling for an examination boycott and reform of existing reservation quotas. The police sided with the students. Castes, Hindu organizations and their Muslim opponents, criminal gangs, and drug dealers joined one side or another. Finally the army was brought in. “Nearly three hundred people were killed, schools and colleges were shut down for the better part of a year, and the old quarter of Ahmedabad was torn apart. Several cities remained under curfew for months … people were unable to get to work.” Many businesses and industries temporarily ceased production (ibid., including the quotation: 182–83; Austin 1995: 43–44). Electioneering, patronage and reservations Clearly, the production and distribution of employment reservations (as well as the educational reservations that permit low castes to acquire the skills and credentials needed for high-level public posts) have deeply affected the content and course of Indian politics since Independence. This is so much the case that it is tempting to describe the desire for job preferences as the most important single factor driving state patronage politics on behalf of lower castes. The core underlying determinant in such a scenario would be the deep, pervasive hunger for government jobs among both higher and lower castes (including the majority of India’s villagers). Several factors contribute to the appetite. Even low-grade government jobs deliver employment security in the highest degree; pay far higher wages than alternative jobs requiring similar work; include housing and pensions; provide a relatively attractive workenvironment; bring escape from poverty with its stigmatization and high risk of malnutrition; and finally are deemed to establish “social justice.” Since Independence, “social justice” in India involves provision of government jobs for Dalits and other depressed castes. From the Dalit’s perspective, award of reservations to depressed castes brings retribution for centuries of humiliation and exploitation by Brahmins and other upper castes. Much of the energy for the relentless drive to increase reservations derives from this deep Dalit anger. In a recent electoral campaign Mayawati, the militant Dalit

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chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, focused more than 90 percent of her speeches on “‘social justice’ which is code for government jobs for Dalits” (Luce 2007: 129, citing Chandra 2004: 206). Edward Luce, an intense observer of Indian trends insists that implementation and rapid growth of reservations are the key element in election politics: [Reservations are] arguably the most extensive system of patronage in the democratic world. … Expanding this system is the only serious item on the agenda of the lower-caste parties. None of the parties publishes manifestos at election times setting out policies on the economy, foreign policy, or defense. What the lower-caste parties offer their supporters is the ability to extract greater powers of patronage from the larger parties in exchange for making up the parliamentary numbers in multiparty coalitions. (Luce 2007: 126) Notwithstanding the far from satiated hunger of the lower castes for publicsector employment, the reservation tide may be ebbing. Disillusionment with and intolerance of preferences have become widespread among those who are not beneficiaries, and political parties can no longer use generation of additional preferences as a low-risk strategy for winning elections. In her mid1990s analysis of the implications of the anti-reservationist movement for democratic politics, Sunita Parikh concluded that the antagonistic reaction to reservations had become so strong by the 1980s, that it was no longer advantageous for political parties to push for their expansion: Affirmative action29 was introduced because it was able to solidify and expand electoral coalitions; it could bring in new vote blocs without jeopardizing existing ones. As the policy became better known, it became more disliked by nontargeted groups, and it was no longer an appeal with no downsides and clear upsides. The early coalition could no longer be assumed. But by this point, affirmative action was also a major symbol of a party or politician’s commitment to those minorities’ concerns, and it was difficult to roll back or eliminate programs without losing these groups’ support. (Parikh 1997: 10) Resistance to employment reservations has also become an explicit national political issue. One of India’s two largest national political parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP India People’s Party) – which led the national government coalition for 1999–2004 – has joined the protest movement in calling for the removal of privileges for minorities and respect for traditional forms of society (Austin 1995: 18). Notwithstanding this stance, members of the current

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national governing coalition have called for reservations to be extended to India’s burgeoning private sector. This newest demand is analyzed in the final section of the chapter. Reservations: how much have Dalits benefited? On a nationwide basis, benefits from reservations of government jobs currently benefit fewer than 10 percent of families of the Scheduled Castes. How do I reach this conclusion? Total government employment at state and union levels is about 21 million (Luce 2007: 47)30 However the 21 million total needs to be reduced by posts exempted from reservations. Many of these are accounted for by the military on active duty of 1.414 million (Wikipedia 2008). Other exemptions are minor in number: judiciary, five national institutes of technology, atomic-energy research, central bank, etc. If these equal another 100,000, total exemptions equal 1.5 million. This leaves 19.5 million jobs. Many of these jobs are in government-owned enterprises in banking, oil and coal production, manufacturing, etc. It is not clear how far reservations apply to various public-sector enterprises. I have decided to err on the side of overestimation and assume that the entire public sector has reservations that correspond to the 19.5 million jobs. Hence, 15 percent or 2.925 million jobs are reserved for the estimated 180 million Dalits in 2008.31 India’s labor force (defined as the able-bodied, non-institutional population of both genders between age 15 and 65) is estimated at about 60 percent of total population.32 Were it 60 percent for 180 million Dalits, it would be 108 million. In which case, if Dalits filled all of the reservation jobs to which they are entitled (15 percent or 2.925 million) they would account for 2.7 percent of the Dalit labor force. If the average size of the Dalit nuclear family (defined as parents plus unmarried children) is five persons, this would mean 36 million families (180 million divided by 5). With 2.925 million reserved jobs, and no family holding more than one government job, 8.1 percent of families would benefit from a government job. Due to failure to fill professional posts reserved for Dalits at the upper echelons of the government services because of weak examination results, the actual number of posts awarded to Dalits is below the theoretic maximum. For example, in 1991 in Tamil Nadu fewer than half of Class I and Class II posts reserved for Scheduled Castes in the state government civil service, were filled by Scheduled Castes (Tamil Nadu Peoples’ Forum 1999: 19). Tamil Nadu data show a similar situation with respect to faculty posts reserved in the state colleges and universities. In 1991, on a state-population proportionality basis, (over 19 percent), Scheduled Castes would have accounted for about 4,000 of the 20,133 faculty positions at Tamil Nadu public and government-assisted private colleges and universities. There were, however, only 350 Dalit teachers, about 9 percent of their proportional share (ibid.: 19). Moreover, most of the reserved posts are at the lowest echelon, e.g., sweepers and messengers. Many of these positions would have been won by Dalits in

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open, non-discriminatory competition without reservations.33 If Tamil Nadu is at all typical with respect to unfilled reservation posts, nationwide, actual public-sector positions held by Scheduled Castes will be well below the theoretic maximum. Actually, Tamil Nadu has one of the higher rates of literacy and average school achievement of India’s 25 states. Presumably, therefore, the average educational gap between Dalits and others in Tamil Nadu is lower than in states where overall educational achievement of Dalits is also lower. One could, therefore, expect its performance to be better than that of the median state in fulfilling high-level state posts. Table 4.9 provides similar data for the national government. In 1994, Dalits held 10 and 12 percent of Class I and Class II posts rather than 15 percent. Nearly all of Class I and Class II reservations (the highest ranks in the national civil service) are occupied by urban Scheduled Castes whose parents were already far closer to socio-economic parity with the majority than the average or median Dalit. For example, in Tamil Nadu in the early 1980s, the offspring of the 11 percent of the Scheduled Castes with the highest incomes received almost half of all reserved jobs and university places while the poorest 12 percent received no more than 2 percent of such jobs and places (Galanter 1984: 469).34 No doubt, a significant part of the Dalits in Class I and II posts would have been able to compete successfully for those posts with the population at large rather than requiring the protective discrimination of reservations policy. On this score too, the number of reserved posts actually awarded to Dalits because of reservations policy is overestimated. So, there are two clear errors in using the total number of government posts reserved for Dalits as a measure of the effectiveness of reservation policy: not all of the posts reserved for Dalits are filled by Dalits, and even if there were no reservation policy, some of the reserved posts now allocated to Dalits would, nevertheless, be filled by Dalits There is a further consideration in estimating distributive impact. Meeting official eligibility criteria for a vacant reserved post is not always a sufficient condition for being granted the post. It is common knowledge that access to posts allocated to Dalits is also controlled by political leaders who may dispense

Table 4.9 SC employment by class in central government civil service (as a percent of total class employment)

Class Class Class Class

I II III IV

1971

1987

1991

1994

2.58 4.06 9.59 10.37

8.23 10.40 14.40 20.00

9.09 11.82 15.67 21.24

10.25 12.06 15.73 20.46

Source: Government of India 1992. Note: Excludes sweepers most of whom are scheduled castes. Data for 1994 extrapolated in the source document. Not all employees in the public sector are civil servants.

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them as patronage, e.g., compensation for service to the caste political party, or sell them to eligible Dalits (Luce 2007: 126). This is general practice for the entire civil service. Reservations also benefit (provide rents to) those who control access to the resource. These controllers may not be Dalits. Most civil-service posts, national and state, are located in urban areas. About 80 percent of Dalits still live in the countryside. Most of these do not have access to either higher education or reservation posts and indeed have little alternative to subsistence production and/or unskilled day-wages employment. This reasoning can be pulled together in one paragraph. If in 2008 the total Dalit population is 180 million and the average Dalit family has five persons, then there are 36 million Dalit families. If no family has more than one reserved post, then 2.925/36 or 8.1 percent of Dalit families could benefit from the assumed 2.925 million posts reserved for Dalits. Since few government posts are in rural areas, most reservation benefits have gone to the urban Dalits. (But some rural Dalits may receive remittances from urban family members.) Assume a Dalit urban population of 36 million (20 percent of the Dalit total of 180 million) and an average family size of the Dalit population in the cities of five persons. This gives 7.2 million urban Dalit families. Assuming all reserved posts held by Dalits are urban and equal 2.925 million, gives 40.6 percent of Dalit urban families holding a public-sector job, assuming that no Dalit family holds multiple reservation posts. The assumptions on which these outcomes are based are deliberately biased. They err in overestimating the number of Dalits who owe their government job to reserved posts in education and government civil services. They probably also overestimate total reservations for Dalits. The conclusion stands: more than 90 percent of Dalits are not currently benefiting from reservation posts. No doubt a sizeable proportion of Dalit urban families hold reservation positions, perhaps near to 30 or 40 percent of the Dalit urban population, or about 8 percent of the total Dalit population. But a sizeable proportion of these positions would be occupied by Dalits even without reservation policy. Unintended side effects: speculation on the impact of reservations policy on the productivity of the public sector There is a consensus that the state or the public sector of India (the union government, the railways, military, teachers, post offices, the oil and coal sectors, government factories, the state governments and municipalities, police posts, ration shops, infrastructure, etc.) comes up short in many ways. Most public institutions (administrative, educational, legal, financial, etc.) do not function well. Undeveloped and perversely developed public services are a drag on economic development. In many ways, corruption is seen as a major contributor to this state of affairs. And how much has reservation policy contributed to this state of affairs? The classic response to this question goes very much as follows. The dangers to public-sector operations as a consequence of employment by ascriptive

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preference (and the disassociation of reward from the quality of job performance that it may entail) increase to the degree that ascription overrides merit in recruitment for and promotion in the public services. In the language of Beteille, “as caste quotas come to be extended indefinitely they turn every organization from a work site into a bargaining centre” (1992: 110). At first glance, this might be the case in India, where many states distribute well over half of government posts on the basis of membership in one or another kind of “backward” caste, rather than on the basis of competency. Focussing on Dalits alone, how much might this explain of the low-efficiency state of the public services? A useful way to address this question involves estimates of the extent of rentseeking in India’s central government and its effects on the associated public institutions, e.g., civil services, railways, military establishment, judiciary, etc. To this end I define rent as illegal income accruing to beneficiaries (some combination of rent-generating officials and their families, political leaders, industrialists, merchants, etc.) by means of unlawful exercise of authority attendant on a position in the public sector. So defined, the total magnitude of rents generated in a public sector provides an indication of the degree of corruption of that public sector. The rent total can be compared to other variables such as taxation, GDP, government payroll, etc. to get some idea of the magnitude of corruption.35 My “guesstimate” is that total value of rents ascribable to Dalit reservations is less than 3 percent of the total value of rents generated by the public sectors of India, because Dalits account for a very small share of the total of high-level officials and political leaders in positions that permit substantial rent-seeking. Consider the proportion of high-level public-sector jobs that are actually filled by Dalits in the central government. Table 4.9 shows that in 1991 they held about 11 percent of the posts in Classes I and II in the central government. What is true of the central government is also true of the states: “More than 90 percent of India’s 21 million public service employees are in the Class III or Class IV category of civil servants” (Luce 2007: 77). These include junior officials, clerks, chauffeurs, messengers, sweepers, etc. The Dalits at the top are too few to play a determining role in government decision-making, including decisions on the distribution of patronage and other forms of rent. The civil services are run by those holding the managerial and professional posts, and their political bosses. Most of these are not Dalits. The role of Dalits in higher education is even less influential in that they likely hold less than 5 percent of the teaching and other professorial positions in higher education.36 Access to jobs, promotions, and school admissions reserved for Dalits is also subject to rent-seeking. Illegal rents from reservation implementation, however, only in some small part benefit Dalits and may actually reduce benefits for them. Political leaders allocate Dalit reservations as patronage. Upperechelon school places and job posts are frequently “de-reserved,” although qualified Dalit candidates have applied and may have been wrongfully rejected. Navsarjan, a Dalit advocacy organization, asserts that publicly supported Gujarat schools “owned by private trusts” have refused to employ qualified Dalit teachers, and habitually “de-reserved” such posts (Navsarjan 2000: 20).

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Others emphasize pro-Dalit rule-bending that produces “rents” for Dalits. For example, in the 1950s, passing grades for Scheduled Castes taking examinations at both university level and for promotion in public-sector jobs were below the official cutoff points (Vakil 1985: 47). Sowell also reports on a large number of abuses and failures with respect to admissions to professional schools, including admission requirements for Scheduled Castes reduced below general norms (Sowell 1990: 98–100). But rents extracted from reservations transactions account for a very small part of the total value of rents extracted from the public sector. The Dalit wage bill from reserved posts adds up to a small part of the wage bill of national and state government. Add to the non-Dalit wage bill the expenditures for government procurement, including construction, equipment, military hardware, and other durables. These latter items however probably provide rents that amount to but a small part of the rent “generation,” by rent-seeking entrepreneurs in the public sectors. The latter occurs with respect to taxation, subsidies, licensing, policing, and regulations in construction, commerce, banking, manufacturing, the judiciary, land development, etc. Relative to the total of these various kinds of rents, the rents derived from Dalit reservations must be a very small part of the total “rent pie.” My conclusion: reservations for Dalits have but minute impact on the overall modus operandi of rent-seeking in India’s governments and other public institutions. Most rent-seeking and rent generation are independent of Dalit reservations transactions and would be as virulent as they are today even without reservation policy.37 Nevertheless, reservation policy in general has clearly not improved government functioning. Elections and the legislatures may be less effective than they would have been were there no reservations. The conversion of elections into partly a quest for patronage and rents benefiting the winning parties may owe much to reservations policy. It has not increased meritocratic behavior within the civil services, but it cannot be held responsible for their managerial and policy shortcomings. All in all, most rent-seeking and patronage would persist today in India, even if the reservations policy had never existed.

Other efforts to increase Dalit income and status Manual scavenging38 I have included an account of manual scavengers (toilet cleaners) because of their extreme situation. Their situation has long been publicized by both India’s national and international advocacy groups. Many NGOs work with them in efforts to free them from their occupation. The national government has made and continues to make efforts to bring them into the mainstream. There has been some improvement in their situation and indeed some scavengers have escaped to a new life. Nevertheless the number of Dalits working as manual scavengers has increased since India’s Independence in 1947.

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Manual scavengers, most of whom are women, are victims not only of external but also of internal status hierarchy. They are unambiguously at the bottom of the Dalit jatis or castes ranking. Officially described as sanitation workers or safai karamcharis , they are found in most of India39 carrying out their hereditary, religiously sanctioned occupation of cleaning up the feces of people who use dry (non-flush) latrines. They may also be required to sweep up trash, remove dead animals, deliver death notices, etc. What is involved in their main occupation? Although most of India’s rural residents do toilet functions alfresco, many of the remainder use dry latrines, as do people in India’s urban slums, etc. (Table 4.10). Dry latrines typically include a compartment into which the urine and feces drop. It is not always easy to access but must be cleaned, often daily. Some town systems rely on septic tanks that may connect to open sewers or other forms of drainage. These also frequently need to be serviced or unplugged. Servicing typically requires human beings to submerge in the filth, a job mostly left to males. Nearly all dry latrines are cleaned by women using no more than a broom, metal plate, and “drum,” or basket. The “pickings” are dropped in the drum, which is typically head-carried to the disposal site, rain or shine. Scavengers cleaning home toilets are as unobtrusive as possible, entering from the rear, cleaning and passing out in silence. Multi-unit latrines are often publicly owned. Their lives are miserable in many ways. Wages are low, frequently hardly enough to buy adequate food for several persons, although some scavengers may benefit from handouts of leftover food and dead animals removed from village/town precincts may be divided, cooked, and eaten. Because of their work, manual scavengers suffer viral and bacterial infections, which affect their skin, eyes, and respiratory systems. They may drink country liquor in order to stomach their work. They and their children are shunned by other Dalits. Even if clean and odorless, their peers typically segregate them in public settings. Sanitation workers are twice victimized. As Dalits they suffer traumatic discrimination at the hands of the public in general, but other Dalits also exclude, isolate, and discriminate against them. Were it possible to measure the alleged hereditary religious pollution of individual Dalits, manual scavengers would no doubt emerge with the worst score. India’s upper castes are twice born and their safai karamcharis are twice broken.

Table 4.10 Sanitation facilities in India, 1998–1999 (percentages)

Flush Toilet Pit toilet/Latrine Other No facility (alfresco)

Urban

Rural

Total

63.9 16.8 0.0 19.3

8.8 10.0 0.1 81.1

24.0 11.9 0.1 64.0

Source: International Institute for Population Sciences, 2000.

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There is no consensus on the total number of scavengers. Shah et al. estimate 8 million safai karamcharis (2006: 108). The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment put the number at 676,000 in its Annual Report of 2002–03. The director of Navsarjan (a large Gujarati NGO working intensively with manual scavangers) calculates 1.3 million (Interview with Manjula Pradees, 17 May 2008). According to data from India’s National Family Health Survey there were about 120 million dry latrine units in use in 1999 (International Institute for Population Sciences 2000). The work is not only in the private sector, scavengers are hired to clean government latrines at all levels: municipal, state and union, including the capital, Delhi. The railways (30,000 coach cars) and installations of the Ministry of Industry also maintain dry latrines and employ manual scavengers. As stated earlier, parliament passed a law in 1993 outlawing existing dry latrines, their construction and manual scavenging. Violations are punishable by imprisonment up to 1.5 years. The law, however, regulates a sector where the states have primary jurisdiction and, therefore, are free to adopt or reject national government legislation concerning it. If a state adopts a law, it commits to enforce it. Most states have adopted the act. Today, the law has been both in force for more than a decade and ignored by all states except Kerala, which has officially eliminated manual scavenging. Some states adopted the law and later insisted that they no longer had any dry latrines, although this was not the case. Others have not presented monitoring data on their dry latrines as required. Given this enforcement history, it is not surprising that the number of manual scavengers appears to have increased. In 2005, the Supreme Court was informed during a hearing of petitions seeking enforcement of the law that the number of manual scavengers had increased from 588,000 in 1992 to 787,000 in 2002 (Viswanathan 2006: 3). Several factors appear to have contributed to the implementation failure:  Viswanathan sees in the failure to comply “a deep-rooted prejudice against Dalits on whom the hierarchical caste Hindu society has thrust an obnoxious occupation only because they are born into this segregated social group” (ibid.: 2).  A strong reason for complying that appears not to have generated much attention has to do with public health. Human feces cause diseases, including diarrhea, which is a leading cause of death and illness among infants and children in India. Feces removal to typical waste sites is particularly dangerous during the monsoon when the sludge may quickly enter the water table and water courses. Yet there appears to be little demand for elimination of latrines on health grounds. The entire law refers to improvement of “public health” only in the “Whereas” preamble to the actual stipulations of the law.  The political context is also important. The Eighth Five Year Plan allocated Rs. 464 million (US$11.6 million) to implement the law but expenditure had little impact in reducing the problem. Some activists point to

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this outcome and insist that funding is not an issue. Yet, neither the railways nor governments would have been able to replace dry latrines without spending far more. In the case of the railways and their 30,000 coach cars, there would have to be a large expenditure to convert the individual cars into non-polluters. Bureaucratic inertia and lack of political pressure for moving forward and allocating the needed financial resources presumably are also important in explaining why the state governments have largely ignored the act.  Another factor concerns the situation of the scavengers themselves. Their traumatic exploitation and victimization by the rest of society has led to intellectual and social isolation, low education, and strong risk aversion with respect to choice of occupation. The resulting cultural endowment (See Chapter 3) leads to a very narrow perception of possible occupational alternatives. Most safai karamcharis have difficulty imagining themselves learning to do anything other than what they are already doing. Their work experience reinforces this mindset: scavenging is their monopoly and brings minimal but reliable economic security. Choosing alternative work brings huge risks at the hands of the dominant castes including possible social boycotts and atrocities. These risks become overwhelming insofar as they believe that they have nowhere else to go occupationally or geographically. Navsarjan makes a similar case: They regard themselves as worthless and responsible for their own fate … The scavengers know that scavenging is a noncompetitive sector, which brings them security. Anything else is … highly competitive. It is clear that the competition is not in the areas of finance or competence, but more with the caste mind. (Navsarjan 1998: 5) Martin Macwan, was the Director of Navsarjan when the above citation was written as part of an application for financial support from the Ford Foundation. He is now guiding new boarding schools (grades 5 through 7) for Dalits. As noted earlier most Dalits, and especially girls, drop out of school early. Hence they have limited economic opportunities and little capacity for achieving upward mobility. Consistent with his earlier thinking, Macwan sees education as a key to liberation for all Dalits. But he notes that girls attending government schools are subject to risks of sexual abuse and rape. Dalits, boys and girls, in public schools experience poor teaching, class segregation, bullying, and stigmatization. The home environment is not conducive to learning. Macwan stresses that boarding schools for Dalits avoid these problems, facilitate development of needed cognitive and behavioral skills; as well as broaden horizons and promote self-confidence.40

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The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has undertaken a number of initiatives to help manual scavengers change their occupation, including:  Awareness camps to increase manual scavenger confidence. Set up in the localities (basties) of safai karamcharis, they aim to persuade them to break away from scavenging and take up alternative employment activities. Up to Rs. 5,000 per awareness camp is reimbursable.  Provision of education loans for scavengers and their dependants for graduate and postgraduate training in law, engineering, medicine, etc.  Grants to individuals for skill development and for self-employment ventures in income-generating activities.  Loans to set up small business and other income-generating projects. The Ministry reports that 102,190 manual scavengers received loans under this category in four years (2003 to 2007) (Government of India 2007: 15–16). The resources invested in these initiatives are small; only an extremely small part of safai karamcharis can benefit from them. In 2003, a coalition of Dalit advocacy organizations and seven manual scavengers filed a public-interest litigation petition at the Supreme Court of the Republic of India seeking implementation of the Manual Scavenging Prohibition Act. The court agreed to hear the complaint.41 Early in the proceedings, it issued an interim order requiring the pertinent central and state government units to draw up detailed action plans with timetables and completion deadlines of steps to eliminate dry latrines and to develop comprehensive plans for re-employing the displaced scavengers. As of 2007, there had been little progress on this front and the advocacy organizations called a national consultation to discuss strategies and means for ending manual scavenging. Many possibilities were considered:  destroy the dry latrines and force governments to deal with the resulting unemployment;  induce the scavengers to walk away from such work;  organize to demand new jobs from government;  replace the dry latrines with low-cost water-flush units, composting units, etc.;  concentrate on training scavengers in alternative jobs and aid them in finding new employment.42 The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment did not participate in the consultation. In 2007 there was also a four-day “Toilet Summit” in Delhi in which NGOs from about 40 countries participated as part of an international move to promote development of low-cost sanitary toilet facilities. At this summit, an Indian company was pushing a line of traditional Indian-style squat toilets which use little water that ranged in cost from Rs. 700 to 3,000 (US$17.50–75.00).

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Perhaps the market has something to contribute. In Mumbai’s Dharavi Slum (population of about a million in one square mile) there is a commercial establishment of 16 public latrines serving 300 “hutments” housing in total about 3,000 people, where “the loos are as clean as they could possibly be.”43 It costs a rupee a visit – or 30 rupees for a monthly family ticket. (Economist 22 December 2007: 58). Possibly, making provision of sanitary toilet facilities a business in which safai karamcharis (SK) have a strong comparative advantage, rather than a caste obligation is a good strategy. One can visualize many SK firms entering into production, possibly subsidized by government per unit of production. Building on Mumbai’s Dharavi experience, selling sanitary loo services in low-income neighborhoods might also be a good way to reduce alfresco activity while providing better job opportunities for SKs. Given that well over half of Indians still defecate outdoors in fields, etc., the potential market for a safe, convenient, hygienic, inexpensive facility must be huge. This is particularly the case for women forced to go in the dark, in groups, at some distance from their homes. Public-health-oriented foreign assistance organizations might consider supporting such developments inter alia because of their potential for improving India’s very low public health standards. Promoting intercaste marriage National and state government financial support to marriage between Dalits and caste Indians is an innovative policy as well as a strong indication of the difficulty of bringing down India’s caste system. In industrialized countries intermarriage of differing ethno-racial-religious groups is common. It is seen as a consequence of but also a contributor to social cohesion: “Intermarriage may well be considered the last step in assimilation. Sociologists have so considered it. … Intermarriage is so crucial a final step because … it marks the highest degree of social acceptance. … it is an indication that everything else in bringing groups together is working” (Glazer 1997: 128). To the present, the Hindu taboo against marrying out of caste (i.e., out of jati) is rarely broken, notwithstanding the explicit legalization of intercaste marriage in 1955. The maintenance of the taboo is an indicator of the durability of the caste system and also an important cause of that persistence and stability. In contrast to the marriage taboo, India’s castes readily accommodate increasing intra-jati occupational differentiation, particularly in urban areas, in lieu of the high congruence between caste and occupation characteristic of pre-industrial India. Such accommodation is common, although moving out of one’s traditional caste occupation(s) is also a major violation of caste rules. Notwithstanding the tenacity of the exogamy prohibition, the perception among Hindus of the overwhelming desirability and even moral inevitability of endogamy is probably slowly eroding. As indicated in Table 4.11, a substantial minority of respondents (26 percent) do not condemn intercaste marriage, while nearly half of the urban respondents were non-condemnatory.

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Table 4.11 Caste marriage decisions in India, 2005 Percentage All Respondents Disapprove of inter-caste marriage Parents to have final say in choice of partner

74 72

Urban, Educated Respondents Disapprove of inter-caste marriage Parents to have final say in choice of partner

56 59

Rural Respondents Disapprove of inter-caste marriage Parents to have final say in choice of partner

82 78

Source: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 2006. Note: The Centre provided data for total and urban populations in a 2005 poll of 15,000 respondents nationwide. Rural respondents’ percentages are interpolated by assuming that 70 percent of the total population has a rural residence.

Intercaste marriage is rare, with one exception: the young, urban professionals of India’s new, hyper-modern, export-oriented, information-technology sector. At India’s Infosys (international IT and consulting firm), for example, a large proportion of professionals have intercaste and interreligious marriages. Similarly, Jeevansathi.com, a matrimonial website attracting informationtechnology professionals, reported in 2007 that 56 percent of its online matches were intercaste couples (Economist, 6 October 2007: 82). In village India, intercaste marriage routinely calls forth condemnation from one or both families involved. If the couple does not flee, punishment for such violation of caste marriage rules is close to inevitable. If the pair remains, at the very least they will be “outcasted.” The same fate might also befall others who fail to treat the culpable couple as outcastes. Violent criminal retribution is also frequent. On occasion, the bride’s brothers restore family honor by killing the bridegroom and possibly members of his family; angry parents “rescue” their daughters, and may accuse them of insanity; others assault their in-laws, or succeed in having the bridegroom jailed, etc. Early in the twenty-first century and close to Delhi, a Dalit boy and upperclass girl were publicly executed because of their romance (Chu 2007). Some marriage victims, however, have been successful in inducing criminal actions by state authorities in which perpetrators have been found guilty of murder, assault, and/or harassment and incarcerated (Shukla 2006). At the political level, Indian regulations are again ahead of Indian practice. To encourage caste-mixing, the national and some state governments offer monetary incentives for intercaste marriage. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE) states that “inter-caste marriages are an effective instrument of combating the evil practice of casteism.” At the state level, the awards ranged from Rs. 2,000 in West Bengal to Rs. 50,000 in Gujarat. Beginning in 2006, the national award was increased to Rs. 50,000 (US$1,250),

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equivalent to two or three years of wages for a low-skill worker or to the price of a very modest house. The award was to be paid in equal part by the state and national governments. The Ministry concludes that the incentive has increased intercaste marriages substantially between 2003 and 2005–6 and gives three examples: in Karnataka (400 marriages in 2003 to 1,200 in 2005/ 06), Maharashtra (606 to 831), and Haryana (26 to 42) (Government of India 2007: 21). These data suggest that the total number of intercaste weddings per year is less than 1 percent of the total number of weddings per year.44 Thus far the impact of the monetary award on the caste system as measured by the total number of intercaste marriages is small. Nevertheless, intercaste marriage awards are a promising innovation. Of the five case studies in this volume, only national and state governments in India offer financial incentives to encourage exogamy of their SRELIM.

The future of reservations policy India’s “war on the caste system” continues. Caste is to come down because it is destructive of human welfare and of human rights but also because it acts as an impediment to economic development (e.g., failure to supply education to much of the population; restricted choice in occupation). Once the constitutional stipulations for emancipation of the Dalits were in place, India’s Westerneducated secularists saw reservations as the biggest guns in the constitution’s strategy to bring down caste. Yet after more than half a century of widespread implementation of reservations, the caste system and its institutions are still the primary regulator of social organization. Caste values and norms remain deeply embedded in Indian society. Caste institutions may not be brought down until most of the population lives in cities, working at radically new jobs, while their jatis fade into social clubs or become nostalgic memories. Meanwhile, reservations, rather than big guns hammering at the caste system, often appear to be reinforcing caste rigidities as hundreds of castes scramble to further their members’ interests by winning elections and maintaining, if no longer increasing, existing reservations. As indicated in this chapter, the endeavor to increase reservations now may lead to violent conflict with castes and individuals excluded from reservations and various kinds of other government benefits, hence additional “reservation inflation” appears unlikely. But the basic system of reservations remains in place and probably contributes in some degree to the pervasive failure of state and national governments to produce adequate public goods.45 The new player in this arena is the burgeoning, globalization-oriented private sector. Most of India’s founding fathers were strong believers in democratic socialism, the ideology that promised rapid growth with equity in the 1940s and 1950s. Prime Minister Nehru’s socialist vision necessarily involved the withering away of the private sector while public enterprises were to flourish, provide most employment in the modern sector, and gradually replace the traditional India of villages and low-income agriculture. It has not worked out that way.

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Rather than elites guiding the nation via state-led planning to public ownership and rational allocation of resources that together would give rise to a noble socialism of equality and growth, India too is opting for globalization, private enterprise, market autonomy and integration into the international economy. Today, in certain fundamental ways, the state in India is withering and the private sector has become the engine of development. Political forces are attempting to shift in response to the new approach by bringing private activity into the purview of reservations policy. In 2007, the prime minister warned of “strong measures” if companies do not hire more Dalits (Economist, 6 October 2007: 81–83). Further, the Dalit chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (population 180 million) has recently insisted that 30 percent of company jobs be reserved for “Dalits, OBCs, high-castes, and Muslim poor46 (ibid.: 81). Much of the modern private sector is resolutely committed to avoiding this outcome and has taken measures to head it off. Some firms finance educational opportunities for low castes. Others furnish training programs for backward castes who meet certain educational standards that will make them attractive candidates for employment in the modern sector. For example, Infosys is funding a seven-month training program for promising, low-caste, engineering graduates, including Dalits, to bring their skills up to job-level standards.47 The Confederation of Indian Industry has also introduced a program of scholarships for promising low-caste students. (ibid.: 82) Job reservations in the private sector would create many problems. In addition to adamant resistance from business people, there is now substantial opposition to reservation inflation among those excluded from preferences. Leaving these issues to the side, it is instructive to consider some of the effects of private-sector reservations. Would extension of Dalit employment reservations to the modern private sector substantially improve Dalit income vis-à-vis the general population? To get at this question, two earlier findings from India’s experience with public-sector reservations are pertinent:  Less than 10 percent of Dalits benefit from their proportionate share of public-sector job reservations. Currently employment in the modern private sector is far lower than that of the public sector (about 21 million jobs). For the foreseeable future, the benefit impact of private-sector reservations for Dalits at 15 percent of additional private-sector employment would be very small relative to the entire Dalit/non-Dalit income disparity gap. True, there are demands that reservations should apply to all existing modern private-sector positions. This is obviously not at all feasible, given the furious opposition to such radical change from both the owners and those currently employed in the positions in question.  A key consideration is job qualification. Implementation of reservations has always included a constitutionally sanctioned precondition that candidates for reservations be fully qualified for their positions. As a result, since Independence large proportions of Dalit slots in grades I and II of

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Inadequate qualification is an even larger issue in private industry than in government. Today in India (2008), there is substantial unsatisfied demand among firms for professionals in fields requiring certain kinds of preparation and skills (engineering, the sciences, accounting, English-language fluency, etc.). There is also a very large number of would-be job-seekers eager for such employment. But the supply of those who have the credentials and the needed knowledge and cognitive skills is far less than the total demand of the firms: India is failing to equip its young with the skills that its companies need. This is one of the biggest threats to sustaining high economic growth. India’s outstanding computer-services companies – which will account for around a quarter of overall growth in the next few years – intend to hire over 1 million engineering graduates in the next two years. It will be tough. To recruit 31,000 graduates last year, Infosys considered 1.3 million applicants; only 65,000 passed a basic test. To address the skills shortage, the company is investing a whopping US$450 million in training. (Economist, 6 October 2007: 83) Traditional public-sector reservations policy is effective in situations which invert the upper echelons of India’s private-sector labor markets, that is, situations in which the unconditional supply of jobs in education and government is fewer than the effective Dalit demand for such positions (the number who want the jobs and are qualified for them). This is the case for many skill levels and work categories in the national and state public sectors. It is most probably not the case for professional and skilled-labor positions in the private sector today. The qualifications required for a position can also be an elastic concept. Firms demand different qualification levels and adjust wage structure accordingly. Under certain circumstances, if labor supply at a given wage is very ample, firms may seize the opportunity to raise qualifications and/or lower wages. Raising qualifications may also be an ambiguous undertaking. Outside of India, firms have been known to do so as a way of discriminating against minorities. In the United States in the 1970s, federal government regulations were promulgated requiring that there be a direct connection between the

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skills/knowledge required to pass written tests and the job content of any position for which they were required. In Indian cases of possible discrimination, rather than attempt to remedy such situations with reservations, a more equitable and possibly less socially disruptive approach would be to take measures to eliminate discrimination, e.g., government-led litigation in cases of suspected discrimination, plus antidiscrimination regulation, and possibly legislation. Reservations expanded to the private sector might backfire if few job-seekers have the required qualifications for reserved positions. Some analysts insist that Indian manufacturing and export industries are heavily penalized on a number of variables: dysfunctional and corrupt government regulation; weak infrastructure, and underqualified staff because of poor prior education (Luce 2007: passim at 323–39). The Economist is emphatic about the situation of low-caste students: Low-caste students struggle in schools without special help, which is rarely available. Their English – the language of India’s middle class – tends to be poor. Many drop out. Up to half of university places reserved for lowcaste students are left vacant. So too, are many of the university posts reserved for low-caste teachers. Most Indians emerge from this system with an abysmal education. Low-caste Indians almost invariably do. (Economist, 6 October 2007: 83) It is not too difficult to imagine a scenario in which government reserves middle-level private-sector jobs across a menu of disadvantaged groups (SC, ST, OBC) according to their relative share in total population, and then experiences widespread failure to fulfill the resulting reservations because of inadequate qualifications among low-caste job-seekers. I say this because even at the primary level, the educational qualifications of the population are not strong, both in quality and the average level of attainment. And what is true of the lower castes, is ipso facto the case among Dalits (and ST) whose educational achievements are the lowest in the nation. At the lowest skill levels, however, there may be less interest in which castes get the jobs, because of low wages and low status. Table 4.9 excludes sweeper jobs (civil-service level IV) which apparently are held predominantly by Dalits. Yet even excluding sweepers, Dalits in Table 4.9 are overrepresented at grade IV (they held 20 percent of such posts, rather than their proportionate share of 15 percent) suggesting that they would have had a substantial share of such jobs even without reservations. If this is true in the public sector, it may be more the case in the private, where the wages and perquisites for jobs at the private-sector equivalent of grade III and IV levels are presumably lower than in the public sector. Thus far, reservation policies have not improved the lot of most Dalits. Fifty years ago upper-level reservations may have been important in demonstrating to the larger population and to the Dalits themselves that they were capable of work at high status levels. The demonstration effect is no longer

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needed. Today, India has advanced to the point where undereducation has become an obvious obstacle to economic growth. It may be hackneyed, but nevertheless worth repeating, that at this juncture among the best policy alternatives that will permit Dalits to improve their standing relative to the rest of India, is broad and deep improvement in education. Both the adequacy and the quantity of education for Dalits are defective. Since the 1980s, India has grown at more than 7 percent annually. At that rate, the size of the economy doubles every ten years. Such growth over a long period would inevitably bring in train rapid urbanization and expansion in the proportion of middle-class citizenry. It should also generate a similar increase in the public supply of education financed by the rapid increase in public resources that growth facilitates. A good way for Dalits to take advantage of this situation would be to press the government to concentrate attention and effort to increasing the quality and quantity of education while advocating measures to improve Dalit educational access. Worldwide, as countries develop, required skill levels increase. Failure of the Dalits to participate in such progress suggests that rather than closing their status/income gap, it might increase while their experience of village oppression persists indefinitely. Finally, in the future even more so than in the past, reservations can have only limited impact in reducing the Dalit parity gap.

Annex: Untouchables are worse than criminals and beasts? In 1924–25, a campaign involving massive nonviolent demonstrations was undertaken to remove the prohibition against Untouchables using a road that passed close to an important Hindu temple in the town of Vaikam, in what is now the state of Kerala. During the campaign, Mahatma Gandhi entered into negotiation with a Nambudiri Brahmin temple trustee to permit Untouchables to use the road. The exchange below was recorded by Gandhi’s secretary, Mahadev Desai, as reproduced by Eleanor Zelliot (1992: 161). GANDHI:

Is it fair to exclude a whole section of Hindus, because of their supposed lower birth, from public roads which can be used by non-Hindus, by criminals and bad characters, and even by dogs and cattle? TRUSTEE: But how can it be helped? They are reaping the reward of their karma. GANDHI: No doubt they are suffering for their karma by being born as untouchables. But why must you add to the punishment? Are they worse than even criminals and beasts? T: They must be so, for otherwise God would not condemn them to be born untouchables. G: But God may punish them. Who are we human beings to take the place of God and add to their punishment? T: We are instruments. God uses us as his instruments in order to impose on them the punishment that their karma has earned for them.

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G:

But supposing the Avarnas [outside the varna, i.e., untouchables,] said that they were instruments in the hands of God in order to impose inflictions on you? What would you do? T: Then the Government would stand between them and us and prevent them from doing. Good men would do so. Mahatmaji, we beseech you to prevent Avarnas from depriving us of our old privileges.

Soon after this exchange, the road was opened to all people. Untouchables were not allowed to enter the temple until 1936 when Travancore [now Kerala] enacted a law opening its state temples to Untouchables.

5

The mobility of Japan’s Burakumin Militant advocacy and government response

The Minister of Justice … stated that discrimination was a “matter of the heart” and not suitable for legal attention.1

Introduction Japan’s Burakumin are a SRELIM of 2 or 3 million out of a total population of 130 million. To the present they remain near the bottom of Japan’s class structure, although they are identical genetically and culturally (same language, religion, and customs) to other Japanese. Centuries ago, they originated as eta, those engaged in “polluting” occupations (animal slaughter, leatherwork, disposal of the dead) and hinin, social deviants such as vagrants, unemployables, but also impoverished peasants who had threatened the authorities (Donoghue 1978: 27–28; Hirasawa 1989: 31). By and large only the memory of these groups remains, but the Burakumin still live in areas that only yesterday were segregated and decrepit ghettos, and still work in lowskill blue-collar occupations. Long-standing discrimination by Japan’s majority explains their continuing existence as a low-status, low-income group. In the last four decades, partly because of the militant advocacy of the Buraku Liberation League, an organization of and for the Burakumin, Japan’s governments invested the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars in ghetto rehabilitation and Burakumin education. This “big push” dramatically reduced the gap in socio-economic status between mainline Japanese and the Buraku minority, although the latter are still far from parity with the majority. (In this chapter, “Buraku” means “of the Burakumin,” and the uncapitalized “buraku” means those village(s) that had once been the exclusive residence of the Burakumin. “Burakumin” is a euphemism that literally means village (buraku) people (min).)2 Buraku mobility history is instructive for three reasons: the unusual manner in which the Buraku Liberation League (BLL) has provoked government to promote “Buraku liberation”; the extraordinary manner in which government has responded; and the question of the degree to which the Burkau minority

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is integrating into the larger society. The account that follows concentrates on these three themes.

Buraku history The institutionalization of the Buraku minority as polluted, endogamous, “ghettoized,” and exploited took place during the period of Tokugawa dominion (1603–1867). To promote social stability, the Tokugawa formalized Japan’s class structure into four castes: samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants. Birth determined to which group one belonged. The Shogunate also “undertook to regulate the morals of the people and to prescribe their behaviour in the minutest detail” (Samson 1950: 192). The status and required behavior of the non-class, the outcaste remainder, today’s Burakumin, were also defined. The Tokugawa segregated and regulated Buraku families in their buraku (i.e., rural villages, although today many are in urban settlements) frequently in undesirable areas, e.g., on steep hillsides, river flood plains and other wastelands. Maps deliberately omitted these settlements, although the authorities recorded the address and the vital statistics of each buraku’s inhabitants (as they did for all other citizens). Marriage was permitted only within the group. Tokugawan sumptuary regulation of Buraku dress and behavior became more humiliating over time. In some periods they were required to wear distinctive clothing such as blue collars, or to keep their hair cut short. At times, their heads had to remain uncovered in all weather and women were not allowed to shave their eyebrows or blacken their teeth (Japan, An Illustrated Encyclopedia 1993: 535). By the eighteenth century they were prohibited from entering public places including shrines and temples or even the homes of common citizens. They were not permitted to attend school. Access to occupations was also regulated although permitted occupations varied regionally and over time. The de facto Buraku monopoly of butchery, tanning, and leatherwork (i.e., the eta) was formalized. Other occupations included roadwork, stonecutting, bamboo-manufactures, subsistence farming, sweeping, fish-mongering, nightsoil and garbage disposal, cremation and burial (Meerman 2002a). During the Tokugawa period, many desperate, nearly starving, rural people were dispossessed of their land (frequently for inability to pay taxes, or for revolting against their lords). These new Burakumin (hinin) fled to towns in an attempt to earn a living, or in extremis, to beg, although even begging might be limited by local authorities (Groemer 2001: 263ff). During the nineteenth century Buraku children and adolescents commonly worked in factories or as babysitters and house servants for the better off (Hirasawa 1989: 47). Some Buraku residents were forced to operate leper or prison hospitals located within the buraku. The myths of the Burakumin as unclean, genetically inferior, and even as non-Japanese developed around the historical role of Japan’s leatherworkers (kawata, or pejoratively and less precisely, eta). The introduction and spread of Buddhism in Japan prior to the first millennium led to condemnation of

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meat eating and the activities associated with it. Later the Shinto association of pollution with death was linked with the Buddhist prohibition against killing animals. Hence, butchery, tanning, and leatherwork were condemned as polluting, and “this defilement was considered contagious” (Japan, An Illustrated Encyclopedia 1993: 146). The eta, the ‘filthy lot,’ who practiced such occupations were isolated from the rest of society and condemned as morally and intellectually tainted. A few of today’s Buraku minority trace their origins to villages of such leatherworkers. During Tokugawa rule, the buraku also absorbed a wide range and large number of social deviants. These “new” buraku residents, or hinin (nonpeople, therefore animal), were usually forced into Buraku occupations and became tarred with the same brush: in the minds of the majority, those forced to live in buraku were blemished and contaminated. The authorities also encouraged many of the hinin to settle new ghettos and these also became “buraku of the polluted and impure” (Kitaguchi 1999: 78ff; Groemer 2001: 274). Today the working definition of a member of the Burakumin is whether one lives in a buraku, or is descended from a Buraku family. Because the influx of “new blood’ during the Tokugawa was so large, relative to the traditional leatherworkers, few Burakumin today have any significant genetic connection with medieval leatherworkers. The Tokugawa quarantine of the “unfit” also ensured that the Buraku population increased rapidly. The conversion of class to hereditary caste eliminated most upward social mobility including that of the leatherworkers, and those of hinin origin. By the last century of Tokugawa rule, it was very difficult for a Buraku resident to regain the status of a common citizen. Hence the influx of “hinin,” plus the natural increase in the established buraku, led to a large increase in the number of Burakumin. Overall, the Buraku population may have increased threefold from 1720 to the mid-nineteenth century, a period when Japan’s total population stagnated (Neary 1997: 54). The Tokugawa also assured the economic livelihood of the kawata Burakumin by supporting their leatherwork as an essential “war industry,” producing saddles, harnesses, bowstrings, leather shields, and drums. (The Shogunates prohibited the use of firearms throughout Japan until their demise in the late nineteenth century!) Burakumin (both eta and hinin) also performed many other roles in support of the regime. They were occasionally used as militia to put down peasant revolts. Some became jailers, judicial torturers, and executioners. They were generally charged with disposing of the bodies of those executed, as well as guardians of the heads of executed criminals during their public exposure. Some acted as government “lookouts” on roads or as gatekeepers who controlled entrance to towns (Acitelli-Donoghue 1978: 29). So, the Tokugawa “re-defined” the Burakumin as a means to maintaining power and, in the process, deliberately exacerbated prejudice and intolerance (Taira 1970; Groemer 2001). To this end they fostered the myth of Buraku impurity and blemished faculties. Because these defects were believed to be hereditary, it was necessary to isolate the Burakumin from society. The

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Tokugawa also used their creation in a police and military capacity (Neary 1989: Chapter 1). The resulting association of the Burakumin with violent and vile duties increased the commoners’ fear and contempt of them. Today, much of the antipathy of mainline Japanese to the Burakumin has its roots in Tokugawa policy. Indeed, “Of all those special measures which were created to help maintain the power base of the Tokugawa Shogunate, anti-Buraku discrimination is the only one which remains today” (Kitaguchi 1999: 133). In 1871, after deposing the Shogunate, the imperial Meiji government issued the Emancipation Edict that ended outcast status and converted the Burakumin to “new common citizens.” Occasionally described as a paper emancipation, initially the political decree had little beneficial impact for the Buraku population. On the contrary, farmers (humiliated because the Burakumin now had equal legal status) undertook “a series of pogroms aimed at exterminating the new commoners in 1872–73 and village governments moved to exclude them from all access to commonly held village land” (Upham 1987: 80). Emancipation also ended the Burakumin monopoly on certain occupations (Donoghue 1978: 33); for example, Buraku shoe production eventually proved unable to compete with mass-production technology. In the ensuing decades progress to socio-economic parity with the majority was slow. De jure legal equality did little to overcome the many disadvantages of Buraku life and less to overcome the widespread discrimination against them. Although by 1912, many Buraku children attended primary schools, usually segregated, they rarely advanced beyond the primary level. In integrated schools, Burakumin were seated apart from other children at the back or side of the classroom. Play groups, eating utensils, and toilets were separate (Neary 1989: 3). During the Meiji period, Buraku leaders pursued a policy of reconciliation that stressed formal petitions for governmental relief. Little relief was forthcoming. By the 1920s, militant young Buraku organizers, much influenced by Marxism and by Christian doctrines, had founded Suheisha (Levelers’ Society) to promote Buraku “liberation.” The new organization pursued a policy of confrontation of those responsible for discriminatory actions by condemning such actions and demanding apologies. In some cases the discriminators were pushed into measures to redress the discriminatory act, e.g., removal of the guilty person(s) from authority. Protested actions covered a wide range, although many involved no more than discriminatory speech. “The chief character of these early denunciations was their spontaneity and anger” and many actions ended in injury or destruction of property, or in fights with rightist groups. By the 1930s, Suheisha had gained widespread respect and support within the Buraku community and was planning campaigns with a view to achieving maximum political impact (Upham 1987: 81–85). In 1937, however, Japan’s expansionist and militarist government closed down Suheisha as destructive of national unity. Following the Pacific War, Suheisha reemerged in 1947 as the National Committee for Buraku Liberation with strong backing from Japan’s Communist and Socialist political parties. In 1955, the Committee became the Buraku

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Liberation League (BLL) and undertook a series of mass demonstrations and protests that increased public recognition of Buraku claims and sympathy for their plight. As a consequence, during the 1960s, many Japanese, perhaps a majority, became aware of the shocking physical environment of the Buraku ghettos, the poor education of Buraku youth and the Buraku occupational pattern with its preponderance of low-paid day laborers, cottage industries, and high unemployment. In 1969, the national government established a nationwide program of Buraku reconstruction and education by means of the “Special Measures Laws.” By then the BLL had over 2,000 branches and close to 200,000 members.

Economic and social status Economic and social data concerning the Buraku population are misleading for three reasons. First, government Buraku statistics are based on surveys of the Burakumin residents of only those buraku classified as “dowa [integration] districts,”3 i.e., the 4,603 buraku that participate in the programs providing benefits under the Special Measures Laws. This dowa-district universe (also translated from the Japanese as dowa areas) excludes about one-eighth of the approximately 5,300 buraku identified by the government in the 1935 count of (special) buraku (Su-Lan Reber 1999: fn. 82). Second, less than half the residents in the dowa districts are classified as Burakumin in government surveys. Within each district, the BLL, local authorities, and occasionally local political parties, have certified who is Burakumin and therefore eligible to receive government benefits targeted to the Burakumin. The error rate in assigning Burakumin identity is unknown (Upham 1987: 113).4 Third, the estimates necessarily exclude the bona fide Burakumin who have emigrated from the dowa areas. In the tables below, the universe of Burakumin is defined as those residents in the buraku included in the dowa districts at the time of the survey that were certified as eligible to receive benefits under the special benefit legislation. A caveat, therefore, is needed in working with the statistics in the tables: they apply, with some error, only to the Burakumin in those buraku classified as dowa districts, and exclude the Burakumin who no longer live in buraku. Important implications of this limitation are taken up in the final section of the paper. In Table 5.2 (showing selected survey results for Burakumin and the total population), the high rate of welfare payments suggests that a majority of the Burakumin in the dowa areas were in poverty well into the 1990s, by which point poverty among “mainliners,” had dropped to single-digit levels. Table 5.1, showing educational achievement for the Buraku population and all Japan, reveals that by 1976 a substantial proportion of the total population had completed college, while Burakumin participation was minimal, i.e., less than 4 percent with hardly any of that in Japan’s top universities. Table 5.3, covering the highest education attained for dowa-district Burakumin and all Japan, indicates that since 1976, the dowa-district Burakumin

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Table 5.1 Educational achievement, Buraku population and all Japan, 1976 (percentages)

Percentage that completed college (CC) Percent of CC that attended prestigious universities

Buraku Population

All Japan

3.4 3.0

13.7 21.0

Sources: Row 1: Hirasawa 1989: 12 and 13; Row 2: Clear 1991: 87. Original Japanese sources are listed in both dissertations. Table 5.2 Selected survey results, dowa-district Burakumin and total population, 1993 (percentages) Burakumin Total Population Receive welfare payments (“livelihood security support”)* Own their homes Dropouts from junior high school Cohort entry into senior high school

52 63 5 92

7 60 2 96

Source: Somucho (1995) Surveys to Assess Conditions in the Dowa Districts: 1–31. Burakumin in this table refers solely to Burakumin living in Buraku classified as “dowaareas.” The above data are cited by Neary 1997: 70–71. Note: * In 1979, 76 percent of the dowa-areas Burakumin received livelihood security support.

have experienced an enormous increase in education at all three levels that has greatly reduced educational disparity, although the data understate the gap in educational achievement because Buraku students at all levels attend schools of poorer quality than mainliners. Educational attainment varies inversely with age, particularly with respect to the Burakumin. Table 5.3 indicates this in providing data by age cohorts. It shows that in 1993, for those in the age group 60–64, 14 percent had completed secondary school (including the 1.5 percent who completed advanced education) while the all-Japan corresponding total was then 49.2 percent, a gap of 35 percentage points. For the most recent graduates, the age group 20–24, the data show that 81 percent of the Buraku minority completed secondary school, compared to an allJapan total of 89 percent, an 8 percentage-point gap. There has also been an enormous expansion in the number of Buraku persons who have completed advanced education. Yet measured in percentage points, the gap between majority and dowa-district Burakumin was still 13 to 14 percentage points for the youngest cohort of completed education, those aged 20–24. Moreover, as indicated in Table 5.3, compared to the majority, very few Burakumin have graduated from a university or other high-prestige institution, while they are “overenrolled” in community colleges. Review of the occupational and employment profiles of the Buraku population compared to those of the majority also indicates continued intergroup

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Table 5.3 Highest education attained, dowa-district Burakamin (1993) and all Japan (1990), by age groups (percentages) Age (years)

60–64 50–54 40–44 30–34 20–24

Completed Elementary Elementary Secondary Only Only Only

Secondary Only

Advanced

Advanced All

Burakumin

All Japan

Burakumin

All Japan

Burakumin

Japan

80.3 73.0 45.6 17.5 16.5

49.0 39.5 22.1 8.2 8.7

12.5 20.4 43.9 60.4 63.8

38.8 45.3 49.2 49.1 58.1

1.5 2.0 8.5 19.8 17.3

10.4 13.3 23.2 41.1 31.0

3.0

12.0

8

21

of which university graduation: Total

55

32

32

45

Source: Somucho, 1995, Actual Situation of Life Survey, 72; Kyo no Buraku Sabetsu, Kaiho Shuppan 1996, as derived from McLauchlan 1999: 14–15.

disparity. At the national level, Buraku populations have lower labor-force participation rates than the majority, partly due to higher rates of disability particularly among older workers, often the consequence of a childhood of poor nutrition and/or years of hard labor. But even those in the labor force have a lower rate of employment than the majority. Most Buraku employees work in small and medium-size companies as blue-collar workers, frequently as temporary workers or day laborers (Tomonaga 1993:12). Few have ever had employment as permanent staff of the large modern corporations that pay the highest wages and offer lifetime employment. A recent review of the occupational distribution of Buraku employees from an Osaka buraku (that has developed into an urban neighborhood) illustrates these findings. About one-third are low-wage, blue-collar government employees, e.g., janitor and cafeteria staff, water-supply workers, and railroad hands. Another third work in small companies (defined as having less than 30 workers) where employment fluctuates substantially. Many of the last third are self-employed, e.g., engaged in buying used materials for recycling or in labor-intensive, smallscale construction (Su-Lan Reber 1999: 323). Consistent with this labor-force account, estimates of comparative incomes in the last 30 years invariably conclude that mean Buraku incomes are 60 or 70 percent of those of the majority.5 Earning endowments There is evidence that the family micro-culture and earning endowments of part of the Burakumin have been a serious impediment to Burakumin mobility toward parity. George De Vos has studied and analyzed buraku communities over several decades and emphasizes the oppositional identity and

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Buraku culture as primary reasons for the failure to achieve parity (De Vos 1992). In her dissertation, Lesley Clear summarized some Burakumin disadvantages. These include the psychosocial fallout of poverty: low self-esteem, illiteracy, alcoholism, child abuse, and vulnerability to organized crime. In their study of Japanese criminal society, Kaplan and Dubro (1986) found that the Burakumin account for about 70 percent of the membership of Japan’s largest criminal gang, the Yamaguchi-gumi and for about 60 percent of the membership of Japan’s criminal class, the yakuza. These traits in turn explain some of the difficulty of many Burakumin in competing academically and financially in Japan’s meritocracy (Clear 1991: 79). Many of these factors also reinforce the demeaning stereotypic perception of Burakumin perpetuated within the society, which fuels continuing widespread discrimination against them in labor markets and education.

Discrimination against Burakumin Discrimination explains most of the lag of the Buraku population in income and status behind the Japanese majority. Past discrimination against Burakumin was blatant and extensive. Japanese born before 1940 typically associated buraku residents with squalor, unemployment, substance abuse, and criminality. But statistical inference that attempts to gauge the degree to which current, and less obvious, discrimination (above all in labor markets and education) causes the lag does not exist. In lieu thereof, this section describes the most egregious documented discrimination and indicates its impact. A few illustrations provide perspective on the virulence of anti-Buraku discrimination:  In 1880, the Ministry of Justice described the Burakumin as “the lowliest of people, resembling animals,” in its Handbook of Japanese Customs and Folkways.  In 1922, in Beppu, Oita Prefecture, the local police had a buraku burnt down because of its proximity to the railroad line. Destruction was deemed necessary since part of the slum would have been visible from the Crown Prince’s train as it passed through the town of Beppu. Prefectural Authorities asserted that demolition was necessary because the buraku was a health hazard, and home to criminals and drifters (Neary 1989: 87).  In 1933, the District Court of Takamatsu ruled that a Burakumin had committed a crime in marrying without disclosing his origins to his spouse (Su-Lan Reber 1999: 305).  During the Pacific War, Buraku servicemen consistently received the lowest-status assignments.  In the 1980s, the BLL documented many graffiti. They included “Kill Burakumin, Buraku people are human garbage” on a bridge pillar in Osaka; a pamphlet that circulated at Osaka’s University of Fine Arts declaring inter alia, “to protect the natural superiority of all decent Japanese citizens … no possible concession must be made towards eta filth;” in

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an Osaka primary school the graffiti was: “To the eta staff at this School. We won’t eat anything you have made. … go and cook the dregs of hell … maggots” (Kitaguchi 1999: 142–44).  On 10 November 2006, a message on the internet message board of 2 CH BBS included: “Non-human eta, practice contraception! Don’t leave your rotten genes for posterity. You represent Japan’s greatest crime. Die BLL!” On 5 November 2006, an earlier message on the same board read: “Buraku people … Their inferior genes are transmitted most probably due to incest. They have the faces of cow killers. Do not allow the inferior genes of eta and Koreans to survive for future generations. Otherwise, Japan will be spoiled” (Tomonaga 2008: 6). A key instrument in Buraku discrimination is the background investigation of genealogy and socio-economic status engaged to ferret out Buraku identity. Its use is most clearly documented with respect to marriage and employment decisions. Independent examination of family background to determine whether the candidate is of sound lineage and adequate status is common in upper-class marriage decisions. It is also an effective way to avoid marriage with Burakumin. Employment discrimination is also a serious obstacle in the efforts of Burakumin to achieve parity with the majority. In taking employment decisions, Japan’s large modern corporations are particularly concerned that those invited to “join the company family” will fit in harmoniously with other employees (Upham 1980: 66–67). Formerly, many companies explicitly stated “that they will not hire Burakumin” (Japan, An Illustrated Encyclopedia 1993: 146). Hence, the family history of candidates for employment is likely to be closely examined particularly with respect to the Buraku connection. Universities also have rejected Buraku applicants on the basis of family history (Upham 1993: 327). Detective agencies conduct such background investigations, relying on at least nine different Burakumin lists that provide the addresses of present and former Buraku ghettos.6 Over 200 corporations in Japan, including most of Japan’s largest and most modern firms, have purchased these lists and used them to exclude job applicants of buraku origin, whether or not they belonged to the Burakumin minority. The use and sale of such chimei sokan (comprehensive guides to place names) is illegal, although they still have a large sub rosa circulation. They are now also found on electronic disks and may circulate on the internet (Tomonaga 2008: 5). Investigators have also relied on the registrations of births and deaths by family and address in municipality offices. These offer information on the place of birth, parentage, and current residence of all individuals born in Japan.7 Until 1976 the family registries were open to the public. By the end of the twentieth century wouldbe viewers or those requesting an abstract had to explain the reason for the request, which the municipal authority may refuse. Nevertheless these restrictions have been frequently ignored and discrimination based on family registry records continues. During Tokugawa rule, Buddhist temples (which

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also own and manage associated cemeteries) were required to record vital statistics on their members, both alive and deceased. Most continue the practice and may supply the information to investigators (Japan, An Illustrated Encyclopedia 1993: 147; Su-Lan Reber 1999: 312, 358) In the “buraku hunts,” the acid test of Burakumin identity is evidence of having lived in a buraku or of being descended from families who were buraku residents. Buraku residence has been the only outward sign of the contaminated bloodline of the individual Burakumin that supposedly arose in the feudal past of the hereditary eta caste. This belief persists despite overwhelming evidence that most individuals with a current or genealogical history of buraku residence have no connection with the leatherworkers of the Tokugawa or earlier periods (Kitaguchi 1999: 81).8 Buraku discrimination also persists notwithstanding constitutional guarantees. Japan’s constitution prohibits discrimination based on race, creed, sex, social status, or family origin (Article 14), and guarantees the free choice of occupation (Article 22), of marriage (Article 24), right to work (Article 27), and access to education correspondent to each person’s ability (Article 26) (Upham 1987: 105). Nevertheless, Japan has never had legislation that made discrimination against individuals or groups in the labor market or school admissions a punishable offense9 (Upham 1993: 327). During the late 1970s, as the BLL pressed for prohibition of the lists used to identify individual Burakumin, the question of the need for specific legislation prohibiting employment discrimination came to the fore. The Minister of Justice stated that discrimination was a “matter of the heart” and not suitable for legal attention (Upham 1987: 117). A frequent response to the demand that firms not discriminate against Burakumin and other minorities (Koreans, returnees of Japanese origin from China and elsewhere, recent immigrants) is that this would interfere with their right to select employees and would have an injurious impact on firm operations. Today (2008), discrimination against Burakumin in schooling, the workplace, and marriage still persists.

The response of the Buraku Liberation League Both public authorities and the BLL have long emphasized the need to change mainline beliefs and attitudes about the Buraku minority, rather than to attempt to “legislate behavior.” The BLL has contended that prejudice against the Buraku minority and the irrationality and superstition that give rise to it are so pervasive among all classes in Japan that enforceable legislation against Buraku discrimination has not been feasible. Instead, the BLL has relied on “self-help.” Publications and conferences are part of the repertoire. But the League has also organized protests, street demonstrations, and picketing by members for many reasons, including targeting discriminators; e.g., schools, teachers, firms, publishing houses that print distortions and “discriminatory phrases” in books or magazines (Far East Economic Review 1992: 28–29).

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However, kyudan toso (denunciation struggle) has long been the League’s most telling technique (Upham 1987: 97). In the words of Ian Neary, kyudan toso is to the BLL what the strike has been to the labor union. Denunciation involves confrontation and judgment against the institutional or individual perpetrator of discrimination, generally followed by the discriminator’s apology and a plan for remedial action. In the event of presumptive discrimination (discriminatory language, discrimination in the workplace or school, breaking off a marriage engagement, publication of a controversial analysis of a Buraku issue, use of Buraku lists) the BLL may initiate a denunciation procedure that starts with a session designed to reach agreement between the BLL and the accused on the nature and content of the incident. The BLL usually finds that wrong has been done and the “denunciation session” follows. At both sessions the discriminators and their supervising authorities (if any) will be present. An incident involving a schoolteacher will require the presence of the teacher and his/her supervisors, but may also involve school leaders and even a representative from a higher level of government. In the denunciation campaign the target may not be so much the offender as the institutions seen as responsible for the behavior of the offender. Sessions take place in rooms or even halls in which the alleged discriminator and BLL face each other. The number of League participants typically exceeds that of the “defendants.” The responsible parties rarely justify their actions but are apologetic and deferential to the BLL. League speakers energetically interrogate those considered responsible, directly or indirectly, for the discriminatory action. Usually the latter agree to rectify their behavior, stress their determination not to repeat it, and indicate measures that will be taken to avoid poor behavior in the future. Confession, self-criticism, and resolution to do better in the future are the essential elements. The session may well end with an expression of thanks by the defendants to the BLL officials for having shown them the error of their ways (Otake 1997: 181ff). The foregoing gives a stylized version of kyudan (denunciation) at least as it was practiced before the 1990s. During the 1970s and 1980s, kyudan was usually menacing and extremely humiliating for the defendants. Rohlen’s description conveys these aspects well: Suspected persons … are surrounded by League members and sympathizers and subjected to accusations and questioning, usually in very insulting language. The purpose is to shock and anger people so deeply that at last their eyes are opened to the reality of their “racist” thinking. Confrontations can last for hours and are often repeated over many weeks. The person surrounded almost inevitably breaks down under the pressure and yields to the insistent accusations and demands of those confronting him. At times the initial shock treatment includes dancing and chanting around the person, a technique known as “Indian style confrontation”; however the intensity of the assault varies greatly with the people involved and with the degree of resistance given. Some people, following the trauma

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of thus being confronted, say it was a deeply moving and worthwhile experience, similar to a religious conversion, but others despise the technique [since it] assumes the individual’s guilt and leaves no room for selfdefense. The Communist party calls it a “kangaroo court” and a “violent assault on individual rights.” Clearly it can shatter a person and suicides have occasionally resulted from such treatment, especially when the confrontations are extended to relatives of officials. On the other hand, the League’s assertion that discrimination will not end short of such shock treatment also seems reasonable. (Rohlen 1976: 692) One atypical denunciation, and possibly the most extreme in the history of kyudan toso, went well beyond this description. In 1974, at Yoka High School in rural Hyogo Prefecture, fifty-two teachers were confined to school premises by supporters of the League to persuade them to start a Buraku study club at the school in cooperation with the League. The teachers were humiliated, intimidated and finally beaten during the twelve hours of their detainment. Forty-three were hospitalized with broken bones and other serious injuries; thirteen remained in hospital from three to six weeks. (ibid.: 982–89) Denunciation sessions have been deployed as the principal tactic in elaborate campaigns covering entire regions, including efforts to enhance access to educational opportunities, improve infrastructure in Buraku settlements, and denounce those responsible for the Buraku blacklists (an undertaking that continued for 10 years). In 1975, the League launched a major denunciation campaign for equal employment opportunity (Upham 1987: 107). In part because of fear of denunciation sessions and other actions, public discussion of Buraku issues has been close to taboo in Japan. For the same reasons, within Japan, non-partisan research on the Burakumin has been constrained. Japan’s mass media “avoid the issue as much as possible” (Masayuki 1991: 284). Discrimination in word and deed has long gone underground. Consequently in the recent past, documentation of discrimination has been rare.10 Moreover, systematic measures of the scale and impact of denunciation actions are not documented. Although denunciation is often initially directed at individuals and associated institutions, such as schools or firms, it might have been most effective when directed at governments (provincial and local) to force action on specific problems. Perhaps it has been most successful in helping to induce governments to undertake the vast program of rehabilitation of Buraku ghettos and of promotion of Buraku education discussed in the following section. The failure of the national government to challenge kyudan toso suggests that Japan’s powerful national bureaucracy and other authorities accept it. Indeed, by the 1980s the judiciary had explicitly legitimized denunciation. There have been very few occasions (one of these was the successful suit for

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personal injuries filed on behalf of the Yoka high-school teachers) when subjects of BLL denunciations have filed a criminal complaint, despite obvious violations of the criminal code11 during many kyudan sessions. During such suits the judiciary has accepted the BLL argument that denunciation is legal. In the Yata Middle-School Case (1975)12 the Osaka District Court concluded that “it’s justifiable for society to accept the process called denunciation against discrimination as long as the methods and tactics don’t exceed reasonable limits.” In ruling on the appeal of this decision in 1981, the Osaka High Court affirmed the existence of “an abstract right of denunciation” as claimed by the BLL during its defense but also set limits in stating that denunciation is “cruel and soon becomes a form of private punishment that cannot receive the full approval of the law” (Upham 1987: 96–98, 101; Neary 1997: 67). The BLL responded by asserting that “Charges that denunciation is intimidation are countered by the assertion that discrimination is intimidation, denunciation only its answer,” and because the most fundamental human rights are invaded, denunciation is only a form of self-defense (Upham 1987: 108). Apparently, to the present these decisions have not been reversed. Although kyudan toso has not disappeared entirely (McLauchlan 2008); the League’s denunciation tactics have become less aggressive in the last two decades, perhaps because of belief that old-fashioned kyudan has developed serious shortcomings such as reduced public support. In the twenty-first century, the League has worked with international human-rights groups and stressed international human-rights declarations and treaties to which Japan has subscribed to structure the ongoing “struggle.” Moving the discussion into the international human-rights arena may in part be due to the League’s conviction that legislation specifically prohibiting and punishing the various forms of discrimination commonly used against the Burakumin is highly unlikely (Buraku Liberation News July 1997: passim). The BLL has also increased its mandate to include other low-status minorities as part of its constituency in an expanding definition of persecuted “Burakumin.”

Government programs to reduce discrimination Special measures In 1961 the central government established a council to study the Buraku situation and to develop an antidiscrimination policy. The council’s report, completed in 1965, stressed that the Burakumin were identical to other Japanese, and that their origins had in no way tainted or polluted them. The report saw Buraku condemnation and discrimination as deeply ingrained in majority thinking, and as an expression of irrational and superstitious beliefs. The accompanying survey of buraku described “ghetto-like communities located on land liable to flooding … with poor housing … often lacking in such public services as sewers, tap water, streetlights and fire protection.” The shortfall in education was highlighted. It concluded that the deplorable state

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of the buraku had to be eliminated and that a large program of education needed to be undertaken (Neary 1997: 63). Moreover it was “the state’s duty to resolve the problem fundamentally and promptly,” and an enabling statute was needed to encourage governments to legislate special measures for the Buraku problem (Upham 1987: 85–86). In 1969, the Diet passed the first Special Measures Law (SML) for Assimilation (Dowa) Projects. It was succeeded by similar legislation in 1982 and by a third law in 1987 that expired in 2002. The SML financed three kinds of expenditure: capital outlays to improve buraku infrastructure; financial grants for Buraku families; and educational outlays. Prefectural and local governments carried out SML projects as agents of the state, i.e., national government, and bore most of the financial costs.13 Usually the national government was to pay two-thirds or even a larger share, since Buraku discrimination was a “primary responsibility of the nation as a whole.” Rarely did the national state keep its part of the bargain. Nor has it intervened in project implementation, nor taken part in the bitter political fights (frequently between the Communist Party and the BLL) that ensued concerning who should allocate funds and distribute benefits among the Buraku population (Neary 1997: 61–65; Upham 1987: 86; Upham 1980: 48). Upham provides an excellent description of the programs, as they existed at about 1979: Streets are paved and widened; sewage and water systems are installed; public facilities such as schools, clinics and government offices are built; settlement houses, homes for the elderly and community centers are built and turned over to the B.L.L. to manage; and perhaps most important to the residents, a large amount of high-rise public housing is constructed. These programs are essentially urban renewal but with no attempt to change the demographic character of the neighborhood. It remains a Burakumin neighborhood and relatively poor although some of the public facilities are new and there may be marginally more open space …. A second component of most programs consists of financial grants paid directly to Buraku families … . The Osaka City program, although more generous than most, can serve as an example … . When a Burakumin marries, he or she receives ¥5,000. The birth of a child brings another ¥215,000, with the cost of milk subsidized during nursing. There is an elaborate and generous program of grants rewarding school attendance. From entry into day-care through university, Buraku children receive annual grants plus an additional bonus at entry into elementary, middle, and high schools and university … . School expenses are also covered. Those enrolled in vocational training receive similar treatment. (By 2003, however, many of these programs had been curtailed.) Osaka and other local governments offer other programs not listed. A family with two children for example could easily receive more than ¥400,000 annually in Osaka, probably somewhat less in most other areas.

110

The mobility of Japan’s Burakumin This figure does not include indirect benefits such as subsidized rents … easy access to state-subsidized day-care and the convenient availability of public recreational and community facilities … . The school programs … are two-fold. First schools in certain areas are more heavily staffed with smaller classes and extra tutoring for Buraku students. Second all schools both within and without the ghetto have instructional programs to explain the origin of Burakumin, the problem of discrimination, and the responsibility of the society under the new constitution to eliminate it. Posters criticizing discrimination … are placed in buses, subways and public offices. Speeches are given to unions, schools, neighborhood associations etc. by public employees specifically trained to present the correct view of the Buraku problem. The emphasis though is on the evil of discrimination and the democratic ideals of the constitution. The content is heavily moralistic and didactic, in many ways reminiscent of moral campaigns in Taiwan or China. (Upham 1980: 38–39)

Additional aspects of educational support are noteworthy. In the 1970s and 1980s, many teachers made special efforts on behalf of the Burakumin. These included visits to the homes of Buraku pupils and development of measures to provide financial assistance to cover the costs of school supplies and uniforms.14 In some school systems, “welfare teachers” were employed on a fulltime basis inter alia to encourage Buraku parents to send truant children back to school (Hirasawa 1989: 44, 65–69). Many of the welfare teachers “served the bridging function between Buraku communities and schools. They conducted seminars to improve teachers’ recognition of Buraku discrimination problems. They suggested reforms in school curricula and activities to ‘welcome’ absentee students to school” (ibid.: 69). During the 1970s, the newly constructed Buraku community centers were often the scene of supplementary schooling and adult literacy classes.15 To the 1990s, a few Buraku children up to the third grade participated in supplementary academic classes at the centers. Such classes were often run by volunteer teachers of Buraku origins. They frequently emphasized the most difficult Japanese language arts, such as use of kanji (Chinese characters), which is of crucial importance in gaining admission to higher education (Clear 1991: 98ff). In the twenty-first century, the cash subsidies of the SML have mostly ceased. Some of those that offered an incentive for higher school attendance now take the form of loans. One Buraku innovation has become universal. Free textbooks in the public schools are now the nationwide norm. By the early 1990s, according to BLL estimates, less than 1 percent of “finance [provided under the SML] is used for educational purposes” (Buraku Kaiho Shimbun 1997, as reported in Kitaguchi 1999: 8). The rent subsidies have continued. There are also important implicit subsidies to the activities carried out in the “new” community centers, e.g., day-care for working parents. In general, however, the willingness of both the Japanese government, and the

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public, to subsidize the Burakumin had decreased substantially, even before the beginning of the economic crisis of the 1990s. How large were the expenditures under the SML? In 1993, the national government carried out the only series of surveys of the 4,442 buraku designated as the dowa districts that benefited from SML programs. The surveys directly sampled about 60,000 Buraku households and 24,000 majority or mainline households. It published the findings in 1995, as a report in four volumes. The report concluded, “between 1969 and 1993 the total amount spent on SML projects was ¥ 13,880 billion” (Government of Japan 1995: 7; Neary 1997:65). This multiyear aggregate is between 5 and 10 percent of Japan’s annual GNP in the 1970s. Since 1979–80 (arbitrarily assumed to be the average-price year for the period during which SML expenditures took place), Japan’s consumer price index has increased about a third (Government of Japan 1999: Table 15–19A). Hence expressing the total in 2000 consumer prices gives ¥18,502 billion. The World Bank estimates that the purchasingpower-parity (PPP) rate of exchange between yen and US dollar in 2000 at ¥138 per dollar (World Bank 2002: 232ff). So the PPP total in US 2000 dollars came to US$ 134 billion.16 The total number of Burakumin certified as eligible for such benefits was nearly a million. Were it a million, the total implies outlays per Buraku person in PPP US dollars for the year 2000 of $134,000! In addition to these benefits, in 1993, 53 percent of Buraku households in the dowa districts received “livelihood security support,” well above the national average of 7 percent, and roughly twice the proportion of non-Buraku households in the same dowa districts that received security support. Moreover about a third of the same Buraku population received more than two-thirds of their rent payments as subsidies (Government of Japan 1995: 4 and 21–22, as cited by Neary 1997: 70). Parts of the Special Measures Laws bring to mind “reparations” in the meaning that the word has assumed for many in the US: compensation for historical injury and injustice that would alleviate but not resolve basic problems such as poverty within the US African American community. Thus Upham concluded that: The ringing language of the S.M.L. and the conspicuous urban renewal projects serve as highly visible symbols of the government’s commitment to social justice while simultaneously leaving the basic structure of discrimination untouched … . The Japanese seem more comfortable, therefore, with giving Burkumin significant amounts of money than in trying to force employers to hire them. (Upham 1980: 72) In a similar vein, Su-Lan Reber concluded that the Special Measures Laws were “more like status-based welfare policies than laws that restrict discrimination” (1999: 348).

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The mobility of Japan’s Burakumin

Drawing the balance: how much progress to intergroup parity? But the welfare payments argument should not be exaggerated. Most of the financial resources of the SML were not used as welfare cash transfers, but to eliminate the intolerable physical state of the buraku ghettos (one cause of majority prejudice against the Burakumin) and for education. Discrimination persists, most obviously with respect to marriage and employment decisions, as indicated by the persistent recourse to Burakumin blacklists by private investigators. Both Upham and Su-Lan Reber propose a solution built around a law against discrimination, above all in employment, but also in school admissions. Su-Lan Reber suggests that “discrimination be made a civil instead of a criminal offense” since a “lower standard of proof would be required” and a “civil offense would most likely result in settlements out-of-court, which would be more suitable to Japan’s judicial system and culture.” Moreover, “Perhaps a body like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the United States would be a valuable and appropriate entity to examine views of discrimination in the first instance.” In addition a government body should be assigned the role of overseeing businesses and other organizations that are susceptible to using these lists for damaging purposes” (Su-Lan Reber 1999: 348–57). As of 2008, none of these suggestions had been acted upon. Notwithstanding the persistence of discrimination, in about three decades, the Special Measures Laws facilitated a large reduction in socio-economic disparity between the Buraku minority and the majority. The improvement is very clear with respect to the education gap. Before passage of the SML, few Buraku children received more than the compulsory 10 years of schooling; by the twenty-first century more than 80 percent of Buraku youth in the dowa districts completed high school (13 years of schooling) (see Table 5.3). As indicated earlier, there still remains a large gap at the tertiary level (Table 5.3). Income levels also remain unequal, with the average dowa-district Burakumin income about two-thirds of the mainline average. It is also important to note that BLL denunciation and other militant tactics, e.g., occasional mass protest, have helped eliminate many discriminatory practices including the open-door policy with respect to examination of records in the government registries of vital data (births, deaths, marriages, and addresses), the use of address lists of buraku residents, the requirement to indicate parental occupations on civil-service examinations, and prejudicial statements in the media and elsewhere.

The passing of the Burakumin Drawing the balance solely with respect to the Buraku population of the dowa districts gives a highly distorted picture of Buraku progress to parity in that it ignores the Burakumin who have passed into the larger society. Before one can draw the balance on the mobility of the Burakumin it is necessary to come to grips with the ambiguities in the very concept of the Buraku minority

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as a SRELIM, and as a consequence, the difficulties in developing what might be called a mobility metric that fits the Buraku case. Serious difficulties come to the fore with every attempt to identify who is Burakumin. The national government’s current definition, used to determine who benefits from the Special Measures Laws, has a two-step test: the person lives in the former ghettos or special buraku, today’s dowa districts, and is a descendant of the eta/hinin. This definition will “capture” all of the Burakumin if and only if there is complete endogamy within the Buraku population and there has been no Buraku emigration from the buraku. Neither condition is met. There has long been substantial movement of Burakumin out of the buraku. At the moment of Emancipation (1871), many of the hinin quickly left their buraku for mainline communities. But there was also a large influx of people into new buraku between 1871 and 1920. For example, the coalmining industry greatly expanded after 1871 and miners very often became buraku residents. (It is not clear to what degree offspring of these new buraku dwellers were certified by the BLL as bona fide Burakumin for award of benefits under the Special Measures Laws.) Neary reviewed several reports and notes that A survey of conditions in Kyoto in 1938 found that only 57% of those living within the Buraku areas had been born there and over 60% who had moved into the Buraku had migrated since 1932, although we are also informed that the rate of migration into Kyoto was not as high as in other cities. (Neary 1989: 149) It is possible that many of those born in dowa districts and certified as bona fide Burakumin are descendants of people who moved into the buraku after 1871. It is likely that the departure of Burakumin from the buraku accelerated after the passage of the SML. These laws promoted a very large increase in educational attainment among the Buraku minority, while the booming Japanese economy dramatically increased middle-class and other job opportunities for the newly educated minority. More education for the Burakumin also promoted positive changes in basic attitudes of their more successful students (reduction of oppositional identity) and in self-perception (increased selfesteem and confidence) but also reduced distinctive Buraku speech patterns and behaviors. All of this facilitated the out-of-ghetto migration and integration of a large number of Burakumin into mainline Japanese society. Presumably this emigration is the reason why the average age of the Buraku population within the dowa districts is now above the Japanese mean, while the Burakumin share of total dowa district population decreased from 72 percent in 1971 to 41 percent in 1993 (Buraku Liberation News July 1997: 9; Neary 1997: 70). The Buraku Liberation League also insists that many Burakumin have left the buraku to live among the Japanese majority. This is consistent with the development process. Most buraku came into existence as segregated, rural

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villages in pre-industrial Japan. By Emancipation in 1871, Burakumin who could respond to urban opportunities in rapidly developing Japan left the countryside as did Japanese in general. The League concludes that there were 3 million Burakumin alive at the end of the twentieth century. Since the total of those Burakumin still residing in the roughly 6,000 buraku was estimated at 1.2 million,17 the League estimate implies that 1.8 million Burakumin passed” into the larger society (Buraku Liberation News May 1997: 8) and that the Burakumin represented 2.4 percent of the total population. In contrast, the five government estimates made between 1871 and 1993 estimated a proportion that varied from 1.1 to 1.5 percent, albeit while defining the Burakumin exclusively as those resident in the dowa districts (Meerman 2002b). A crucial unresolved issue in any estimation exercise is the impact on Burakumin identity of Burakumin marriage with mainliners. First there is the question of Burakumin who moved out of the buraku into the cities. Presumably many of these have married into the larger urban communities as well. Second, the data on Buraku intermarriage within the buraku indicate substantial integration into the larger community. Somucho dowa-district surveys from 1993 found that only one-quarter of Buraku married couples under the age of 30 and living in a dowa district were endogamous, that is both spouses were bona fide Burakumin, while 79 percent of marriages with husbands aged 75 or older were endogamous. (See Table 5.4 on Buraku exogamy.) At what point, in succeeding generations, do offspring with a single or an occasional Burakumin ancestor become identified as being mainline Japanese? Traditionally children from mixed marriages were always classified as Burakumin, although if identification as a Burakumin is increasingly a matter of self-identification, it may be that by the second generation of mixed marriages, the offspring simply walk away from their already highly diluted historical identity and emphasize their identity as offspring of mainline Japanese.

Table 5.4 Buraku exogamy: birthplace of spouse, Burakumin population of dowadistricts, by age brackets, 1993 Age of husband

No. of couples in the sample

Both spouses born One spouse born Both spouses in Buraku (%) outside (%) born outside (%)

Total* Under 25 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 55–59 65–69 75+

40,071 474 1,315 2,381 3,526 5,002 5,064 3,917 2,150

57.5 24.5 25.6 32.6 40.6 46.2 65.6 73.9 78.8

36.6 67.9 67.4 61.2 54.3 49.2 27.7 21.2 14.9

Note: * Based on all data. Selected data, from Table 2–9, Somucho 1995.

6.0 7.6 7.1 6.1 5.1 4.7 6.7 5.0 6.3

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This discussion leads to an important conclusion. It is impossible to gauge the progress of the Buraku minority to parity with the majority (as measured by income or other markers of socio-economic status) because membership in that minority is far from completely defined. Progress to parity might be measured by the increasing degree of out-marriage over time, since exogamy is the basic test of a minority’s acceptance by and integration into the larger society.18 But this too has not been studied. It is also likely that the presumptive increasing integration of the Buraku minority into the mainstream has been facilitated by the decline in antiBurakumin discrimination in the last half century. The material below supports this thesis:  Today, perhaps fewer mainline Japanese finance background checks of family bloodline, family status, home environment, etc in marriage decisions. As early as 1981, a survey of 13,000 citizens in Osaka found that two-thirds of the marriages took place without a background check (Hirasawa 1989: 18).  More than 90 percent of the respondents from a national survey in 1993 stated that they would not object to their child marrying a Burakumin if they felt strongly that there was nothing they could do about it; 45 percent said they would respect their children’s wishes unconditionally (Government of Japan (Somucho) 1995: summary volume, 31). Su-Lan Reber reports on two similar surveys with a comparable outcome (1999: 311, fn.77, 325).  Two-thirds of the dowa-area Burakumin responding to a Somucho survey reported that their rights had never been violated, notwithstanding their Burakumin status (Government of Japan 1995: 31).  There are efforts by firms to avoid discrimination and to encourage employment of Burakumin. In Osaka, 230 large companies have made a nodiscrimination pledge; have introduced dowa education programs into their training classes; and about a quarter of the firms have initiated affirmative action programs on behalf of both Burakumin and older employees.19  Apparently the psychological costs of “passing” into the mainstream are decreasing. Traditionally, those passing hid their Buraku identity. Stress and insecurity resulted since hiding one’s identity encumbered access to education, job search, social relations, and so forth. But a large majority of the respondents to recent surveys state that they would not break a friendship on learning that the friend was of Buraku origins. Moreover, disguising origins is not universally the case. One anthropologist who did field work in a buraku in 2001 found that many Buraku youth have mainline friends and some bring their mainline friends to the buraku inter alia to use the various recreational facilities (McLauchlan 2001). One Burakumin girl came out of the closet in dramatic fashion. Voted head of her school, she commenced her graduation address with “I am a Burakumin and I am proud of it” (Far Eastern Economic Review 1992: 28).

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Finally, the increasing prevalence of exogamy usually implies openness about identity. Perhaps the combined impact of these factors (movement out of the buraku; reduced prejudice; intermarriage) led the Zenkaren to its conclusion. Established and supported by Japan’s Communist Party, it has been an important advocacy organization on behalf of the Burakumin although in bitter competition with the BLL. By the 1990s it had become less active while asserting that the national integration of the Burakumin was largely a fait accompli, and that Buraku mondai (the Burakumin struggle) belonged to the past (SuLan Reber 1999: fn 173).

Conclusion Most offspring of exogamous Burakumin have been integrated into the larger society. Many of those that integrated have higher income and occupational status than those who remain in the buraku due to avoiding discrimination, better education, and more mobility-promoting family and peer cultures. Probably, redesigning the statistical and other data on the Burakumin to include data on those who have passed would reduce the estimates of status and income disparity of Burakumin with mainline Japanese. Taira (1970) suggested that given high intermarriage and high mobility in and out of the buraku, the Burakumin are better defined as part of Japan’s blue-collar classes, rather than a distinctively outcaste and disadvantaged group. Those Burakumin who remain in the buraku have now become a minority even within the buraku. Yet, most of the buraku have retained their character as reservoirs for low-income segments of the population, in part because of the inflow of “new” low-status minorities: Koreans, foreign workers, descendants of Japanese returning from abroad.20 Perhaps what is desirable is a concentration on the contemporary residents of the buraku rather than a continuing focus on a fading target, the increasingly elusive descendants of the historical eta/hinin. In this way those Burakumin most in need, still caught in the buraku, need not be ignored, while other vulnerable groups could receive more attention. This would be consistent with the BLL’s evolving mission. The BLL has redefined the Burakumin problem. It welcomes the new low-status minorities to residence in the dowa districts and thereby ensures that it continues to “control” the districts. The BLL has also stretched its mandate to encompass defense of human rights. It stays “in business” by advocating for the human rights of the new Burakumin, the low-status Koreans and immigrants who currently fill vacancies at the bottom of Japan’s occupational structure (McLauchlan 2008). It might be instructive to ascertain the degree to which that part of the dowa-district Burakumin population, clearly and primarily descendant from the Burakumin of Emancipation in 1871, is in some sense in a poverty trap.21

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Analysis that seeks to understand why they remain in the buraku,22 while most other “historical” Burakumin have moved into the larger society could be helpful in advancing work addressing the general problem of the concentration of poverty in SRELIM elsewhere in the world whose history of exploitation and low mobility somewhat parallels that of the Burakumin; e.g., African Americans in the US; Europe’s Roma; native peoples long overrun by European settlers as in Australasia. Such analysis could build (in part) on the work of George De Vos and others who made a start with this endeavor in their analysis of Buraku subculture (itself a consequence of earlier exploitation) as contributing to the persistence of the low status and low income of the dowa-district Burakumin vis-à-vis the larger Japanese population (De Vos 1992). Some political scientists assert that a deprived and despised minority will rarely be able to move to parity with the majority without some degree of serious political agitation, including the threat of violence by the minority itself (Nelson 2008). This suggests that the militant tactics and strategy of the BLL may have been a necessary element in accelerating the pace of Buraku integration into the larger Japanese community. Specifically, without the BLL history of kyudan toso, and other techniques (mass protest, advocacy publications, etc.) the Special Measure Laws might never have been undertaken, nor various discriminatory practices eliminated, and the Burakumin would be less well off than they are today.

6

The Afro-Cuban story A brief success

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs … .1

This chapter builds on my paper published in World Development in 2001.2 The publication concentrated on the mobility history of Cuba’s Afro-Americans and compared their situation with three other SRELIM: US blacks, India’s Dalits, and Japan’s Burakumin. That paper found that a quarter century after the Castro Revolution of 1959, most of the status-income gap between black and other Cubans had been closed. Cuba’s achievement of black equality was contrasted with the lower degree of progress to parity of the three other SRELIM. I was skeptical about whether the success story would hold given the faltering socialist economy and the deteriorating relative status of black Cubans. Events since 2001 have confirmed the skeptical stance. Cuba is backtracking on its once fundamental commitment to a raceless and classless society. Since 2000, the forces destructive of black status have gained momentum and further eroded black socio-economic status. Notwithstanding these effects, Cuba’s Afro-Americans are probably far closer to parity with their majority than they were before the Revolution in 1959. Presumably, a large fraction of the blacks who had escaped from their low-class origins by the 1980s via education and higher-status employment have been able to perpetuate themselves in middle-class status. The chapter presents the Cuban analysis largely as published in the earlier article in World Development.3 This makes sense since the analysis is still valid. (In the essentials, political Cuba has changed little in the last decade.) I have made one important addition in the text of the earlier article: a passage providing basic information on Cuba’s education system, which indicates why Cuba was so successful in reforming education. It concludes with an afterword that confirms and extends the earlier analysis. In the year 2008, following the resignation of Fidel Castro from his leadership post, the Cuban nation is no doubt on the threshold of fundamental changes. Within another decade, probably sooner, the status and role of Afro-Cubans vis-à-vis other Cubans will be clearer.4 Few disinterested and impartial analysts expect the current status quo to endure.

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Introduction The history of black Cubans indicates that by the 1980s, they had largely achieved equality with their majority, as measured by income, occupational distribution, educational attainment, and health status. This presents a striking exception to the rule that achievement of socio-economic parity by highly exploited minorities historically ranked near the bottom of their social hierarchies is necessarily a far slower process than that of other low-status minorities, such as voluntary immigrant communities, or rural people who leave traditional subsistence agriculture for a new life in the cities. Discussion of the “why and the wherefore” of Afro-Cuban experience has been limited. This chapter responds to this issue in considering Cuba’s experience on several dimensions. 1 It seeks to show why planned and rapid basic social change on a broad scale was feasible. (State ways can change folkways.5) 2 It suggests that the negative impact on human development of destructive cultural endowments (see Chapter 3 above) can be quickly overcome on a mass basis. 3 It implicitly presents further evidence against the thesis of systematic differences among ethno-racial groups with respect to innate or genetic capacity for economic productivity. The four variables of the model are used to analyze the mobility experience of black Cubans since the paradigm shift in 1959. Inter alia, the analysis addresses how Cuba suppressed discrimination against blacks and created the job opportunities necessary for their upward mobility; examines why cultural endowments of Cuban blacks appear to have been less of a problem than in other countries; and traces the role of Cuba’s education system in bringing blacks to parity. There follow measures of the increase in black socioeconomic status that resulted from the shift and discussion of the impact of learning endowments on the mobility of Cuban blacks. Finally, the chapter concentrates on the impact of Cuba’s evolution from a dirigist (command) to a more market-oriented economy, including whether Cuba’s interracial socioeconomic equality can persist as the Cuban economy evolves from socialist to more market-oriented.

Socio-economic mobility and Cuba’s paradigm shift Cuba abolished slavery in 1886 and the constitution of 1901 guaranteed legal equality for all citizens. Nonetheless, many kinds of discrimination against blacks persisted up to the Castro Revolution. The Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, 1992 explicitly addresses discrimination in many of its 137 articles.6 In many ways the constitution works out the implications of the fundamental

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Communist ideal of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Chapter 6, titled “Equality,” initially states that “all citizens have equal rights and are subject to equal duties.” It then prohibits discrimination because of race, color, sex, or national origin. It guarantees all Cuban citizens unlimited access according to “merits and abilities” to all employment opportunities, including to any rank in the armed forces and security services and to education. It guarantees access to medical care, and to other public services including transport. It guarantees non-discrimination in access to lodgings, restaurants, recreational areas, etc. Equal pay for equal work is guaranteed as well as the right to “live in any sector, zone or area.” Moreover it provides as a right unencumbered access to free education and medical care (Articles 50 and 51). It stipulates that all citizens have the right to social security. Given Cuba’s history since 1959, the constitution also unexpectedly spells out freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion (Articles 53 and 55). It also stipulates that citizens’ property will be protected and not subject to confiscation except as punishment, and spells out safeguards against arbitrary arrest. Cuba’s approach to minority issues is based on Marx’s theory of social class. Short of revolution, class is “inherited,” permanent, and inescapable. Exploitation is a consequence of the class structure in capitalist and earlier societies. In theory, following the elimination of capitalism, class exploitation (including exploitation of ethno-racial minorities) and the mores or folkways and ideologies that sustained it would automatically disappear. These ideas prevailed in the paradigm shift after 1959 that aimed to produce a Cuba that was “raceless and classless” (ni raza, ni clase). After the Revolution, the authorities insisted that the needs of blacks would be met as part of the working class, in principle, Cuba’s only remaining class. The government also suppressed discussion of race issues. The state aimed to achieve equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes by reconstructing the economy according to socialist norms. It took control of the labor market, of access to occupations, and of management of enterprises. Business enterprises of all kinds became state property. There were neither opportunities for economic entrepreneurship, nor wealth accumulation, but all adult Cubans were employed or entitled to a pension. The state allocated jobs and also established a highly compressed wage structure where the highest wages (salaries) were only five times the lowest. Transportation and housing were provided with substantial subsidies. Basic goods, above all food, were provided at low administered prices, and by means of a national ration system. To some degree they still are. Though much battered, and much reduced in scope, most of these policies have endured to the present. The public effort to meet working-class needs led to expansion and reform in health services and education. The public educational system that resulted is among the most prominent accomplishments of the Revolution. I give it substantial attention since access to education made possible black advance

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to parity following the Revolution.7 Full-cohort enrollment in elementary schools was soon achieved. Between 1958–59 and 1968–69, enrollments in secondary education tripled. Over the same decade enrollment in higher education increased 37 percent (much of it concentrated in the sciences, technology, and medicine).8 The quality of education also increased. In 1996, a consortium of 13 Latin American countries conducted an international study of comparative educational achievement (Primer Estudio Internacional Comparativo). Educational achievements of all third- and fourth-grade pupils were assessed by means of standardized tests. More than 50,000 pupils were tested on language and mathematics in 13 Latin American countries. Cuba’s average test scores were about two standard deviations above the overall 13-country mean in both reading and mathematics! (Willms and Somers 1998). In 2006, the high quality of Cuban education was reconfirmed in UNESCO’s educational assessment of Latin America. In the mathematics and reading examinations, Cuba again came away with high scores: 50 percent of Cuban students scored at the highest level, compared to 10 percent of students from other countries of Latin America.9 How did the Cubans succeed at education to such extraordinary degree? The explanation has to do with Cuba’s organization as a totalitarian state exercising a control over the individual behavior and family life of the citizenry much exceeding that of private-property, democratic polities. The Cuban state, for example, intervenes to greater degree than US public authorities to protect children against the impact of family difficulties. In problematic situations, visits by social workers to homes and teacher meetings with parents are routine and frequent. Both teachers and social workers come backed by the authority of the state. Both groups “advise” on raising children and admonish parents with problems. There is also guidance, exhortation, and control at the neighborhood-block or village level by local leaders from the Communist Party who see themselves as carrying out government policies. Apparently these various quasi-supervisory services have had a positive impact on schooling. The totalitarian state also proved capable on another dimension where many nations come up short, namely development and maintenance of a strong teaching corps and a history of generous funding of the cost of universal schooling at all levels. Curriculum reform that also had a noteworthy effect. Cuba’s education reformers constructed a new national curriculum for primary and secondary schools based on Communist East European approaches. For example, an East German mathematics curriculum was applied throughout the island. The college courses in education instruct future teachers in how to work within and apply this national curriculum. This turned out to be advantageous compared to teacher training largely independent of actual school curricula, as is the case elsewhere in Latin America and the United States. School administrators are also schooled in the single curriculum. So teachers, students, and authorities all “grow up” in the same system.

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Further, the socialist government not only recognized good practice but implemented and institutionalized it. In many countries, educational reforms are stifled because of political factors, such as the interests of teachers unions. Here are some attributes of Cuban education of particular interest to the reform minded:10  School teachers are graduates of Cuba’s teacher-training schools, carefully trained in the curriculum and supervised on the job. Their reputation is one of strong professional performance. Many former teachers now work in the tourist industry and there is concern that average quality is diminishing because their replacements are new high-school graduates who get a grounding in teaching of less than a year, as opposed to the previous thorough training.  Virtually all teachers understand their subject matter. In the United States, this may not always be the case particularly as concerns mathematics.  Actual class work is a standard four hours of instruction per school day but children remain in school for about seven hours under the tutelage of the teachers, among other things, for completion of homework. Teachers stay with the same class, typically, for four years. Carnoy describes them as “surrogate mothers.”  Cuba’s national school system has institutionalized the requirement that teachers report to work regularly and work for the entire time allotted. In parts of Latin America, actual instruction time is less than half of official instruction time.  In early grades teachers work intensively with slow learners to assure that they learn to read fluently, a prerequisite for further work, which usually requires skill in reading. The approach minimizes retention in grade.  Apparently there is no practice of “social promotions,” i.e., promoting a pupil who is clearly performing below grade. Where social promotions are common, as in some US school districts, children so treated initially avoid the destructive impact of failure on self-esteem, but they also lack the prerequisites for further learning. Most subjects require reading at an advancing level as the student progresses from grade to grade.11  Children and adolescents cannot access drugs nor join gangs. Destructive adolescent peer behaviors are “reined in” by both school and political authorities.  The Cuban population is largely stationary. Government provides housing and discourages moves to new locations. Children rarely change schools, minimizing disruption and improving academic performance.12 Cuban success contrasts with United States experience. US public schools are particularly problematic with respect to minority students as concerns the low level of educational achievement as opposed to educational attainment. (See Chapter 8.)

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The key independent variable in the mobility model is the pace of economic development as measured by GDP growth. Development leads to structural transformation of the economy from traditional rural orientation to a modern urban economy. In lieu of development, the Cuban Revolution recast social roles toward creating a classless society. It provided state-determined meritocratic criteria in determining the occupational structure. But rather than the buoyant job market that accompanies rapid growth, the Revolution led to an exodus in 1960 (mostly to the US) of the high-income professional technical and managerial elites that cut off the upper part of the income and status distribution. (This alone greatly reduced income and status inequality.) The exodus was a superior subsitute for the buoyant job market in that it provided mobility opportunities far larger than occur in even the most rapidly growing economies. So elite exodus, the government’s regulations that restructured and flattened the class system, and the unprecedented explosion in black educational achievement delivered a unique opportunity for black ascension. As discussed below, for a period in the 1980s, Cuban blacks came close to economic parity with the majority. Impact of the paradigm shift on comparative socio-economic status The following tables also show that Cuban blacks benefited more than proportionally from the paradigm shift. They are based on data derived from publications of Alejandro de la Fuente, who documents a very large increase in blacks’ socio-economic social status in Cuba during the 1980s.13 The Cuban data are based on the 1981 census results for the partition by races. As a percentage of total population, whites were 66, mulattos 22, and blacks 12. The 1981 partition is also close to that of the 2002 census, which used selfidentification and reported the racial distribution as 65, 25, and 10. In this paper, the category black includes mulatto, unless otherwise indicated. The inclusive partition (blacks 34 percent) is used by de la Fuente and is also used in the following tables. (Many researchers insist that this enormously understates the mulatto population, which is seen to account for about half of total population. As indicated in the attached endnote, the evidence on the issue is unclear).14 Table 6.1 shows equal life expectancy for Cuban blacks and whites by 1981, while the black/white disparity in life expectancy for Brazil and the US was very large. Cuba’s situation before 1959 showed similar disparities. Following the 1959 Revolution, the expansion in preventive healthcare and the enormous decrease in seasonal unemployment that greatly improved nutrition in rural Cuba (where a larger proportion of the black than white population resided in the 1960s) dramatically reduced the incidence and mortality of infectious disease.15 Table 6.2 shows virtual parity in educational achievement between Cuban blacks and whites while the same comparison for Brazil and the US shows lower achievement for blacks. The exact impact of post-Revolution reforms is

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Table 6.1 Estimates of life expectancy by race, Cuba, Brazil, and the United States, 1980s Country

Whites

Blacks

Whites–Blacks

Cuba (1981) Brazil (1980) USA (1980)

71 66 74

70 59 68

1 7 6

Sources: Cuba: Government of Cuba 1993: 105–6; Brazil and the United States: Andrews 1992: 239. Adapted from the table published in De la Fuente 1995: 143. Note: Blacks include mulattos. Table 6.2 Maximum educational attainment by race, Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, 1980s, for the population aged 25 or older (percentages)

Brazil, 1987 Cuba, 1981 USA, 1987

High School College High school College High school College

Whites

Blacks

Mulattos

Blacks/ Whites

Mulattos/ Whites

13.9 9.2 9.9 4.4 56.4 20.5

5.3 1.0 11.2 3.5 52.8 10.7

8.0 2.0 9.6 3.2

38 11 113 80 94 52

58 22 97 73

*

Sources: Cuba: Government of Cuba 1983: 67–70; Brazil and the United States: Andrews 1992: 229–43. This table is adapted from De la Fuente 1998b: 2. Note: * USA blacks include mulattos. Cuban “high school” is “preuniversitaria.”

uncertain since Table 6.2 confounds education after the Revolution with education before it.16 Cuba’s occupational structure in the 1980s also suggests that blacks were near to status parity with whites,17 and far closer than blacks in either Brazil or the US (Table 6.3). Their entry into the professional ranks (22 percent of black employment) put them at parity with whites. In contrast, the lag at the professional level is pronounced in Brazil and substantial in the US. On the other end of the scale for the category manual labor (farm and non-farm), Cuban blacks again were very close to parity with whites, while blacks were overrepresented in the US and Brazil. This movement of blacks in large numbers into the upper echelons of the occupational structure is probably without precedent in Cuba’s history.18 Nevertheless, Afro-Cubans accounted for more than a proportional share of socially deviant behavior (habitual drunkenness, vagrancy, drug addiction, and prostitution). In 1986 in Havana, 78 percent of those appearing before the courts accused of punishable socially deviant behavior were black (De la Fuente 1998b: 5). They also account for more than a proportionate share of those incarcerated.

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Table 6.3 Percentage distribution of occupations, civilian labor force by race: Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, 1980 Brazil

Professional Management Sales Manual, non-farm Services Agriculture Other

Cuba

USA

W

B

M

W

B

M

W

B

09 17 09 26 11 23 06

03 04 04 28 23 32 07

04 07 07 26 13 39 06

22 13 06 23 07 18 10

22 07 07 29 09 13 12

23 09 07 24 09 18 11

16 28 11 32 11 03 00

11 22 05 37 22 02 00

Sources: Cuba: Government of Cuba 1983 and 1985: 117–18; Brazil and the US: Andrews 1992: 249–50. Table derived from De la Fuente (1998b: 3). Notes: W: white, B: black, M: mulatto. “Management” corresponds to Spanish administración.

Cuba’s paradoxical black earnings endowments The mobility model explains the pre-Revolution high level of poverty of Cuban blacks as partly due to inadequate cultural endowments following centuries of slavery and discrimination. How were Cuban blacks able to overcome this to arrive at educational attainments at parity with the majority? Why did Cuba succeed where other countries, including more industrialized, high-income countries such as Japan and the US, have been less successful? The explanation appears to involve three factors: earnings endowments or cultural endowments may have been less dysfunctional than those that operate in the other three minorities; the impact of the Revolution on earnings endowments was strongly positive; and Cuban schools may have been very successful in working with disadvantaged students. Each of these is discussed below. Inadequate cultural endowments may have been less problematic for black Cubans than for Afro-descendant minorities elsewhere. Iberian slavery left a heritage of cultural endowments and institutions – or in today’s language, social capital – among the various black populations apparently more conducive to upward mobility than that of non-Iberian slave or caste societies.19 During the late nineteenth century, in the former Iberian colonies, many blacks were moving up “in stages” from the bottom of the hierarchy to the very top (Waters 1999: 29). Simultaneously, in the United States institutions were such that slavery and the caste society that followed the end of slavery ensured that blacks mostly remained at the bottom of the class structure indefinitely.20

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Historical research supports this thesis of substantial upward mobility of Cuban blacks by the nineteenth century. During the sixteenth century cabildos de naciones de afrocubanos (Afro-Cuban mutual support societies) provided assistance to newly enslaved Africans on arrival. Urban blacks who spoke the same language as the new slaves, Yoruba, Mandinga, etc., were permitted to use the societies to promote maintenance of African languages and customs. By the 1850s sociedades de color arose that emphasized progress toward social equality and that stressed the importance of education and acceptance of Spanish culture. By Emancipation (1886), some economic and social gains resulted in part because of the activities of these societies; e.g., “all forms of transportation, public places and schools were opened to blacks” (Howard 1998: xv). Klein (1986:232) describes a subset of the sociedades de color or hermandades (brotherhoods) as a major source for maintaining Afro-American religious cults [that] cemented class and color friendships through ritual ceremonial activity. Though created for racist reasons and supported by a white society bent on maintaining a social order that was more separate than equal, these religious voluntary organizations became pillars of the community and gave the free colored a sense of worth and identity, which like their militia units provided them with crucial supports in highly racist societies. In 1959, when Castro took power, these organizations were affiliated in the Federación Nacional de Sociedades de Color with about 500 branches throughout the island. According to Moore (1988b), the revolutionary government eliminated them in the 1960s. Other scholars find that both African religions and African language survive in Cuba so that a fair number of people still locate their origins in specific African ethnic groups or regions. While African religions in many cases were fused with the rituals and doctrines of the Catholic Church, specifically Santeria and Abakua both have large parts of their liturgy in African languages including Yoruba, Igbo, and Ñañigo (Wikipedia 2008). From the beginning, the legal status of slaves was higher in Cuba than in the US. One difference grew out of Catholic teaching that slaves were human and endowed with eternal souls. Indeed in 1537, Pope Paul III proclaimed that “Indians themselves are true men” and should not be “deprived of their liberty” and “reduced to our service like brute animals” (Mann 2005: 58). There is at least one case of slave traders arriving in Spain only to lose their human cargo when seized and liberated by priests (ibid.). Consistent with this pronouncement, “white society incorporated Africans into Christianity as co-equal members of a universalistic Church. Among the Latin American legal codes there was a basic assumption that Africans would eventually become freedmen in these same slave societies” (Klein 1986: 186). Cuba’s Code of 1842 legalized slave marriages and families. Throughout Latin America, “most slaves lived in family units” and “In estates owned by the Church,

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usually all slaves were legally married” (Klein 1986: 170: 168). The code also instructed the government in Cuba to appoint a sindico procurador (public attorney) to protect the rights of slaves, including representing slaves in legal actions against their owners. Slaves had the right to testify, including testimony against their masters. Spain’s Slavery Code (Codigo negro carolino), promulgated in 1785, encouraged slave-owners to provide slaves fields to grow food crops. Slaves could keep part or even all of the proceeds from sale of such crops and some slaves used savings from their production to buy their freedom or the freedom of their children (ibid.: 194). By the mid-nineteenth century, Iberian slaves could own valuable property. Moreover, by the early eighteenth century full-scale “Crown recognition of the [slave’s] right of selfpurchase” was “fully accepted in the slave systems of Ibero-America” and a substantial proportion of manumissions took the form of self-purchase (ibid.).21 In the US South prior to the eighteenth century, conversion to Christianity was considered incompatible with the status of a slave. Thereafter missionary work among slaves was encouraged. But the churches in the American South overwhelmingly preached to blacks a doctrine of permanent submission to and acceptance of slavery. There would be no equality before the afterlife (Myrdal 1962: 859–61). Rather than an ideology of eventual emancipation and equality, the presumptive biological inferiority of blacks was used to justify an ideology of eternal slavery, and, after emancipation, low or even outcaste status well into the twentieth century (ibid. 90). Cuba also has a longer history of both independent blacks and of blacks of higher social status than the United States. By 1841, Cuba had 436,000 slaves and 153,000 free “colored” (Howard 1998). By 1861, “free colored” accounted for 38 percent of Cuba’s black population. In the United States, in 1860, out of a black population of 4.4 million, 11 percent were free, about half of whom lived in Northern free states. In the Southern slave states, 94 percent of the 4.2 million blacks were slaves (Klein 1986: 295–97). In Cuba, many slaves escaped to the “frontier,” above all to the largely unsettled and isolated Oriente province and evolved free, subsistence, agricultural communities. By the end of the nineteenth century, in large parts of Oriente, blacks were among the dominant landowners (ibid.: 204, 237). During Cuba’s first inconclusive 10year war for independence (1868–78), Perez estimates that 40 percent of the officers (including several in the highest ranks) of the liberation army were black or mulatto (1983: 106). Afro-Cuban soldiers and officers also played an important role, in the second War of Independence (1898). High rank in the uban militia brought not only prestige but also the opportunity to turn to military courts for protection against discriminatory practices experienced by blacks engaged in commercial and other activities in competition with the white majority (Klein 1986: 232). By the 1890s, Cuba had a large middle class of free blacks and mulattos. After the establishment of the Cuban Republic in 1898 Cuba’s governments universally fostered an ideology of general racial integration and equality (De

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la Fuente 1998a: passim). “Jim Crow” laws to enforce legal, political, and economic exploitation of blacks, such as those of Southern states following the US Civil War, never existed in Cuba (Zeitlin 1967: 71). Indeed when the US occupation of Cuba (1898–1902) restricted suffrage by imposing a literacy requirement on voters, “a cross-racial movement of protest made clear that ‘the Cuban people’ would not tolerate ‘any violation of the principle of democracy.’” Instead, the constitutional convention in 1901 established universal male suffrage (De la Fuente 1998a: 47). Similarly, the US military governor reversed his attempt to create an all-white artillery corps in the face of protest against segregation by a broad range of black and white war veterans (ibid.). The acceptance of interracial marriage in Cuba, at least outside of the upper classes, also indicates a degree of racial integration absent in the US. In 1967, 17 US states still had racial “miscegenation laws” that forbade marriage between blacks and whites (Mason 1970: 92). Changes in national ideology brought by the Revolution of 1959 also improved the self-esteem and probably thereby the cultural endowments of Cuba’s black children. The de jure, and de facto reversal of the status hierarchy to enhance respect for the working classes and to condemn the bourgeoisie, plus the very dramatic increase in mobility opportunities (access to education, availability of full-time employment, and access to high-status jobs) presumably changed belief systems, identity formation, and basic attitudes of blacks in ways that improved black earnings endowment and propensity to learn. A third factor may also help explain the parity paradox: the workings of Cuba’s educational system. Cuba’s educational achievements in the elementary grades imply that Cuba has been successful in teaching slow learners. This involved close cooperation with parents and a concentration on remedial programs in the schools. Many toddlers and older preschool children attend state-directed day-care programs. Moreover, during the 1960s, many rural children were moved to the cities (presumably away from their parents) to attend school (Restrepo 1970: 68). Together these factors also contributed to the enormous increase in the educational achievement of Afro Cubans, one of the necessary conditions for their rise in Cuba’s occupational hierarchy.

Cuba’s changing economy and social mobility With the Communist collapse in 1989, Cuba lost its main external ideological and economic prop. The large Soviet subsidy that had sustained the Cuban economy ended in 1991. The Eastern Bloc had bought Cuban exports at prices three to five times above those of the world market, as implied by the value of the petroleum products, food imports, and other goods that Cuba imported in return. By 1992 Cuba’s imports had dropped by more than twothirds. Further indication of the gravity of the crisis was the decrease in Cuba’s caloric intake by about 30 percent from 1989 to 1993 (Eckstein 1997: passim, 147). Between 1989 and 1993, Cuba also suffered inflation (the state covered large fiscal deficits by printing money), contraction and breakdown in

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enterprise production, and widespread unemployment. Since 1993 production has increased substantially but capital continues to depreciate with insufficient replacement investment. Moreover, at the turn of the century, total production, and consumption were still significantly below the peak levels of the late 1980s.22 In weathering this storm, Cuba has been moving from a strict socialist economy to an economy divided between dollar (market-driven) and peso (socialist) sectors, while permitting a small dose of domestic market autonomy primarily via the re-enfranchised self-employment sector (Eckstein 1997). The economic role of the state is diminishing, although in 1997, most employment was still in the state sector. Since 1993 citizen ownership of foreign exchange is legal and widespread with a well-developed exchange market. Dollars are increasingly used in domestic trade for services provided by the self-employed (restaurants, construction trades, automobile mechanics, taxis, childcare, etc.) Nevertheless, commerce as a specialized function officially remains a state monopoly notwithstanding abundant worldwide experience showing the comparative advantage of the private sector in commerce. (But private commerce characterizes Cuba’s very substantial informal, i.e., illegal, sectors.) Moreover, private employers that meet payrolls are still illegal in Cuba’s domestic, peso economy. Rather than an autonomous market for labor, government controls access to jobs in the legal sectors. It can still do this because all domestic business enterprises larger than family undertakings that rely on self-employment remain in state hands. So although some individual and family initiative in production is tolerated, insofar as feasible, it is heavily taxed. (However, Cuba’s nouveaux riches are informally hiring domestic servants, drivers, gardeners, etc.) The government also prohibits foreign firms from directly paying their Cuban employees, but pays them itself, with funds received from the foreign firms, in an effort to minimize wage disparities (Plasencia 2000).23 In 1999, the state still attempted to provide citizens certain basic goods at low peso prices: education, food staples, housing, transportation, and medical care.24 But it had also introduced or increased prices for many goods, including electricity, meals at the workplace, and sports events. Further, beneficiaries of higher education and pensions are now (as of 2000) expected to cover a larger part of the costs of benefits. Today most consumption goods are freely available only in dollar-stores. Foreign-exchange earnings are more diversified than in the past. Well over half of Cuba’s foreign-exchange earnings are covered by remittances from Cubans living abroad (more than $700 million annually) plus tourism (1.6 million visitors in 1999) (ibid.). But foreign investment in mining, export agriculture, and manufacturing is complementing dependence on tourism as the largest foreign-exchange earner. Moreover local firms, notably in pharmaceuticals, but others as well, are increasingly moving into exporting. There are also the beginnings of export-oriented vertical integration: local industries produce goods for Cuba’s tourist industry including textiles, furniture, air-conditioning installations, and food (Jatar-Hausmann 1999: 126).

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The Cuban economy is also becoming less equal. By 1997, legal selfemployment in Cuba accounted for about 10 percent of Cuba’s labor force of 4 million (ibid.: 92). Incomes of the self-employed are highly variable, but are many times higher than those of families primarily dependent on peso incomes, such as public servants and public enterprise employees. In 1997, a sample of 234 self-employed had average incomes 18 times higher than their previous earnings as state employees (ibid.: 102). Further, in the sample, earnings and level of education were uncorrelated. Those with the highest education and who had the highest incomes in Cuba before the 1990s were prohibited from working as self-employed in their professions (law, accounting, medicine, etc.) at least through 1997 and as a result had incomes far below those of the self-employed. There are other sources of economic inequality. Remittances, primarily from the United States, account for the majority of income of a substantial proportion of the population. Cuba’s buoyant local agricultural markets (supplied directly by farmers without intermediaries) have been liberalized. The supply response has been primarily from cooperatives recently converted from state farms, and small private farms that had never been nationalized. Average income of farmers supplying such markets has also increased many times. Finally for thousands of attractive young Cuban women, services provided to foreign tourists generate individual incomes many times higher than earnings in the official peso economy. Andrew Zimbalist concludes that Cuba’s hard-won and briefly realized ideals of equity and equality, ideals that legitimized the Revolution and the regime for many Cubans, have been undermined: Cuba has become a class society, defined by access to hard currency, either through work, politics, or relatives abroad. According to one study based on data from the Cuban government’s Instituto Nacional de Investigación Económica, the share of income going to the top 5 percent rose from 10 percent in 1986 to 31 percent in 1995 … material rewards in Cuba today do not correspond in any meaningful way with one’s economic contribution. Rather those connected to the dollar economy enjoy much higher living standards. The prevailing incentives encourage doctors to become taxi drivers, scientists and engineers to become shoemakers and restaurant operators, teachers and professors to leave education for the tourism sector, and government officials to rent-seek in the dollar economy. Further the return to human capital has been so undermined that even Cuba’s best students are dropping out of school. According to one report, the number of matriculated college students fell by 50 percent between 1989 and 1996. (Zimbalist 2000:15) De la Fuente made a preliminary assessment of the impact of recent changes on the incomes of black Cubans. His work suggests substantial deterioration in their income position relative to the majority since 1989 (1998b: 6–9). In

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proportion to population share, about half as many blacks have emigrated as whites. Moreover, black Cubans have substantially lower incomes in the US than white Cubans. So US remittances can be expected to proportionately benefit Cuban whites far more than Cuban blacks. Blacks very rarely owned commercial farms and their principal agricultural role of harvesting sugarcane had become mechanized by the 1970s, leaving them to find employment elsewhere. The resurgence of farm incomes, with the re-opening of private farm markets in 1994, has primarily benefited largely self-employed cooperative and private landowners. (Private farms, in socialist Cuba, are small and generate little demand for non-family workers.) Urban blacks live to greater degree than whites in undesirable neighborhoods where there is little demand for the small family restaurants (paladares) that have proven profitable for many whites. Few blacks are employed in tourism, partly because of presumed prejudice against blacks among tourists. Finally, De la Fuente takes issue with the belief that black and dark-mulatto women disproportionately supply Cuba’s large-scale and very profitable sex industry. He cites anthropological analysis showing that the majority of so-called black sex workers are light-skinned mulattos (mestizas) who would be considered white by most Cubans were they in any other occupation (ibid.). Two remaining income possibilities need consideration: earnings of AfroCuban workers in foreign-owned enterprises and earnings from urban selfemployment. The state selects the workers hired by foreign firms. Information is not widely available on the number of blacks employed in such enterprises, whether or not they receive supplementary payments, or how total wages compare with other Cuban incomes. Whether foreign firms discriminate against blacks is another issue. As concerns earnings from urban self-employment, it is plausible to believe that blacks are disadvantaged and underrepresented in self-employment because of their history of restrictive low-skill wage-work for others. In 1952, “the workers in the sugar industry … comprised 23 percent of the labor force … three quarters of whom worked no more than five months a year” (Zeitlin 1967: 50). Most such sugar workers were black cane-cutters, putting them at the bottom of the wage hierarchy. Rural sugarcane-cutters, plus their children and grandchildren no doubt have, on average, less experience of urban work in an industrial economy than other Cubans. Presumably these factors put a large proportion of black Cubans at a comparative disadvantage compared to other Cubans seeking self-employment. Pulling it all together suggests that Cuba’s blacks are once again losing out relative to the majority.

Replication and research Could Cuba’s apparent success (up to the collapse of the Soviet Union) in integrating the black minority be repeated elsewhere? The Cuban experience appears to be the result of an improbable conjunction: the exodus of most of the Cuban bourgeoisie and the resulting occupational openings; the extremely rapid expansion in education; the draconian suppression of discrimination;

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and a sweeping and very positive change in the identity and other components of the cultural endowments of black Cubans. In general, the Cuban solution is unlikely to apply in countries with similar low-status, ranked, and long exploited minorities because of the enormous difficulty in achieving favorable parameters for these four basic variables: rapid growth (or revolution, Cuba’s substitute for rapid growth, is even less likely) reduced discrimination, improved earning endowments, and increased access to education. This conclusion very clearly applies to Dalits in India, as well as black minorities in the United States and Brazil, and to Japan’s Burakumin. Although Cuba can hardly serve as a template for minority integration, its experience does provide a valuable perspective on the causal factors at work. Cuba’s unique experience per se could be analyzed further in order to improve the mobility theory. Although the experience has received some attention, good statistical data are scarce. More information and analysis that build on the hypotheses developed in the chapter are needed. Several themes especially warrant attention. First, Cuba quickly brought a hard-core, lowstatus minority to educational parity with the majority. Armed with its newly acquired human capital, the minority was able to briefly acquire socio-economic status close to parity with the majority. Low-status involuntary minorities have usually been checked in their progress to parity. The chapter offers hypotheses on why these checks did not operate or were overcome in Cuba. Survey research and more analysis of Cuba’s approach to education, childcare, and occupational structure are needed to test the hypotheses. Second, more attention needs to be given to calibrating and assessing the differences between the black and the mulatto experience. Third, the Cuban economy is evolving away from socialism. The current development of limited private enterprise and market autonomy appears to be accompanied by deterioration of the average black socio-economic position. Analysis is needed to determine whether this is the case and if so why. Whether Cuba’s blacks will maintain their recently won status in a less dirigist economy is a question that merits detailed attention, not least because of its implications for future work on the progress to parity of low-status, ranked minorities.

Afterword: Afro-Cuban reversion Since 2000, little has occurred that is not consistent with the above material indicating declining relative black socio-economic status and the factors causing that decline: discrimination leading to substantial exclusion of AfroCubans25 from employment in the new export industries; the lower flow of international remittances to Afro-Cubans; black disadvantage in generating employment in the upper reaches of the informal economy; and perhaps negative consequences of the mechanization and contraction of the sugar industry for Afro-Cubans at the lower part of the status hierarchy. The combined impact of these factors has probably caused higher dependence of black Cubans than others on work in state-owned industries and

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other sectors at wages far below those in the joint-venture, foreign-exchange sector. An article in The Economist (23 February 2008: 49–52) makes clears the nature of such dependency. It states that the typical salary for a factory worker is 400 pesos monthly, and a medical doctor 700. The article also lists retail prices for some basic foods: one onion for five pesos; a pound of dry beans, 10 pesos; a pound of chicken or of bacon, 23 pesos. Hence a worker in a state-owned factory gets the equivalent of about two pounds of beans for a day’s work. The foreign-exchange values of these wages in 2008 are about US $17 and $30 respectively. These are extremely low monthly wages relative to those of the private foreign-exchange sector, where monthly “bonuses” of a US$100 and more are the rule.26 The exclusion of Afro-Cubans is most clearly the case with respect to foreign tourism (including medical tourism), which is now Cuba’s largest industry, as measured by total value of output or foreign-exchange earnings. It is labor-intensive and many jobs in the industry are highly valued because not only tips but also parts of wages are paid in foreign exchange. (The foreign exchange monthly “bonus” of one to several hundred dollars although formally illegal is de facto universal for workers in many parts of the tourist industry.)27 The reason alleged for black exclusion from these opportunities is prejudice among tourists who supposedly prefer employees of buena presencia (pleasant appearance). Some degree of exclusion of black workers, however, also appears to be the case in assigning positions in non-tourism joint ventures of foreign investors with the state although pleasant appearance should not be an issue in these cases. De la Fuente (2007: 142), a prominent historian and analyst of Cuban political and economic trends, concludes that “According to research done by the Center for Cuban Anthropology, blacks barely represent 5 percent of the labor force employed in tourism and other dollarrelated activities.” Were Afro-Cubans employed in proportion to their share of the total population (35 percent), their number so employed would increase sevenfold over the actual situation. Very low black participation is the norm, notwithstanding the fact that many of the jobs in these joint or foreign-owned industries have modest skill requirements. Indeed, “until the 1980s, when these jobs were not particularly attractive, blacks and mulattos were overrepresented in similar services. Their low representations in the tourist industry in the 1990s reflect a deliberate effort to minimize their presence in these attractive jobs” (ibid.). The government tolerates this state of affairs. As I stated earlier, officially, the state allocates all formal-sector employment in Cuba. Government organizations have in fact explicitly assigned specific persons to specific jobs in many foreign-owned/joint-venture undertakings. In the tourist industry, however, “jobs are allocated informally through personal networks of various kinds and then formalized through the state companies that oversee this process” (De la Fuente 2008). In the past, corruption also played a role in that certain much-coveted jobs in tourism were in effect sold by public officials to the taker (ibid.). Presumably in any such “competition” for tourism jobs,

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Afro-Cubans are disadvantaged in having less money and weaker contacts with pertinent government officials than do other Cubans. As mentioned earlier, on average Afro-Cubans also appear less successful at moving into productive employment in the more profitable parts of the informal economy perhaps because of their exclusion from most educational opportunity prior to the 1960s, and long restriction to a narrow menu of rural occupations, in which sugarcane-cutting predominated. Hence, in the majority, they may well be at a disadvantage in developing production in the large informal sector compared to Cuban families with experience, or at least familiarity, with various kinds of employment in urban labor markets. Further, insofar as developing work in the informal sector may require a substantial outlay in capital, e.g., chicken farming, trucking and taxi operation, housing construction, etc., Afro-Cubans are again penalized in having more limited access to capital than whites, who benefit from larger remittances than blacks. Notwithstanding black disadvantage in moving into informal-sector work, the need by blacks to move into informal employment may have increased substantially beginning in the 1990s because of untoward economic developments. In the 1950s the sugar industry employed about 23 percent of the labor force, mostly in cane-cutting (Zeitlin 1967: 50). During the early years of the new regime, cane-cutters were in the majority black and this work accounted for more black employment than any other industry. At that time, Cuba had long been the world’s largest exporter of sugar. The mechanization of canecutting in the 1970s and, more recently, the precipitous contraction of the sugar industry have substantially reduced what had been an important source of black livelihoods. In 2002, approximately half of Cuba’s sugar mills were shut down. The 2007 sugar harvest was less than a quarter of production in the peak years of the twentieth century (Sanchez 2008). During the 1990s the contraction of the sugar industry, the simultaneous catastrophic drop in imports attendant on the demise of the Soviet Union and its disappearance as Cuba’s main trading partner would normally have led to substantial unemployment perhaps disproportionately higher for blacks than for other Cubans. Because minorities are supposedly nonexistent in Communist economies, Cuban statistical data have not permitted comparisons of unemployment by groups. But there is a consensus that the economy contracted very heavily while food consumption dropped substantially during the 1990s. Perhaps largely as a consequence of economic contraction, the so called Palestino migration peaked during the 1990s. This refers to the substantial migration to Havana of Cuban families from the Oriente, the most eastern and rural part of the island where the proportion of the population that is Afro-Cuban has long been above average. The migrating Palestinos were in the main looking for work and escape from poverty. By 2008, the migration had substantially abated. Although government regulations formally require that illegal residents be subject to forced return to the provinces, many Palestinos have succeeded in remaining in Havana living in makeshift houses in slums (fanguitos) often without running water and electric power. They are

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believed to work mainly in Havana’s informal economy. It is generally acknowledged that Afro-Cubans account for a larger share of Palestinos than they do of the total population. The Palestino plight provides further support for the thesis of declining black socio-economic status vis-à-vis the majority. Alejandro de la Fuente played an important role in verifying and analyzing the great strides made in socialist Cuba in bringing blacks to parity with the Cuban majority. He now confirms the decline in Afro-Cuban socio-economic status because of discrimination most clearly expressed in their exclusion from employment in tourism, but also in other respects: There is consensus that since the early 1990s race relations – social interactions and exchanges between individuals believed to belong to different racial groups – deteriorated dramatically on the island. Visitors and observers are shocked by the frequency and virulence of racist remarks, indeed by the undisguised contempt with which many white Cubans refer to blacks and mulattos. They are equally startled by the low proportion of blacks and mulattos in positions of power, by their lack of representation in the media, by their low presence in the most desirable jobs, particularly in those dealing with tourists and by their prominent participation in informal economic activities. Several surveys conducted in the 1990s show that blackness continues to be equated with the most degrading physical and ethical attributes – ugliness, laziness, incompetence, vanity and ignorance – and is also identified with the most despicable behaviors from robbery and peddling to prostitution and rape … . In order to minimize the black and mulatto presence in tourism, white managers began to demand from prospective employees what they defined as a buena presencia (pleasant appearance), an aesthetic attribute that only people deemed to be white could fulfill. The same criterion has been applied to positions in so-called joint ventures – companies financed and partly owner by foreign investors … . By creating supposedly objective indicators of desirability and competence they can be used to exclude Afro-Cuban job seekers from the best positions. This ideology has helped to whiten the most coveted sectors of the labor market and to rationalize the process of exclusion. (De la Fuente 2007: 141–42) Article 45 of Cuba’s constitution stipulates that “Work in a socialist society is a right and duty and a source of pride for every citizen.” It continues: “This is guaranteed by the socialist economic system that facilitates social and economic development without crises and has thus eliminated unemployment.” But largely the opposite has occurred: society has not guaranteed adequate employment, nor has Cuba’s socialism recovered from the shock and dislocation caused by eradication of the Soviet Union. Further, a very large proportion of Cubans do not take pride in their work. Nor is current practice at all consistent with the constitutional prohibition of racial discrimination which “will be punished by

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law.”28 In contemporary Cuba, there are far fewer believers in the ideals that once were a driving force for revolutionary change and a new society of equality. In many ways the biggest losers in this outcome are the Afro-Cubans. They have come down from a status close to heroes of the Revolution and noble members of the working class, who for a brief time achieved educational and occupational equality, to a stigmatized, underemployed, and undervalued group. Cuban folkways once again check state ways.

7

Bolivia’s highland Indians Oppressed but not conquered

We are going to incorporate the campesinos into the Bolivian economy and national life so that they are no longer objects of derision. (President Hernan Siles Suazo, 1952)1

Introduction: the past in the present Before the National Revolution in 1952, Bolivia’s indigenous highland peoples in the main still spoke primarily Aymara or Quechua, the languages of an empire eradicated by the Spanish four centuries earlier. The Spanishspeaking minority described these highlanders as Indios. With the Revolution, this denigrating and stigma-ridden word largely disappeared. Overnight, the Indian, allegedly inherently inferior and by nature condemned to the bottom of Bolivia’s caste2 system, became the worthy, hard-working campesino, the rural resident or peasant. It is easier to change names than realities. But the change in names did indicate a paradigm shift in political ideology embodied in Bolivia’s new constitution established soon after the Revolution. In this new social order the campesino had formal legal and political status equal to that of the country’s Spanish-speaking minority. Hence, in theory at least, he could at will escape peasant status. Nevertheless, the campesino started out no closer to socio-economic parity with the country’s dominant minority than the Indian had been. During the ensuing half century there has been much progress toward equality, although the remaining gap is still large. The Aymara and Quechua quest for parity in Bolivia’s economic and social life is the main theme of this chapter. The case of Bolivia has become instructive on another dimension. In December 2005, Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian3 was elected President of the Republic with an absolute majority of 54 percent of the total vote rather than the usual victory by plurality. The majority vote was due to the overwhelming support Morales received from voters who identified themselves as Quechua or Aymara. In generating an unprecedented indigenous majority, the radical agenda of Morales and his party also gained an unprecedented legitimacy. Andean nationalism had brought the Spanish conquest to an end.

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Indeed, at his inauguration on 22 January, 2006, Morales described his presidency as the beginning of a new era and the end of five centuries of colonialism. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the tactics employed by the resurgent Aymaras and Quechuans to gain political power and whether their initial uses of that power are likely to be conducive to closing the status/ income gap of the highlanders with the non-indigenous population. The Bolivian case is of interest for several additional reasons. First, the Bolivian history of Spanish conquest and ensuing imposition of Spanish feudal institutions on indigenous majorities was replicated in many places including Mexico, Guatemala, and the other Andean nations. Findings from the Bolivian saga may apply to other Western-hemisphere nations. Second, Bolivia’s highlander campesino socio-economic “minority” is also the rare case of an apparent SRELIM that is simultaneously a numerical majority. As spelled out in the chapter, this has important consequences. Third, in the Bolivian case traumatic victimization is that of conquest, in distinction to the other studies which involve either slavery (US and Cuban black citizens) or outcastes (India’s Scheduled Castes and Japan’s Burakumin). However, analysis of the Bolivian case forced the conclusion that Bolivia’s campesinos were less “deculturized” by traumatic victimization than typical SRELIM. True, Bolivia’s Aymara and Quechua are the descendants of groups that suffered traumatic conquest, loss of autonomy, ensuing stigmatization, lowest rank, and enduring exploitation. But they conserved their language and much of their pre-Colombian religion. They retained their agricultural way of life and homeland. They also kept many other elements of their preConquest culture, including moral code and prestige system, as well as numerous customs and norms such as safety nets for the destitute. Moreover in Bolivia, to the present, they have survived as a numerical majority while suffering minority status.4 Altogether these factors indicate that they have not suffered the cultural annihilation that SRELIM groups often experience. They have not been enslaved and dispersed abroad, nor reduced to fragmentary survivors in segregated communities, dispossessed of their homeland, and speaking solely the language of their exploiters. Rather, as discussed in the chapter, during the National Revolution in 1953, Bolivia’s highland Indians seized control of the estates (haciendas) held by settlers of European culture to emerge with their traditional identity and way of life intact. The campesinos have absorbed much European culture but their indigenous culture continues to be of surprising vitality. In Xavier Albó’s phrase, they were “oprimido pero no vencido” (oppressed but not conquered). He and other anthropologists consider that a new and distinct society may yet evolve in Bolivia as the campesino majority finds its way (Albó 1988: 22). All in all, these considerations force the conclusion that contrary to my initial belief, Bolivia’s Quechua and Aymara are a poor fit for the SRELIM construct. Nevertheless, their mobility history remains pertinent in a study that concentrates on the problem of bringing SRELIM to socio-economic parity with their dominant groups.

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In Bolivia, before the 1970s, the phrase “indigenous people” meant small ethnic groups, frequently hunter-gatherers, inhabiting the eastern lowlands. In the 1970s, the burgeoning human-rights movement with its strong emphasis on indigenous peoples and the simultaneous development of indianist parties emphasizing Aymara and Quechua identity expanded the meaning of indigenous to include these highlanders as well. Today Bolivia’s “indigenous peoples” include the Quechua and Aymara, plus Guarani, Chiquitano, and other lowland peoples. The lowland indigenous groups, however, totaled to 6 percent of Bolivia’s population in the census of 2001.5 Their history is radically different from that of the other Bolivians; e.g., they were not part of the Inca Empire. This chapter concentrates on the mobility history of the highlanders in interaction with the non-indigenous Bolivians. Hence, I concentrate on about 94 percent of the total population of Bolivia. In the chapter, the phrase “highland indigenous” or “highlander” encompasses solely the Quechua and Aymara.6

A history of exploitation the balance of power and property in the countryside … served to maintain a tradition of economic and social oppression of the indigenous masses that was not unlike a combination of serfdom and apartheid. (Dunkerley 1984: 18–19)

The Spanish Conquest (1532–38) made Bolivia dualistic: a minute elite of Europeans ruled a population of millions of highland indigenous peoples. By the National Revolution in 1952, notwithstanding widespread miscegenation and the growth of a mestizo class, more than two-thirds of Bolivia’s population were still Quechua- and Aymara-speakers. These indigenous South Americans either lived in remote, independent, rural communities or, more frequently, as peons on haciendas owned by the Spanish-speaking elite. Notwithstanding the economic dominance of mining through most of Bolivia’s history, relatively few Indians became miners. Consequently, in 1952 when the word Indio was removed from public communication as highly pejorative, campesino (rural resident) quickly became the universal substitute. It was also an accurate description of the overwhelming majority of the Indian population. Before the Spanish Conquest, most of the people of the Inca Empire were peasant farmers who cultivated and grazed the land of distinct, largely selfgoverning, local communities (ayllus). Within the communities, membership was hereditary while the members considered themselves kin. Land was inalienable and belonged to the community, although within the community family parcels inherited over the generations were the rule. Apparently markets did not exist and surplus production was distributed by the headman.7 Following the Conquest (1532), the King of Spain soon confiscated and then granted the most fertile lands, including the very large holdings vested in the Inca, to individuals, while the Indians who had cultivated these lands

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became their serfs. The Spanish Crown ignored indigenous land rights and expropriated at will. It rewarded Conquistadores with grants of entire Indian communities (ayllus) and their land, including “rights” to their labor and product, linked with the responsibility to convert them to Christianity and to protect them. The grants were to run out after two generations. Some lands and their campesinos did revert to the Crown. Others evolved into private haciendas (fincas) held, in some cases, by descendants of the original conquerors. In addition, during the sixteenth century, the populations of many communities were brought together into settlements (reducciones, congregaciones) administered by Jesuits and other clergy or by government officials. With the exception of the latter, the new administration and its churches were imposed on existing communities but the traditional rulers (jilicatas, curacas) were left in place with substantial authority. Clerical and administrative settlements came to an end during the eighteenth century, but the process of converting ayllus into private holdings of Europeans continued throughout the colonial period.8 Following Independence from Spain in 1825, the “land hunger” of Bolivia’s upper classes increasingly threatened the surviving traditional Aymara and Quechua communities: the possession of land was fundamental, almost mystical. … It was through land ownership that one’s name gained solidity. By passing land through the generations, the family name would gain historical permanence. … The working of colonos (peasants) upon the land strengthened its economic value while simultaneously conferring prestige. (Malloy 1970: 189–90) Hence the rate at which land converted from community to hacienda tenure accelerated. Outright appropriation, however, was no longer standard practice. Instead, three statutes (1866, 1879, 1884) ostensibly designed to encourage the development of a land market and an independent peasantry greatly facilitated destruction of remaining indigenous communities. The law of 1866, for example, required Indians residing in the communities (i.e., on lands that the national government, as the successor to the Spanish Crown, claimed were state-owned) to purchase individual land titles. Community lands of Indians unable to purchase individual titles were frequently sold at auction (Dunkerley 1984: 20; Klein 1992: 140). Later statutes were similar in their requirements. Predictably, urban businesspeople and political elites supported liberal nineteenth-century ideas concerning the social desirability of a free peasantry holding personal title to the land. They saw the communities … [as] an anachronistic system of land tenure and a barrier to social integration … . They forced upon the communities … direct land purchase in which the titles to the land were held by individuals and not by the corporate group. The creation of an individualistic

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Indian “peasantry” holding de jure title gave the land owners (hacendados) the power to break up the de facto control of the communities by purchasing a few small parcels thus destroying the cohesion of the community. The rest was simple with fraud and force being as common as simple purchase, and soon there was a major expansion of haciendas throughout the highlands and the … valleys. (Klein 1992: 152) The move to individual tenure and associated destruction of the Indians’ traditional way of life could be fast and furious where land values were abruptly enhanced because of transportation or other improvements. In Bolivia, perhaps the last large-scale shift of this kind occurred in 1927 on completion of the Sucre to Potosi railroad. As a result, the market value of local lands near the railroad enormously increased and “accelerated hacienda pressure on the communities.” In response, some 12,000 community members (as reported by the British Ambassador) went “on the warpath,” but “a hundred or two … were shot down and order restored” (Dunkerley 1984: 24–25). By the mid-twentieth century, the majority of self-governing indigenous communities had disappeared, their number declining from about 11,000 at the time of the Conquest to about 3,800 by 1950 (Dunkerley 1984: 20). Many still exist today. Those that survived did so because of their isolation or the unattractiveness of their domains, but also, in some cases, because they had acquired written, corporate title to their lands. It is noteworthy that the current President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, born in 1959, grew up in a traditional Aymara ayllu, on the Altiplano near the city of Oruro. If the century following Independence was the period of most rapid conversion of communities to haciendas, it was, perhaps, also the period with the most frequent and most bloody attempts by their members to halt the eradication, or in some cases to repossess communities that had undergone the shift to hacienda tenure. These insurrections peaked during 1869–70, when about 400 communities were publicly auctioned off to private purchasers and bloody revolts by small bands of unarmed Indians was the reaction. The army responded by killing thousands (Cardenas 1988: 508–15). The apparently futile response by the Indians may have had some effect in that the likelihood of violence and other problems may have reduced the demand of would-be landlords (hacendados) for tillable land. This may be one reason why hundreds of traditional communities have survived to the present. The usual mode of hacienda production involved grant of usufruct rights to the campesino, typically, for three to five parcels of hacienda land plus rights to grazing land for sheep and other ruminants, in return for the campesino’s labor on land directly exploited by the owner. During the first centuries of Spanish rule, the campesinos, although legally landless, were tied to the land, unable to leave and were included in hacienda sales transactions. By the twentieth century, hacienda Indians were legally empowered to move off the fincas

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or haciendas, but before the Revolution actual movement was very rare. The campesino was unaware of alternate livelihood possibilities and landlord coercion was common.9 As in many medieval European systems, land per se was taxed lightly or not at all. The institution also universally involved the humiliating and detested pongueaje, the requirement that members of tenant families provide off-field labor to the patrón (landlord) usually at the manor house, be it in town or on the hacienda. In either case the pongo brought food, cooking fuel (i.e., typically llama dung; few trees grow on the Altiplano) clothing and bedding for what was usually a two-week sojourn (during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries) spent in tasks such as cleaning stables, providing firewood, making cheese, tending gardens, etc. McEwan (1975: 170) provides a telling description of hacienda labor practices in the Yungas (densely populated, fertile, subtropical valleys, east of La Paz) just before the Revolution in 1952: In the Yungas, peons were obliged to give four days each week to the patron and in turn were permitted to farm a small plot on the hacienda for themselves. Their hacienda work days were thirteen hours long and on some haciendas the peons and their wives were obliged to work in the master’s house for one-week periods in rotation. Peons were occasionally required to care for hacienda animals, and if an animal appeared to have died before its natural time they had to reimburse the hacienda for the loss. Peons who did not meet their work obligations were fined, and on repeated failure were beaten. By 1950, about 259,000 rural campesino families had no land, “either individually or collectively.”10 The then rural population of 2.4 million11 (80 percent of the national population of nearly 3 million) and an average of four to five persons per campesino family, implies a rural landless population of 1–1.3 million, most of whom depended directly on agriculture for survival.12 Hence, in 1950, perhaps about half the rural population was landless. If this is true, then it is safe to conclude that by 1950, about 40 percent of Bolivia’s population consisted of indigenous, agricultural campesinos dependent on landlords for access to productive land, without which they could not survive. Moreover most of this land, particularly the most fertile land, was concentrated in the hands of a few large owners: more than 90 percent of arable land was held by less than 7 percent of the owners (Table 7.1). Each of the estates of the largest 7 percent of owners was 1,000 or more hectares.13 Landlessness was not a consequence of land shortage, with a few exceptions, such as the densely settled Cochabamba Valley and the environs of Lake Titicaca. Table 7.1 implies that less than 2 percent of arable land was in production at any one time.14 By controlling access to arable land, landlords gained access to labor, the relatively scarce factor of production, on favorable terms for the landlords.15 The Indian peasants had few livelihood alternatives to farmwork.

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Table 7.1 Bolivia, ownership of arable land by size of holding, 1950 Hectares owned

Over 10,000 5,000 to 10,000 1,000 to 5,000 200 to 1,000 50 to 200 5 to 50 Less than 5 Individual Owners Indigenous Communities

Percentages owners

of land

of holdings cultivated

0.7 0.9 4.7 4.7 5.9 22.9 60.1 Numeric Totals 85,160 3,799

49.6 15.7 26.7 5.5 1.5 0.8 0.2

0.5 1 1.9 7.4 15.9 31 54.2

32,741,000 ha 7,000,000 ha

Source: Censo Nacional Agropecuario de 1950 Oficina Nacional de Estadisticas y Censos Sección Agropecuario (La Paz, 1950). Derived from Dunkerley 1984: 19–20.

Taxation and forced labor The Spanish introduced the tribute tax (tributo) during the generation of the Conquistadores. It was levied exclusively on the “Indian male head of household, aged 18 to 50” who, as a hereditary member of his local community with full land rights, belonged to the class of originarios that was “the base of the entire economic and social order” prior to the Spanish Conquest (Klein 1992: 51). The tax increased with the value of production from the land the originario cultivated. The originarios had to pay in money or specie, not goods. Hence they were forced into market transactions, often manipulated for the benefit of the agents of the new government. From Conquest to the nineteenth century, the tribute was the most stable and reliable tax, at times, accounting for more than half of public revenue. During the seventeenth century, as Upper Peru’s population (including what is today Bolivia) declined because of infection by European diseases, the aggregate burden of the head tax was not reduced, but increased per person of the surviving population. The indigenous communities were also subject to the mita (corvée) which became the main source of labor for the Crown mines. Each community was required to provide a specific contribution of adult males for service in the mines (often for a year), or on public works (Heath 1972: 156). In the seventeenth century a seventh of the community’s adult males of working age were typically in the mines at any one time. This labor went unpaid and the communities supplied food and clothing for their mitayos (Klein 1992: 42). From the Conquest until well into the eighteenth century, the combined impact of mita and tribute brought “frequent wholesale abandoning of communities and the massive withdrawal of Indians from originario status” (Klein 1992:

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52). By the seventeenth century, and continuing into succeeding centuries, a large and rootless population of landless Indians existed throughout the settled areas of Bolivia. In the main these became second-class workers on the haciendas, or in the remaining indigenous communities, so-called visitors or strangers (forasteros) obliged to provide labor services to the originarios to survive (Klein 1992: 53). Before the nineteenth century, very few Indians were permitted to leave rural life to become urban-dwellers. Nevertheless, by 1952, the year of the National Revolution, there were many “free Indians” who owned their own land or did unskilled work in town and moved about as they wished (McEwan 1975: 169). In the eighteenth century, the Crown concluded that the mode of levying the tribute was destroying the “legal class of originarios to its own detriment” and in 1734 it extended the tribute to all rural Indians, including those living on the haciendas. Moreover, rather than a land tax it became a fixed head tax (initially five pesos per year) levied on the entire population of able-bodied, highland, indigenous males. Apparently the universal burden of the new tax was such that the “originario class … also stabilized” (ibid.: 73). Not until the end of the nineteenth century was tribute eliminated, many decades after the mita’s abolishment in 1821 (Heath 1972: 156). But the de facto expropriation of the land by converting indigenous communities into private holdings continued to the Chaco War in the 1930s. To recapitulate, in Bolivia as elsewhere in Latin America, the Spanishspeaking elite established a legally based caste system that generated substantial production for state and landlords by taking possession of most arable land. They then exploited the Indian by dictating the terms on which the latter gained access to the farmland needed to avoid starvation. The system persisted to the mid-twentieth century. By the 1930s, Bolivia’s Aymara and Quechua peoples had endured four centuries of conquest, alien rule, serfdom, insult, and abject poverty. They also had suffered the eradication of pre-Colombian political institutions, substantial reorganization of their economic life, and the imposition of Christianity. In sustaining this “mode of production” the army was the ultimate sanction: Throughout Bolivian history, peasants periodically rebelled and armed with hoes and pitchforks defied their masters. And throughout Bolivian history, the army shot them down, efficiently and without remorse. This almost feudal system, like its precursor in medieval Europe, was in the last analysis based on the force of arms and sustained by violence. (Kelley and Klein 1981: 77)

The crucible of the Chaco War Bolivia is also a country with a long history of cultural dualism. The organization of the haciendas and free communities was such that from the Conquest (1532) to the 1930s, the rural majority remained mostly in the traditional

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world of the local community and its indigenous culture while largely ignoring the larger society, its politics, its national economy, and even its church, intellectually isolated by a lack of the latter’s language and culture. Most of the elite in turn were monolingual in Spanish, with limited comprehension of the civilization of the highland Indians whom they were exploiting. The persistence of Aymara and Quechua as the languages of the rural majority and the nearly complete lack of formal education of the Indians (less than one year of schooling per adult in 1950; see Table 7.2), are good markers for this state of mutual non-comprehension. As discussed later in the chapter, the Spanish-speaking elite also practiced substantial stigmatization of the Indian before the Revolution. The Chaco War (1932–35) brought highlander isolation to a brutal end, particularly for the Indians forced to fight it as foot soldiers. The experience, however, gave them a new frame of reference for interpreting their role in society. The war became a crucible, a defining experience which opened the eyes of the campesino to possibilities for change and improvement hitherto unsuspected. The war started as a conflict with Paraguay over disputed borders of territory including petroleum reserves at the southeastern limits of Bolivian settlement and at the northernmost reach of the Gran Chaco, a vast, unsettled area of grasslands and scrub. Following initial skirmishes in the Chaco, Bolivia’s army was greatly expanded but remained organized by caste: the whites were officers; cholos or mestizos, non-commissioned officers; and the Indians, the common soldiers. This organization adapted the standard pattern of exploitation to new circumstances. The War “quickly deteriorated into a corrupt, bloody and bottomless defeat and disaster” (Klein 1992: 190). After thousands of deaths on both sides, it ended with Bolivia retaining the hydrocarbon reserves but relinquishing all claim to the other disputed lands to Paraguay. The impact of the war on the campesino is well documented. After the first year, many Indians had to be hunted down and press-ganged into service by army regiments dedicated to this activity. Recruits from the cool highlands were forced to campaign in scrub “alternatively scorched dry and drenched in sudden violent downpours” that left them homesick, bewildered and disoriented (Dunkerley 1984: 27). There were several massive frontline mutinies and some 10,000 deserted (Klein 1992: 194), many to start a colony in northern Argentina.16 The venality and incompetence of Bolivia’s officer class widened the breach between castes. During and after the war several novels emphasized the “waste of lives, the hunger and thirst, the incompetence, treason and cowardice of the officer caste … [and] destruction of troops through starvation” (Klein 1992: 196, 198). The humiliating and traumatic role forced on Bolivia’s campesinos during the conflict illustrates the degree to which four centuries of exploitation had reduced them to stigmatized, subordinate, low-status subjects. Bolivian losses were also devastating in their impact on campesino family life. Some 65,000 were killed, died in captivity, or deserted, that is, “roughly 25 percent of the combatants on the Bolivian side” (Klein 1992: 193–94). Given a male population of about 1 million (out of a total population of 2 million) and

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assuming that half the males were of military age during the conflict, i.e., between the ages of 18 and 45, gives a total population of men of military age in Bolivia of half a million. The losses, therefore, would have been 13 percent of those of military age or about 7 percent of the entire male population! Since most of these losses were highland Indians, their losses were far higher than 7 percent. The war politicized the indigenous campesinos by pulling them out of their isolated communities and giving them “an introduction to the notion of Bolivia as a nation, and talk of politics as well as the ability to use a firearm and to pick up a smattering of Spanish.” The great majority of those who returned had also acquired “a vibrant nationalism” and “an abiding hatred of their senior commanders and political masters” (Dunkerley 1984: 27–28). The vibrant nationalism, however, had little to do with Bolivia and everything to do with Indian identity. This coming of age of the highland Indian has been identified as one of the main contributing factors that made the Chaco War “the single most important cause of the 1952 revolution” (Dunkerley 1984: 26).17 One of the first indications of these changes was the movement that began in the agricultural region of the department [i.e. province] of Cochabamba where returning Indian veterans organized rural unions that about 16 years later were at the forefront of the rural uprising and peasant land seizures that destroyed the hacienda mode of production during the National Revolution of 1952.

Emancipation: revolution in 1952–53 The National Revolution of 1952 destroyed Bolivia’s ancien régime. In contrast to earlier uprisings and coups, it led to radical upheaval in the economic and political roles of the citizenry including a redefined class structure and the reorganization of economic production. The laws and other institutions that governed labor relations and the exploitation of Bolivia’s two main sources of income (mines and agriculture) were revoked and recast: the mining industry (extraction, smelting, exporting, etc.) was nationalized, and Bolivia’s feudal hacienda system destroyed. The enfranchisement of the Indian majority eliminated the Spanish elite’s monopoly on political action. Together these changes redefined economic, social, and political life in Bolivia including the role and status of the campesino. For this study, the most important aspect of this paradigm shift was its potential impact on the socio-economic mobility of the campesinos. The shift was most telling with respect to their political enfranchisement, the agricultural reform, access to education, and what may be described as pride in their identity. Rural revolution In April 1952, after three days of military conflict with a loss of about 600 lives, the left-leaning Movimiento Nationalista Revolucionario (MNR) had made a Revolution and become the ruling party. The MNR’s miners, urban workers,

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and municipal police had defeated Bolivia’s professional army and taken control of the national government. Thereupon, the “victorious rebels dismissed the entire officer corps, jailing or exiling most of them, closed the military college … then distributed the Army’s weapons to civilian militias” (Kelley and Klein 1981: 94). All this had been planned as part of the MNR program. The unexpected then occurred: the peasants too began to form militias and to dispossess the landed elite. What began as rural uprising in the Cochabamba Valley, “a bedrock area of spontaneous peasant activism” (Mitchell 1977: 46), quickly gained momentum and spread throughout the country: With the army ineffectual, arms quickly reaching the countryside, and young political radicals spreading the word, a systematic peasant attack on the entire latifundia system had developed … the period from late 1952 until early 1953 saw destruction of work records in the rural areas, the killing and/or expulsion of overseers and landowners and the forcible seizure of land. Meanwhile the peasants … began to organize … sindicatos … to receive arms and to create formal militia organizations. Although the countryside had been relatively indifferent and little affected by the great conflicts of April, 1952, it was the scene of tremendous violence and destruction by the end of that year. (Klein 1992: 234) In the heavily populated area bordering Lake Titicaca, peasants, led and encouraged by sindicatos [unions] organized by former peasants who had moved to La Paz, stopped work on landlords’ parcels well before the end of 1952. Elsewhere they burned manor houses and in some cases hacked their owners to death, although most landlords resident in the countryside fled to the safety of the cities. By mid-1953, throughout the highlands, land was no longer held by the Spanish-speaking oligarchy. Rather, Aymara and Quechua Indians controlled the countryside for the first time in more than four centuries. Universal suffrage Universal suffrage became law in July 1952, two months after the April Revolution. Prior to the Revolution, in theory males could vote, although over 90 percent of adult males were routinely disenfranchised because they failed to meet the constitutional requirements: literacy and a minimum monetary income (McEwan 1975: 21). Dunkerley notes that by suppressing the traditional qualification of being male and literate for membership of the formal political nation – a qualification which meant that it won the 1951 election with the support of 2.6 percent of the population – the MNR increased the electorate in one move from around two hundred thousand to over a million; in effect, it had enfranchised the campesinado. … Enfranchisement was an obligatory move, but its full social

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With the change, voting became compulsory. But, as chronicled below, it was many decades before the “campesinado” (peasantry) came near to voting as a concentrated block with a platform of shared interests. Agricultural reform Rather than violent suppression and bloody retribution, the customary response to Indian uprisings from the Conquest to the Revolution, the new populist government acquiesced in rural rebellion and supported the de facto “agricultural reform’ that it engendered. As rural unions seized haciendas, expropriating the expropriators, a broad-based government commission discussed, negotiated, and then drafted the 177 paragraphs that became the Law of Agrarian Reform. The law was signed with great pomp and ceremony on 2 August 1953 in the village of Ucureña in Cochabamba, scene of the Revolution’s largest and most protracted peasant uprisings, in the presence of about 100,000 campesinos (Dunkerley 1984: 72).18 The reform decree is comprehensive. Smallholdings, Indian community property, cooperatives, and modern, capital-intensive agricultural enterprises were exempted from expropriation.19 Latifundia, however, are to be abolished (paragraph 30 of the law).20 Nevertheless, due process is foreseen in the form of a hearing by an agricultural tribunal to, inter alia, fix the terms of compensation for expropriation by the campesino beneficiaries. Most campesinos, however, took control of the haciendas without government hearing. Initially some paid compensation but this soon stopped, so that most lands were confiscated (Klein 1992: 235). One constant of the reform was the universal practice of titling the hacienda usufruct parcels to the families that worked them. Such parcels constituted the majority of the land that was at any time actually tilled prior to 1953. In general, the initial primary benefit from the reform for the campesino was not so much increase in land at his disposal as the removal of feudal labor requirements that left campesino families with little time and energy for their usufruct and other plots. Between 1953 and 1980, the government gave title to 31 million hectares granted to 434,000 landless peasant families. The process went slowly in part because of the need for land surveys and the persistence of litigation (ibid.: 256). What proportion of the population directly benefited from the redistribution of land? Campesino family size during this period probably averaged close to 4.5 persons. More than 434,000 new titles were distributed, so that presumably about 2 million campesinos directly benefited. The entire population of Bolivia in 1950 was 2.7 million. By 1962, it was approximately 3.8 million

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people. If the agricultural population were 80 percent of the total in 1965, it would have been a total of 3 million. Clearly, the reform directly benefited more than half the entire agricultural population. Worldwide, few land reforms have had such broad scope. In the Western hemisphere, only the Mexican land reform of 1916 directly benefited a larger proportion of farm families (Kelley and Klein 1981: 97).21 The Agrarian Reform Law also encouraged migration of highland campesinos into the unsettled lands of the Santa Cruz region and other lowland areas by making explicit their right to receive a homestead parcel of public land. Much migration to the Santa Cruz region dates from the Revolution.22 In addition to land reform, the law radically reoriented rural labor relations. Pre-1952 debts of campesinos to their patrones (landlords) were voided and hereditary debt bondage, which had been widespread, outlawed. (It survived well into the 1990s, however, among the Guarani and other lowland indigenous peoples employed on large ranches and estates in the eastern lowlands (Kohl and Farthing 2006: 156).) In addition, pongueaje (services provided to the patrón’s household in addition to regular fieldwork) was prohibited. The practice of flogging refractory workers (McEwan 1975: 370) was outlawed. Compensation for agricultural work was henceforth expected to be monetary wages, or via sharecropping. The land reform facilitated campesino access to and participation in product markets. Pre-Revolution, traditional feudal work obligations left peasants with little time, energy, or opportunity to escape the hacienda equivalent of the North American “company store” in selling their surplus in exchange for staples such as kerosene, cooking oil, etc. Frequently these outlets were monopolistic and rigged against the peasant. After the Revolution, peasants bought and sold as they desired. Some became merchants and/or truckers. Education The peasantry, and above all the hacienda peasantry, now faced a new set of opportunities. After four centuries, they were free to come and go as they wished and to choose among occupations. But most campesinos neither spoke Spanish, nor were they literate in their native tongue. (In 1950, 80 percent of Bolivia’s population were native speakers of Quechua or Aymara and more than half the population could not speak Spanish. See Table 7.2.) Before the Revolution, few Indians had had an opportunity to attend school. Neither the state nor the haciendas provided schools for Indians. In the free agricultural communities, some children received a few years of schooling, but on average, educational achievement was less than a year for the adult male campesino population in 1952.23 Campesino women had even less access to education. Campesino occupational skills were largely limited to local farming techniques. The majority were uncertain of “finding their way” outside of their village communities. Perforce, the generation of the revolution remained largely in their traditional setting with respect to occupation and way of life.

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Following the Revolution, education became an urgent concern of both the long-existing traditional communities and the indigenous communities replacing the haciendas. Typically, rural communities were able and willing to build schools. But paying teachers was beyond their means. After title to land, the most common demand peasants made on the revolutionary government was for teachers (Kelley and Klein 1981: 114). The MNR government responded by making elementary education compulsory. The newly established Ministry of Campesino Affairs (Ministerio de Asuntos Campesinos) was made responsible for provision of education throughout the countryside. By 1965 there were 7,000 teachers in rural zones (McEwan 1975: 24), a number high enough to probably reach most campesino children aged six to 11.24 By 2000, rural indigenous children were achieving six years of education on average, compared with less than a single year in 1950 (Table 7.2). Pride in identity Fifteen years after the Revolution, a survey of middle-aged campesinos was carried out to determine what they considered had been the benefits of the Revolution. Land reform and educational opportunity were very highly valued. But in the eyes of the campesinos the change of greatest benefit was that the Revolution had made them free, that it “made us men” (Kelley and Klein 1981: 114ff) The respondents considered the rise in legal status, the change in identity and the associated increase in self-confidence and self-esteem more valuable than the other three other main improvements: land reform, education, and enfranchisement. This is an important finding because of its implications for campesino mobility through the putative impact of such psychological changes on individual cultural endowments.

The campesino as a SRELIM? As stated in the chapter introduction, I initially classified Bolivia’s Quechua and Aymara as a SRELIM but later reclassified them for two reasons: first, rather than traumatic loss of culture and low self-esteem, analysis showed the contrary; second, an ethno-racial minority that acquires national political power by winning a national election of president and parliament does not fit the SRELIM profile, as spelled out in Chapter 2. In the following paragraphs, I trace basic highlander historical development with respect to status and stigmatization. This sets the stage for the main topic of the section: to what degree are Bolivia’s highland peoples “deculturized”? Race, caste and status Following the conquest, Spain developed a two-caste society with the Indian at the bottom and the white European, the blanco, at the top. Caste and

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culture were then congruent with race: language, religion, occupation, clothing, housing, lifestyle (cuisine, leisure pursuits, social relations, norms and values), etc., all such distinctive manifestations of culture “belonged” either to Indian or European, to the low-status or the high-status caste, but rarely to both. Initially, genetic inheritance as reflected in phenotype was also necessarily fully congruent with race and caste. Spanish institutions, (legal, religious, etc.) reinforced these racially identified cultural divides and facilitated Spanish exploitation of the Indians. Soon, however, there were many mestizos who formed an intermediate, third group. These children of Indian women and Spanish men, the mestizo offspring of so-called “gente decente” (respectable society), were frequently, even usually, recognized and supported by their upper-caste fathers.25 If male, they were frequently given primary education and “became government officials, clerks, and hacienda administrators … . They dressed and spoke like decentes and emulated their style of living … some learned to speak Aymara, which was useful in their jobs … they took easily to marriage with Indians … ” (McEwan 1975: 169). Notwithstanding the ideology of genetic congruence of race and caste, by the nineteenth century, many individuals had emerged out of the Indian population as educated Spanish-speakers in the cities who had taken on the behavior and finally the social identity of the blanco elite. Such individuals were frequently classified as mestizo, and no doubt genetically usually were indeed mestizos. But by the nineteenth century, there were also many full-blooded, or nearly full-blooded, Indians who had “passed” into European status, a process that typically involved several generations. Hence, with the passage of time, as elsewhere in Latin America, the presumptive genetic congruence of caste with race became increasingly mythological, particularly with respect to the upper class. By the nineteenth century the “term ‘white’ was … prone to manipulation and only infrequently corresponded to Caucasian stock rather than membership in the ruling class and aspirations to an association with European heritage” (Dunkerley 1984: 23). The definition of race and classification of individuals by race came to be socially constructed, permitting the continuation of the myth of full congruence of class and race. Klein (1992: x–xi) expresses this evolution well: But the elite, which was initially made up of European conquerors has slowly miscegenated, as in all such multi-racial societies, and over the centuries there has emerged a new biological grouping of mixed background. Thus Bolivia … has come to define race as a social rather than a genetic or even phenotypic term. The Spanish-speaking upper classes, wearing Western dress, and consuming non-indigenous foods are whites … . The urban lower classes, the lower middle class and the rural freehold farmers, who wear European dress and are usually bilingual … are mestizos, or as they are called in Bolivia, cholos. The peasants are the Indians, no matter what their background, and they have served as the workers, miners, farmers and soldiers of the society. They have been denied access

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Bolivia’s highland Indians to power except as they abandoned their traditional norms and languages and integrated into the national society as cholos or whites. Thus the more marginal, ambitious, or able of these peasants have constantly fed the white and cholo classes.

Heath, writing two decades before Klein, supplies a good picture of the cholos, but also indicates their racial ambiguity: A term signifying an ethnic group or social race, but not consistent in its referents. … a Cholo is a highland Indian “on the make” … striving to better his social and economic position … Cholos usually use an Indian language and Spanish with equal fluency; the men wear Western style clothing, and the women wear Indian syles. … of exceptionally rich materials. Although they retain many Indian beliefs and practices, cholos are usually involved in commerce … and often live in cities or towns. The aggressive “Cholita” market vendor is subject to frequent stereotypic caricature, emphasizing her gold teeth, lavish jewelry, massive breasts … and domineering character. During the colonial period the term appears to have been used as a more general synonym for “mestizo.” (Heath 1972: 64–65) Cholo has always meant an individual of Indian culture “going Spanish.” Frequently, “mestizo” has been used in the same way, independently of whether the person so described was of mixed race or not. It is revealing that the terms mestizo and blanco were used as census categories up to and including the census of 1900, which found that 13 percent of the population was white (Klein 1992: 166). Nevertheless, by the twentieth century if not sooner, all of the apparently racial terms in common usage in Bolivia connoted social status rather than racial makeup. The National Revolution brought in train a social revolution which accelerated the dissolution of the caste system and its ambiguously defined mestizos or cholos. As implied above, the Revolution destroyed the legitimacy of ranking by races (genetic or social) and their supporting institutions, above all the hacienda system. No longer tied to the land, many campesinos moved to town and took on urban pursuits (McEwan 1975: 170ff, 402). While some campesinos increased their status and incomes after 1952, many landlords were declassed and some impoverished. As discussed in the next section, since the Revolution, the educational attainment and occupational status of Bolivia’s indigenous highlanders has increased dramatically. In 1950, three-quarters of the population were rural; by the year 2000 this had dropped to 36 percent (Table 7.2). Today, many of those who identify themselves as either Aymara or Quechua Indians are urban residents who speak only Spanish and may have university education.26 Social mobility in Bolivia has increased very substantially since 1952.

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Stigmatization Chapter 2 postulates that dominant ethno-racial groups universally develop myths portraying the SRELIM that they exploit as mentally inferior and morally depraved.27 Because of these supposed SRELIM shortcomings, institutions of exploitation are frequently justified by dominant groups as necessary for the guidance and discipline of the subaltern group. Prior to the National Revolution among Bolivia’s ruling elite, the conventional wisdom concerning genetic endowment and character of the Indian was similar. Dunkerley (1984: 24) provides an illustration: In 1921, comunarios [peasants] … killed a number of local dignatories and their corregidor [police officer] after he had left a prisoner to die of starvation in the lock-up whilst away on a ten-day visit to La Paz. The army replied by killing several hundred campesinos, burning houses and destroying crops before seventy “ringleaders” were sent to jail in the capital. The incumbent president the mestizo Bautista Saavedra, was not expected to demonstrate any lenience since, when acting as a defense lawyer for Willka [leader of a peasant revolt] twenty years earlier, he had referred to “blood-thirsty orangutans,” [pongos] “the profound perversion of Aymara moral sensibilities,” and a “morally atrophied race, degenerating into dehumanization … .”28 Dunkerley further describes the hacendado class as “holding their charges … in paternal contempt as some species of subhuman.” (ibid.: 22). In the 1930s “local landowners opposed the purchase of rundown convent lands in Cochabamba by a peasant cooperative because the native laborers were ‘lazy, liars, deceitful and nobody can trust them’” (ibid.: 22). Other writers emphasized the perception of the Indian as a childish brute requiring that the landlord take control of every aspect of life, including punishment by whipping (Kelley and Klein 1981: 77). The anthropologist William McEwan led a study of four Bolivian towns and two communities in the mid-1960s that inter alia documented the perceptions of campesinos then current among the former blanco gentry. In the town of Coroico, they considered that “cholos are sneaky, untrustworthy, scheming and aggressive” and “campesinos are dirty, lazy, ignorant, animal-like.” He notes that many of the former elite stay home to avoid having to mix with those of lower social status. The intensity of this avoidance is illustrated by the … mother who refuses to send her child even to the parochial school, because the school admits campesinos and “she will never be educated there, with all those dumb, stupid Indians.” (McEwan 1975: 176) Beliefs and attitudes among the elite in the other towns were similar and contributed to the development of a

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Bolivia’s highland Indians social system that until the eve of the revolution prohibited the entry of indios into certain central streets and plazas of La Paz and freely printed in its newspapers photographs of captured peasant ‘criminals’ stripped of their lower clothing and placed in irons. (Dunkerley 1984: 22)

These reports (among many) indicate that many of Bolivia’s blancos stigmatized the Indians because they believed that they lacked intelligence, were morally defective, prey to bad habits, and not capable of managing their own affairs. Bolivia’s highland Indians suffered four centuries of extreme exploitation, including low rank and status, accompanied by an equally long history of such stigmatization. As discussed in Chapter 3, the traumatic impact of such psychological injury on SRELIM worldwide has led to reaction in the form of identities of reduced self-confidence and self-esteem, oppositional cultures, values, beliefs, habits, and other behaviors that reduce the capacity of SRELIM members to do well in school and in the labor force. Deculturalization? Nevertheless, examination of the historical record suggests that traumatic victimization, stigmatization, and ensuing exploitation, did not eradicate traditional culture in Bolivia. On the eve of the National Revolution, traditional Indian culture, including language, homeland, traditional occupational structure, religion, moral code and institutions (underpinned by norms and mores) for distributing property, awarding prestige, and adjudicating disputes, all of these had survived. Indeed a way of life and pride in that way of life have persisted to the present. There has been substantial evolution in highlander culture in the last half millennium because of diffusion from other cultures (religious, economic, technological, etc), but the highland culture of Bolivia has remained intact, in contrast to those of Australia’s aborigines, or the native peoples of North America, or the many cultures that completely disappeared following traumatic victimization. Deculturalization appears to play a smaller role in the evolution of Bolivia’s Andean peoples than in SRELIM groups. What is the evidence for these assertions? As discussed earlier, after the Conquest in the sixteenth century, the Spanish Crown taxed the indigenous local communities (ayllus) in two ways: labor drafts and monetary payment. Hence the autonomous local communities furnished the workers in the Crown’s mining industry; they furnished labor as domestics, herdsmen, etc. for the Spanish elite, including the Spanish church; they paid taxes levied on community members in kind and in specie over several centuries. This took place “without upsetting the type of structure that had existed in Inca times. The tribute was directed on a provincial and cantonal level rather than a community level … .” This implies that “there may have been less direct intervention by the state in community-level affairs after [rather] than before

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the Conquest” (Carter 1964: 34). In other words, notwithstanding a heavy tax burden plus heavy and frequent demands for manpower, much of the Aymara/ Quechua population, which lived from subsistence agriculture in independent communities, was left to its own affairs much of the time. This situation persisted through most of the twentieth century. The free community acted as a mini-estado (mini-state) that had its own territory, citizens, legal norms, internal stratification, authorities, internal economic organization, and its own relationship with other communities (Carter and Albó 1988: 490). The conclusion also holds, albeit to lesser degree, with respect to the centuries of hacienda production. By the late nineteenth century, Spanish-speaking hacendados (estate-owners) had appropriated most of the best arable land and a very substantial share of the output produced by the indigenous population. They succeeded in this because in controlling the access of labor to land, the hacendados also assured their own access to the labor that they used to generate income on the arable lands in their control. But they also found it convenient to leave a substantial share of the arable land to their Indian peasants in usufruct tenure and to leave the organization of subsistence farming and many rural institutions intact.29 By the 1920s the majority of the indigenous highland population was on haciendas. As indicated above, the labor demands put upon these campesinos were onerous. Husband, wife, and other family members were primarily employed on behalf of the landlord: planting, cultivating, harvesting, threshing grain, dehydrating potatoes, shearing sheep, etc. All of this work was done by hand. Additional tasks also ate heavily into their time: estate repairs and maintenance, housework for the patrón. Notwithstanding these demands, traditional folkways persisted throughout the period of landlord dominance. Most of the work done for the landlord was similar to the work campesinos did for themselves. Moreover, apparently the pre-Colombian layout of many villages, livestock compounds, and grazing land for sheep, cattle, donkeys, mules, and llamas persisted in many haciendas. Even the traditional Inca patterns of family usufruct rights to an array of small and large parcels was left largely intact, with alterations as needed mostly in the hands of the traditional Indian authorities (as vetted by the mestizo overseer). These institutions remained even though landlords had legal title to the entire acreage of the haciendas. Rather than deal with peasants directly, the landlord’s mestizo production manager dealt with the hacienda headmen (jilacatas), that he had approved, from those who the peasants chose from their own ranks. Not all haciendas were traditionally organized, however. In many, the mestizo administrator fulfilled the role of headman with a substantially larger degree of control and varying degrees of departure from traditional modes of operation. Traditional fiestas (notably harvest fiestas) and ceremonies also persisted as institutions with a fundamental role in grooming and choosing headmen of local communities and, to a lesser degree, of haciendas. Within each community and many haciendas, male householders were expected and encouraged to

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aspire to community offices awarded to those who sponsored an annual series of five traditional fiestas. The fiestas progressed successively in degree of prestige awarded their sponsors and in the lavishness as measured by costs in food, alcoholic beverages, musicians, and priest-led church rituals. Major festivals were usually three-day celebrations that typically cost more than a year’s income of a peasant family, although the costumes, coca, food, much of the alcohol (chicha), and some of the music and its instruments are traditional highland products. Carter (1964: 40) provides a good description of the requirements for a successful major fiesta: The preste grande (sponsor of a major fiesta) … had to arrange for the priest’s coming, provide him with transportation, feed him well, and present him with such gifts as … fresh killed mutton. The preste grande had to give food and drink to all those who “accompanied” him – and he wanted a great deal of company, for his prestige depended upon it. Prestige depended likewise on the number of people he could cause to become inebriated. If a considerable percentage of his guests could not make it home at night, but had to stay with him, his reputation soared. For these people he had to provide bedding … from his private store. In addition he had to provide blasting power in sufficient quantity to set off a charge every time a new guest arrived. (The amount could reach as much as two or three hundred pounds.) And he had to be open to receive guests for at least three days after the beginning of the fiesta. Typically, it was middle-aged men who completed the sponsorship of the entire fiesta series that brought with it the office of headman or chief (jilakata) and the administrative powers and responsibilities which it entailed. In the case of a hacienda community, these included ensuring the performance of the many tasks that the hacienda required, and responding to the administrator’s directives. In earlier centuries it also included responsibility for collection of the tribute. The most telling badge of office of the headman was a whip conspicuously wrapped around his chest over outer clothing. Usually he held the position for a year until the repetition of the culmination fiesta and his replacement by a new headman. Anthropologists have studied such “fiesta cargo systems” in other cultures and stressed their socially functional attributes in that only the wealthiest male householders are able to cover outlays for the most prestigious functions. Hence the institution is seen as leveling incomes and increasing community cohesion.30 Customary work arrangements and other agricultural institutions that applied to the usufruct lands also persisted according to rules that came down from before the Conquest: labor exchanges among kin, rules for employment of child labor, inheritance mechanisms, boundary adjustments among peasant parcels, mechanisms to ensure food production for orphans and widows, etc. All of these were dealt with according to traditional norms that applied on both the haciendas and the surviving independent communities (ibid.: passim).

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Spanish efforts over the centuries to substitute Catholicism for Indian beliefs led to a syncretic outcome in which pre-Inca rituals and beliefs fused with Roman Catholicism (as elsewhere in Latin America). According to Carter, Catholic theology never overwhelmed the Indians: “the most important super national beings are place spirits; the Christian God and saints occupy only a secondary status” (ibid.: 86). In 1981, a joke so widely diffused that it came to the ears of foreign researchers illustrates the hold of the Inca catechism on the contemporary campesino, as well as campesino pride in their folk identity. At the time government leaders were profiting from both the cocaine trade and an arrangement for illegal mining of semiprecious stones. Citizen ridicule of this took the form of wordplay on three commandments from the Inca catechism: ama kella, ama llulla, ama sua (be not lazy; do not lie; do not steal). In the joke, these mutate into the three “Spanish commandments” of ama coca, ama tista, ama Iami (love coca, love amethyst and love Miami) (Dunkerley 1984: 332). The Inca version of these three basic commandments (along with several others) have now been carried over into Bolivia’s new constitution in 2008 (Title 1, Article 8) as precepts for good behavior of the entire citizenry. More pride in identity Chapter 3 considered the loss of pride in identity attendant on a traumatic history of stigmatization and humiliation as a factor contributing to the SRELIM condition. The impact of the National Revolution on the highlander was in the opposite direction. The radical improvement in social and political status and the role of the campesino in the Revolution bolstered pride in self-identity and increased self-confidence and self-esteem. Before the Revolution, the psychological costs of integration into nonindigenous society were high: the Indian had to forsake the traditional community and redefine her identity. Language, rituals, dress, possibly friends and family, an entire and valued way of life, had to be dropped to take on the role of the mestizo or cholo, held in low esteem by both sides because the mestizo had a foot in both camps but was loyal to neither. The Indian may not have wanted to behave like a cholo, but had to play the part. The Revolution reduced these costs of integration in making it feasible to maintain traditional campesino identity while claiming the rights and privileges of full citizenship. In the language of the campesinos in the survey discussed earlier, the Revolution “made us free” and “made us men.” Second, the Revolution acted to boost campesino identity in that the eradication of the landlords was initiated and carried out by the campesinos themselves, a success story that increased their pride, self-confidence and self-esteem. Support for these assertions of reduced costs of integration and increased pride in identity is implicit in data marshaled in post-Revolution surveys. Before the Revolution, class norms in Bolivia required that all indigenous, not just the hacienda peones, be respectful, deferential, and obedient to landlords, and other gente decente. Post-Revolution interviews of the former landowners

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registered with high frequency the complaint that the formerly docile Indians have become “uppity” and lacking in deference to the former patrons (Kelley and Klein 1981: 76; McEwan 1975: passim). Strong support for the thesis of pride in identity is also implicit in Bolivia’s recent data on self-identification of ethnicity. Publicly proclaimed membership in an ethnic group (defined in racial, caste, or ethnic terms) can be, in part at least, a matter of individual decision (Chiswick 1998; UNDP 2004:16–17). In the case of ethnically mixed parentage or of offspring of recent immigrants, individuals are given some degree of choice as to which identities they bring forward. In contrast, membership in SRELIM is defined as involuntary, and socially or even legally imposed (Ogbu and Gibson 1991). Such cases frequently give rise to the phenomenon of “passing”: the practice of minority members entering into mainstream society by hiding the imposed ethnicity and claiming that of the larger society.31 Such passing is well documented, for examples, with respect to Japan’s Burakumin, India’s Dalits, and US blacks.32 In the Bolivian case, recent data suggest that rather than passing out of the SRELIM classification, many are “passing back in” as Indians. In the Bolivian census of 2001, 71 percent of the population self-identified themselves as indigenous, not withstanding the fact that about 60 percent of the total population were then monolingual Spanish-speakers (see Table 7.2). Since only about 45 percent of the population spoke Aymara or Quechua, about 25 percent of the population spoke Spanish as their sole and native tongue while simultaneously identifying themselves as highland indigenous. Using the traditional census definition of native tongue as a necessary and sufficient marker for ethnicity33 would have identified an indigenous population that was about half of the total (including the lowland indigenous; e.g., Guarani, etc.). A conclusion forced by this reasoning is that for purposes of ethnic identification apparently many Bolivians are not interested in passing into what was historically the highest-status group, but rather the contrary. This outcome is consistent with substantial pride in being of indigenous descent. Actions speak louder than words. Contemporary Aymara highlanders, led by an indigenist separatist leader, Filipe Quispe, attempted an insurrection in the 1980s calling for a separate indigenous nation and the expulsion of the non-indigenous elites who stole the land and impoverished its people. The ayllus have also assumed a modern political role in supporting actions that have culminated in Bolivia’s new indigenous government. As discussed later in the chapter, the highlanders from the allyus have proven particularly adept at mounting roadblocks and organizing community leaders to stimulate marches and demonstrations in La Paz (Kohl and Farthing 2006: 158–59). Such behaviors are less common among SRELIM than other ethnic groups. The cultural endowment The above material suggests that even before the agricultural reform of 1953, the indigenous majority of Bolivia was living in a culture that was in many

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ways satisfactory. The tenacity of the culture to the present suggests that on the dimensions of self-esteem and identity, many basic social and psychological needs were being met. Study of highland communities in the mid-twentieth century implies that they had strong and widely accepted values and norms such as the value of work, diligence, reliability, self discipline, social cohesion, and community support. The impact of the National Revolution in 1952 on legal status and self-perception reinforced the pride in identity of the indigenous population. It is possible that the cultural endowment of the Aymaras has been more conducive to movement from an ancient way of life to a modern industrial economy than is the case with respect to many other indigenous peoples. This speculation is consistent with the conclusions of Xavier Albó, a prominent anthropologist of the Aymara: The world of the Aymara is one of a people … that have best maintained their vitality. Whatever the processes of destructuralization, and deculturalization … which they have suffered, the people and their culture remain vibrant … the Aymara are a people with no taste for death (sin ganas de morir) … a people that struggles to find its own identity, its own mode of cultural expression, its own historical depth … a people that bears witness to the ingenuity with which humanity learned to live with nature in the Andes. (Albó 1988: 22, 34, author’s translation) Conclusion Bolivia’s indigenous highlanders have many of the attributes of a SRELIM. They have a history of traumatic victimization, were long stigmatized, ranked, and of lowest status. They may have high scores for certain kinds of social deviance. But they are not deculturalized; they have not lost their languages, homeland, nor their ancestral way of life. Other aspects of their culture and its values are still intact. They are not trying to flee their historical identity. Indeed, they won the elections in 2005 with a majority vote. Today they are neither powerless, ranked, nor an involuntary minority. I do not classify them as a SRELIM.

Progress to socio-economic parity This section marshals data to assess the overall progress to socio-economic parity of Bolivia’s Aymara and Quechua people with other Bolivians since the National Revolution. Knowledge of Spanish is a necessary condition for achieving economic parity.34 Table 7.2 shows that in 1950, 55 percent of the population of Bolivia had little knowledge of Spanish. At the turn of the century, less than 10 percent had little Spanish. At present, fluency in Spanish is very close to universal among adults under the age of 30 and virtually all children now receive

Population: Millions Rural Urban Language spoken: Monolingual: Spanish 10–20% Aymara Quechua Bilingual: Identity by language 10–20% by self-declaration Years of education 4.4 Rural Urban % cohort receiving any university training Literacy Aged 9–11, employed and not attending school Incidence of Poverty Rural Urban Relative income per full-time worker Landless farm families: Smallholder land titles registered by 2000: 25–35%

2002

0.8

3.7

80–90% (includes bilingual)

22% 33%

259,000

< 2% 31% ?

2.2

2.7 74% 26%

Total

31% 71% 88% 56% 68

8%

49% 71% 5.9

Indigenous

Bilingual

Spanish

Indigenous

2000–02

1950

Table 7.2 Progress to parity of the Highland indigenous population, 1950 and 2001–02

8% 50% 76% 45% 150 ?

19%

9.6

Other

434,000

62% 85% 50% 100

90+%

7.5 3.7 9.4

55–68% 3%– 5%– 25–35%

8.3 36% 64%

Total

(continued on next page)

Poverty and Income: INE, Unidad de Análisis de Políticas Sociales y Económicas interpreting data from the National Census of Population Census 2001; income as presented in Landa and Jimenez 2004: Table 10. Land Titles: Klein 1992: 256.

Data for 2000–02: Population: National Census of Population and Housing 2001. Language Spoken: Upper and lower bounds are used in the table. Bolivia’s Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) published tablular data online stating that in 2000 the mothers of 62.59 percent of the entire population spoke Spanish as their native tongue (Cuadro 6.04 Bolivia: Distribución de la Población por Condición de Pobreza é Indicadores de Pobreza según Área Geográfica é Idioma Materno 2000; Source of the table not further indicated online). This is consistent with a second table of INE for 2000 which identifies 68.38% of the population (excluding children too young to speak) as having spoken Spanish when interviewed, while 31% spoke either Quechua or Aymara. Further, in 2000, there was apparently a substantial group that spoke Spanish as a native tongue but that also spoke an indigenous language, primarily Aymara or Quechua. McEwan and Jimenez (2001: 22) estimated the distribution of language skills during 1997 as indicated in Table 7.3 below. The basic data source for their estimates was the Encuesta Nacional de Empleo, 1997. Education: INE for years of school completed, by total, rural, and urban. Incidence of Employment for Children Aged 9–11: INE the Encuesta de Mejoramiento de las Condiciones de Vida, 2002 (MECOVI-02) survey. See also Landa and Jimenez (2004) for a full discussion (page 16ff).

Data for 1950: Population: Census of 1950, as reported online by INE in 2004. (Certain INE data published before 2004 reported a ten percent higher total population.) Language Spoken: Census of 1950 Education: Census of 1950. See also Kelley and Klein (1981: 131 and 135) Land Titles: INE Census of 1950. See also Klein (1992: 256) Language Spoken: National Census of Population 1950. See also Dunkerley 1984

Sources: The data in the table are derived from online publication of Bolivia’s National Institute of Statistics (INE, Instituto Nacional de Estadística), which in turn are based on sample surveys and censuses. See also statistical analysis based on INE data for 2000–02 in Landa and Jimenez (2004).

Definitions: Ethnicity: For 1950, membership in an ethnic group is defined exclusively in terms of native tongue. Further, it was assumed that all bilingual speakers had Spanish as the second language. Hence indigenous identity for the 1950 data is defined as the sum of those who spoke only an indigenous language and those who were bilingual. Using this definition for 1950 data, at least 80 percent of the population are indigenous. Two boundary definitions are used for the 2000 data. The low limit to the indigenous population (exclusively Quechua or Aymara groups) occurs when indigenous ethnicity is defined to include all and only individuals who speak an indigenous language, including those who speak Spanish as their native tongue. In this definition, all individuals who do not speak an indigenous language are considered non-indigenous independently of the ethnicity of their parents, or the individual’s ethnic self-identification. By this definition, roughly half of the population in 2002 was indigenous. The second definition used in Table 7.2 is that of self-declaration, as recorded during the Census of 2001. Apparently many individuals identified themselves as indigenous although they were urban dwellers, middle-class, and could not speak the language of their ethnic group. Note that these definitions differ from those earlier conceptualizations wherein the cholo/mestizo population was defined separately from indigenous. For example, Kelley and Klein (1981) partitioned the population into the three “social races” of “Spanish, Cholo, and Indians” in their econometric study of status mobility. They found this convenient because many of those who were classified as Spanish socially (that is spoke Spanish as their native tongue) were phenotypically clearly of mestizo or even Indian origins.

Table 7.2 continued Parameters: In part, because different surveys and other data sources differ somewhat in the estimates of identical parameters, the table fixes upper and lower bounds for languages and literacy. Plus and minus signs following an estimated parameter indicate that the estimate is a lower or upper bound respectively. Some of the parameters are described by intervals that encompass the parameter between upper and lower bounds.

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substantial education in speaking and writing Spanish. In the MECOVI35 survey of 2002, 98.5 percent of the indigenous cohort aged 15–19 was literate in Spanish (Landa and Jimenez 2004: 22). Table 7.2 also provides data on the expansion of general education. In 1950, mean educational attainment of the monolingual indigenous population (who spoke only Quechua or Aymara) was less than a year of schooling, while the Spanish-speaking population averaged more than four years. At the year 2000, indigenous attainment was about six years, although the nonindigenous population then averaged nearly ten years of schooling. Although a sizeable number of indigenous attended university in 2000, the proportion was still about half that of the non-indigenous population. Further, a sizeable proportion of indigenous children, particularly rural residents, do not complete elementary school. INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística) data for 2002 show 31 percent of the indigenous age group 9–11 employed and not in school, compared to 8 percent for the corresponding non-indigenous population. So, notwithstanding much progress in the last half century, the educational gap between indigenous and non-indigenous remains large in part because indigenous children are still put to work very early in life. Standardizing the data for the fact that the indigenous population has a higher proportion of aged and rural residents than the non-indigenous population reduces much, but by no means all, of the educational gap (Landa and Jimenez 2004). In 2001, the incidence of poverty (as officially defined) was also substantially higher for the highland indigenous population (71 percent) than the non-indigenous (50 percent). After adjusting for age and residence, Landa and Jimenez found that the probability of poverty was still 13 percent higher for indigenous than for the non-indigenous (see ibid.: Table 6). Incomes are consistent with these outcomes. Table 7.2 shows that mean relative income of the indigenous population in 2001 was still less than half that of the nonindigenous. As also indicated in Table 7.2, much of the gap is explained by the predominance of the indigenous in the rural areas. Table 7.2 provides data on the incidence of poverty of urban and rural citizens. Nevertheless, within both rural and urban sectors, the incidence of poverty of the indigenous is far higher than poverty in the non-indigenous population. In the half century since the Revolution, therefore, the education and material prosperity of the indigenous population have increased substantially and reduced the gap between indigenous and other Bolivians. There has also been substantial progress as measured by the usual indicators: life expectancy, educational attainment, occupational profile, and income. Moreover, through the 1952 Revolution and agricultural reform, the Quechua and Aymara populations took title to the land that they had been farming at that time. Many also emigrated to new lowland farming areas after the 1952 Revolution. The fact that the population has tripled in the half century following the Revolution, while life expectancy has increased by many years, suggests that the malnutrition and ill-health characteristics of indigenous Bolivia before the Revolution have greatly diminished. Moreover, the stigma of being of indigenous

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Table 7.3 Bolivia, languages spoken, age 6 and older, 1997 (percentages of speakers)

Spanish Quechua Aymara Totals

(1) Spanish

(2) Quechua

(3) Aymara

(4) (5) Monolingual Bilingual

54 20 15 90

20 7

15

54 7 3 64

27

3 18

36 20 15 36

(4+5) Total 90 27 18 100

Source: derived from McEwan and Jiménez, 2001, 22. Notes: Cells in bold print record monolingual speakers. Bilingual is defined as fluency in Spanish and either Quechua or Aymara. The table excludes trilinguality as well as bilinguality in the two indigenous languages. The incidence of both of these is low.

origins has apparently disappeared. With the electoral victory of the indigenous majority in December 2005, this is even more the case. Many people now describe themselves as highland Indians although they speak neither Quechua nor Aymara. Nevertheless, the highlanders are still far from parity with the non-indigenous population.36 Table 7.2 shows this for level of education, incidence of poverty, and average incomes.

Politics to promote socio-economic mobility The highlanders’ impressive social and economic gains have underpinned a fundamental increase in indigenous political empowerment. As indicated in this section, the highlanders won the national election in 2005 and have undertaken a radical program that aims, among other goals, to reduce the remaining socioeconomic gaps between highlanders and the former dominant groups. Early post-Revolution political action Following the National Revolution in 1952, newly enfranchised campesino voters usually acted as indigenous wings of the mainline parties, above all the party of the Revolution, the MNR. Organizations also arose that extolled Indian identity; including a so-called Partido Indio founded in 1962. These organizations ebbed long before they became major political forces (Dunkerley 1984: 212–15). Moreover, before the 1970s, the prevailing Marxist ideology and strategies for political action among Bolivians emphasized class differences, rather than indigenous rights and progress. In the words of Xavier Albó (1988) the Revolution re-baptized the Indian as a campesino or peasant. Hence, even indigenous leaders saw the mainsprings for action in terms of action by workers, peasants, and unions, rather than by ethnic/racial identity. During the 1950s, the MNR’s newly created Ministry of Peasant Affairs (Ministerio de Asuntos Campesinos) sent teams into the countryside to enroll the former tenants or villagers in unions (sindicatos) for each hacienda and

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free community. By the late 1960s, there were about 7,500 such sindicatos. Together they formed the National Federation of Rural Workers of Bolivia (CNTCB, Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia). The sindicatos took on local-government functions following the eradication of the hacienda system. In many cases a new patrón/peón relationship developed between union leaders and campesinos while the unions became the chief mode of campesino interaction with the MNR government. However, according to Mitchell, the MNR was “not concerned to mobilize the peasants but rather to manage, and … neutralize them” (Mitchell 1977: 48, 47, passim). Consistent with this perspective, campesinos had but lukewarm support for the sindicatos such that they rarely evolved into viable organizations. Their ascendancy was shortlived. Rather, by 1976, peasant leaders in the department of La Paz had established the Tupac Katari37 Revolutionary Movement (MRTK, Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Katari) that took over many of the sindicatos and enrolled them in the United Trade-Union Federation of Campesinos of Bolivia (CSUTCB, Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia). The Kataristas prized and promoted Aymara nationalism, including the use of the Aymara flag, language, and other aspects of Aymara culture. They also demanded increased educational opportunity (Albó 2002: 76). By 1981, the CSUTCB had gained representation and a leadership role in the COB (Central Obrero Boliviano, the National Labor Federation), a powerful government institution which had long been dominated by the national miners’ union. In 1981, the COB, established during the Revolution, was still the “cogoverning” institution of the national government with veto rights over legislation and ministerial decrees. By using the COB as their platform, “the newly developed Aymara peasant leaders presented to white society a series of demands relating to their perceived unequal treatment from the state in terms of agricultural prices, provisions for credit, and health” (Klein 1992: 273). The CSUTCB also became a practitioner of “politics in the street,” including strategic roadblocks on the Altiplano and general strikes (Dunkerley 1984: 274). In 1985, after tin’s role in the economy had catastrophically plummeted due to falling international prices (tin had long been Bolivia’s main export), the COB secretariat was taken over by Bolivia’s Communist Party. But the CSUTCB, remained dominated by the Katarista movement, and became both the main organization of rural workers and the single most important workers’ group within the COB (Klein 1992: 273–76). Simultaneously, the Tupac Katari Revolutionary Movement (MRTK) evolved into a campesino political party. Nevertheless, before the year 2000, indigenous political parties per se attracted less than 3 percent of the total vote in any given presidential election (Albó 2002: 82–85; Morales 2003: passim). In 1997, the MRTK, then the largest of the indigenous parties, ran on a straight Indian-rights slate that received 2 percent of the total vote (Klein 1992: 273). In general, rather than a united front, campesinos spread their votes among many parties. In the contested elections of 1978 following 14 years of rule by military junta, the

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campesino vote split among at least four of the nine largest parties competing for the presidency, although the total indigenous highlander vote might have added up to a plurality of all votes cast.38 Further, in the rural areas many indigenous could not vote, because they lacked the identification documents required to register. In 1992, this was still the case for about 45 percent of the campesino population.39 The Revolution also induced social and economic changes that eventually had pronounced impact on political developments. The disappearance of the ancien régime was followed by improved nutrition of the campesino population and such rapid population growth that in the 50 years following 1953 population tripled.40 Widespread shortages of arable land in the traditional areas of settlement in the Altiplano and the high valleys followed. Increasing demographic pressure was paralleled by development of all-weather roads into the Amazonian foothills while the new land-tenure law established as part of the agricultural reform of 1953 encouraged emigration to the lowlands. Settlement was particularly rapid in two river basins: the Chapare in Cochabamba and the Yapacani in Santa Cruz because the development of a new export industry, coca/cocaine in the two regions provided the highland pioneers with a profitable cash crop that they could produce with their limited means. Although Chapare coca leaf for chewing and tea was considered inferior to that of Bolivia’s traditional areas of coca production in the Department of La Paz, it was good for processing into cocaine. Klein describes the development of the new industry: With Chapare leaf more highly desired on the international than on the national market, and with its location far from traditional urban centers, the Chapare region became the dominant center for coca leaf supplies [to make] illegal cocaine exports. Not only was coca native to the region, and a highly labor intensive product, but it was overwhelmingly produced on small farms, with an estimated two-thirds of production coming from plots of six hectares or less. These … plots were grouped into colonies and large peasant unions which were an effective voice for the small landowners … . [F]or the first time in modern Bolivian history, a primary export product was dominated by small peasant producers. Though … Bolivian merchants would produce cocaine base (or paste) from the peasant-produced leaf by the mid-1980s, final crystallization and commercialization of the product on the world market remained in the hands of Colombian middlemen … . In 1984 it was roughly estimated that cocaine exports were worth over twice the $724 million of legal exports41 … . Whereas only 12,000 hectares were devoted to coca-leaf production in 1976, by 1985 the area of cultivation had grown to over 66,000 hectares. (ibid.92: 277–78) By 1986, annual national production of coca leaf had increased to 153,000 tons, of which about two-thirds came from the Chapare and much of the

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remainder from the Yapacani area. Notwithstanding the long history of universal use of coca as tea, chewed as a stimulant, and in sacred ritual in the 1950s before the cocaine boom, Bolivia’s annual home consumption as leaf was less than 4,000 tons, nearly all of it produced (as it had been for centuries) in the subtropical, densely populated narrow Yungas valleys north of La Paz. By the 1980s, however, at least a quarter of a million farmers were cultivating coca as a cash crop, mostly exported as coca paste (Dunkerley 1984: 313). When not penalized by eradication campaigns, coca has been profitable for smallholders, producing much higher income than that derived from using the same land in the highest-value alternatives, such as maize, rice, or even coffee. The expansion and profitability of coca was also stimulated by the contraction in world tin consumption in the 1980s. Following the collapse of international metal markets in 1985, Bolivian refined tin could find no market for many months. The entire tin industry underwent a catastrophic contraction, more than three-quarters of the tin miners were laid off, while the country’s nearly brand-new tin smelters were forced to close. The mineral veins that had underpinned the economy for centuries had largely run out and Bolivia had become a high-cost tin producer refining some of the world’s lowest-grade ores. It is likely that the burgeoning export of coca products kept the price of foreign exchange from rising to a level where some tin mines might again have become competitive.42 Hence, in the late 1980s, coca products probably substituted for tin and other minerals in supplying foreign exchange and provided a livelihood for several hundred thousand campesinos in growing and processing coca. During the depressed years of world-market collapse of prices for tin and other commodities (1985–89), miners and other unemployed workers turned to coca production and the drug trade for survival. The US interdiction policy complicated this state of affairs. Anti-narcotics operations, such as “Blast Furnace” in 1986 and “Snowcap” in 1987, made production risky. In 1988, passage of Bolivia’s anti-narcotics Law 1008 criminalized coca-leaf production (Morales 2003: 249–50). Eradication programs prompted mass action by producers and defense of coca became a central issue in the growing indigenous political movement. Moreover, the Coca Growers’ Union (Sindicato de Cocaleros) became one of the strongest political forces in the country: Using direct action tactics like strategic roadblocks, hunger strikes, mass rallies with coca leaf ‘chew-ins,’ marches and occupations the peasants forced the government to compromise. … Coca is the sacred leaf of the Aymara and the Quechua peoples, central to their religion, folklore, medicine and social relations. … Federations of coca-leaf growers of the Chapare-Cochabamba, Yungas-La Paz and Yapacani-Santa Cruz regions turned coca cultivation into an issue involving national sovereignty and the preservation of Andean culture. Defense of coca cultivation unified the peasant movement behind the powerful regional and national coca

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Bolivia’s highland Indians growers union. Over the years, the popular campesino leader Evo Morales Ayma has become the premier representative of these cocaleros or coca-leaf growers. Since 1988, as leader of the largest Chapare coca growers’ federation, Morales has passionately defended the farmers’ right to grow the sacred coca leaf, arguing that the cocaleros were not addicted to coca but to eating. (Morales 2003: 216–17)

In 1997, Evo Morales was elected to the House of Deputies as the representative of the Chapare district and its cocaleros, running on a ticket with five other indigenous candidates as the United Left under the aegis of the Communist Party. In parliament, he joined eight other indigenous deputies to form the “Indigenous Parliamentary Brigade.” Together, they committed themselves to mutual support for the benefit of the indigenous campesinos whom they represented. In the past such cross-party cooperation usually collapsed “under the strain of party differences and personal interests” (Albó 2002: 93). Highlander division of votes among competing parties continued until Morales started a new political party in 1999, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, Movement to Socialism). MAS quickly became the force that finally brought together the diverse strands of Aymara and Quechua political activism. Although in the beginning, the cocaleros were the core constituency, from its beginnings the party’s scope of action extended beyond support of coca to a broad spectrum of issues. Led by Morales, MAS has used mass demonstrations backed by roadblocks to achieve its goals, of which the most basic has been winning the presidency and seats in the national assembly. All this is covered in the next two subsections. Politics in the street From the National Revolution to the conclusion of the twentieth century, Quechua and Aymara relied heavily upon protest to promote their political agenda. In the 1950s and 1960s, this took the form of practices used by miners (most of whom were highland Indians), campesinos, and urban workers. These manifestaciones (demonstrations or protests) involved strikes, mass marches, occupation of government facilities, and roadblocks synchronized with protests in the capital (Albó 1988: 525–27). Roadblocks have been most effective when they shut down main arteries and prevent movement of food and fuel into the cities. If major, they also halt much of the economy and put people out of work. As described below, in recent faceoffs with demonstrators backed by roadblocks, the government capitulated. Demonstrations have been accompanied by vandalism, stone-throwing, random rifle fire, and throwing sticks of dynamite (in the past mainly by miners who routinely used dynamite in their work), frequently from moving trucks loaded with demonstrators. Such tactics have also long been institutionalized in the sense that

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mobilization, protest, and ensuing negotiation between political authorities and indigenous leaders follow a well-defined pattern (Lucero 2006: 11). Activating and maintaining roadblocks has not been spontaneous, but a centrally controlled undertaking that frequently aims to stop traffic on Bolivia’s major highway directly connecting La Paz, the capital, and the country’s most populous urban conglomeration, Santa Cruz. Roadblocks are set up at strategic points on this highway as well as to bottle up traffic in La Paz and the cities of Oruro and Cochabamba, two other major cities on the highway between the capital and Santa Cruz. In addition, blockades have also been frequently deployed to close down La Paz’s airport. All-out blockage effectively cuts off the capital from most supplies of food and vehicle fuel. As deployed by MAS, the roadblocks are organized as recurring undertakings using experienced “professionals” paid for their services. The roadblockers, typically highland Indians, are required to man their posts at the blockades on demand. MAS has levied fines on blockade personnel who failed to perform as required. Repeated failure may lead to expropriation of the land of the negligent blocker. Coordination of blockage today is enhanced by the universal availability of cellular phones. The network of cell-phone communications for the various points of blockage may be coordinated from a central point, such as a government or legislator’s office, while a single operator in direct communication with the center may coordinate and activate as many as eight individual blockades (Reel 2005: A18). Led by Evo Morales, road blockades, along with more violent tactics, were much used by the Sindicato Cocaleros (Union of Coca Growers) in resisting the US financed coca/cocaine eradication programs from the 1990s until their relaxation in 2003. The Cocaleros have also been a core constituency of the MAS and roadblocks have been extensively deployeded by MAS in protest campaigns since its very beginnings. President Evo Morales describes such massive protest campaigns as mobilizaciones sociales wherein both road blockage and large street demonstrations (aka civil strikes) are coordinated and simultaneous. MAS street demonstrations are also organized rather than spontaneous. They typically involve transporting thousands of protestors from rural areas to the points of protests via truck and bus convoys. The protestors are frequently professionals who are also paid for their participation (Gamarra 2008). Beginning in 2000, Bolivians have experienced two so-called “wars” (sandwiched in among other protests and riots) in which “social mobilizations” were the principal tactic: the conflict over the privatization of piped water in Cochabamba and the conflict over the ownership of the hydrocarbons industry. In both cases the government backtracked on an important policy. In both cases, blockades and protests were the primary means employed by militants to achieve their goals. It is noteworthy that the second of these, the so called “gas war,” was deliberately engineered and initiated by Morales and others to bring about renationalization of the natural gas industry. I begin with a discussion of the “water wars.”

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In late January 2000, in Cochabamba (population 1.5 million), mass protests were triggered when the newly privatized, and extremely unpopular foreign-owned water authority (established by a national statute that applied only to Cochabamba) sent out bills greatly increasing water charges throughout the area. Although the initial protest was led by small irrigation farmers, they were soon joined by other groups. The initial wave of protest culminated in a four-day general strike that closed down the city. Although generally not violent, on occasion, police fired teargas and rubber bullets into crowds of rock-throwing protestors. The conflict remained unresolved and additional protestors joined succeeding protest waves, some in Cochabamba, but also in other cities. Many brought additional demands: teachers struck for higher wages, while others demanded jobs and lower gasoline prices. Led by Evo Morales, the cocaleros joined in, adding their demand that the US-sponsored program of coca eradication be ended. In February and March, attempts by Catholic prelates to negotiate a solution were unsuccessful. The protests continued intermittently for nearly four months. By April the demonstrators had taken control of Cochabamba’s central plaza. The conflict had also become national with massive demonstrations in La Paz, Oruro, and Potosi, as well as roadblocks on the main highway. Much of the economy ceased production. Food shortages in La Paz became intolerable. On 8 April, President Banzer declared a state of emergency. Shortly thereafter he agreed to meet the protestors’ demands. In response, police and soldiers removed roadblocks in five departments. On 11 April 2000, the parliament, in special session repealed the water-authority privatization law. Evo Morales and the cocaleros much increased in stature as a result of their role in the conflict.43 The water wars were led on the militant side by an ad hoc coordinating committee that effectively organized a coalition of activist groups which had office space, meeting space, communications, and other needed infrastructure. Kohl and Farthing point out that the “Coordinadora’s strategy combined an excellent sense of timing with an ability to articulate and productively direct anger.” There was also impressive self-discipline among the protestors and “not a single store was looted” (2006: 166–67). In contrast to the water wars, which began as an angry reaction to the government’s privatization of potable water, the gas wars were deliberately planned and provoked so as to bring about renationalization of the hydrocarbons industry, which had been privatized in the 1990s. The belief was widespread among the public that the foreign firms pumping out and exporting Bolivia’s natural gas were making enormous profits that the state did little to tax, notwithstanding substantial government deficits. In July 2002, shortly after the national presidential and congressional elections, a National Coordinadora for the Defense and Recovery of Gas took form essentially to provoke full renationalization of Bolivia’s largest export, natural gas. Led by Evo Morales and a senator elect of the MAS, 21 organizations joined the endeavor. They included local antiglobalization activists, military leaders, urban neighborhood leaders, pensioners, highland campesinos,

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and cocaleros (Kohl and Farthing 2006: 173). No doubt, many of these also were MAS party members. The new Coordinadora started demonstrations in August 2002 that continued, sporadically, until September 2003. The protests culminated in a crisis when President Sanchez de Lozada announced his decision to build a pipeline through Chile to carry natural gas for export to the United States, rather than transit through Peru. The Peru route was a much more expensive undertaking due to the longer distance in transit and the higher cost of financing the necessary liquefaction plant in Peru. De Lozada’s proposal was, however, not politically feasible. Bolivians learn to abhor Chile because Chile annexed Bolivia’s sea coast after defeating Bolivia in a brief nineteenth-century war. The memory of this defeat is very much alive because the story of Chile’s annexation is routinely taught to all schoolchildren. Following the pipeline announcement, a massive demonstration occurred, presumably called by the Coordinadora. Thousands of protestors stormed down the highway into La Paz from El Alto (altitude 4,150 meters), the large Aymara indigenous city above La Paz. Their angry march was punctuated with the clamor of “Gas for Bolivians, not for multinationals!,” and “Death to neoliberalism!” The protests spread across the country as people took to the streets to demand the president’s resignation. The demonstrators soon bottled up all traffic to and from La Paz. With the city under siege, within a week food and fuel were in short supply. On 17 October 2003, Sanchez resigned as president and fled the country after days of protests, during which the army killed more than 59 mostly Andean demonstrators (Economist 2004: 35; Kohl and Farthing 2006: 11, 174–75). The protests ended when Vice President Carlos Mesa became president. But in 2004, they broke out in bitter opposition to Bolivia’s neoliberal legislation governing oil and gas production, presumably again, at the behest of the Morales Coordinadora. In May 2005, the congress passed a law that doubled taxes on profits of hydrocarbon companies to 32 percent; designated the state as the sole owner of all natural resources including hydrocarbons; and required renegotiation of all contracts with the 76 foreign oil/gas firms within six months. Mesa neither signed the bill nor vetoed it, and the legislation remained in limbo until the president of the senate, as required by law, took action in signing the law. Many protestors were disappointed because the new law failed to bring immediate and full renationalization of the industry. The protests continued. Late May brought a rising tide of protests and roadblocks. President Mesa, who described the blockades as “collective suicide for the nation,” attempted to placate the demonstrators by promising early election of a national assembly to draft a new constitution and referendums on the issue of increased autonomy for Bolivia’s nine departments (states). The attempt was in vain. By 2 June, tens of thousands of protestors had again marched down into La Paz from El Alto. By prior arrangement, the police refused to intervene. On 6 June, while protestors in downtown La Paz numbered in the tens of thousands, President Mesa resigned, two years before completion of his term of office.

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The two congressional leaders next in line for the presidency were even less acceptable and the demonstrators massively protested their candidacy, leading the congress to evade them by moving from La Paz to Sucre, the former capital. But protestors soon rallied in force there as well. Both leaders withdrew their candidacy. The third in line, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Edwardo Rodriguez, was acceptable and he was sworn in as president on 9 June 2005. As required by the constitution, he began preparation for the national election of a new president and congress within six months of his inauguration.44 Electoral politics: the oppressed majority wins the national election MAS the protestor is also MAS the political party deeply involved in the electoral process. As a result of their role in the “water wars” of 2000, Evo Morales and MAS acquired prominence, credibility, and support among the indigenous majority. In the congressional/presidential elections of 2002, the first elections which MAS contested as a national party, it came in a very strong second with 21 percent of the vote, almost defeating Sanchez de Lozada who took first place with 22.5 percent. The strong showing of the Movement was far out of line with pre-election polls and completely unexpected. The second surprise: breaking with tradition, Morales rejected negotiation with the other frontrunners who were seeking to put together a majority coalition for the runoff election by the legislature,45 stating that “MAS wants to form a government from the streets.”46 The third surprise: to some extent this is what occurred. Three and a half years later, after the long run of protests almost entirely in the streets, (which further increased the stature and popularity of Morales), MAS won the elections of December 2005 with 53.7 percent of the vote, the first majority vote won by a single party since the reemergence of democracy in the election of 1982. The Podemos Party47 was the distant runner-up with 28.6 percent of the votes (Corte Nacional Electoral 2007: 8). Two conclusions can be drawn from this experience: 1 Led by Evo Morales, MAS had finally mobilized the voting potential of Bolivia’s indigenous majority. 2 The five-year run of protests (2000–5) greatly contributed to the popularity of MAS and Morales among the indigenous and to the latter’s confidence and faith in the new party. Without the long run of protests up to the elections, MAS would not have received a majority vote.48 By mid-2008, the new indigenous government had also achieved some of its political goals.49 Some of the changes are listed below: 1 A constitutional assembly, elected in 2006, drafted a new constitution that increases the power and status of the indigenous majority. The constitution foresees compensatory expropriation of arable land declared as unproductive to provide plots for landless campesinos.

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2 In January 2006, the government issued a requirement that all civil servants must learn Aymara or Quechua within two years to remain in service. 3 In 2006, the attempt by the Minister of Education to close out teaching and practice of Roman Catholicism as the official religion in the public schools was rebuffed by President Morales in response to protests by Catholic prelates. 4 Statutory renationalization of the hydrocarbons industry is a fait accompli and far more contracts have been renegotiated with foreign firms. 5 Annual public investment increased by three-quarters from 2005 to 2007 to $1.1 billion. Private investment was $164 million in 2007, the lowest level in over a decade. 6 A national pension (Renta Dignidad) has been established for Bolivians over the age of 60. 7 Conditional cash transfers are now made to families of more than 1.3 million students to encourage school attendance. 8 In 2008, certain public enterprises privatized within the last decade, were being renationalized, e.g., Entel, the national telecommunications company. 9 The coca contraction policy has been reversed. But official government policy prohibits production of cocaine or intermediate products that can be converted to cocaine.50 10 Indigenous symbols, including the Aymara flag, the wiphala, are now among the official insignia of nationhood in the new constitution. In worldwide perspective, Bolivia’s new economic policy marches to a different drummer. It dismisses much of the development model that stresses privatesector production in a global economy as the best approach to generating broadbased, rapid growth. In contrast, MAS-led government behavior indicates great concern with equitable development that does not shortchange the indigenous citizenry, plus respect for indigenous identity and honest government. President Morales has pledged to exert greater state control over the economy and to redistribute the country’s wealth, giving far greater weight to poor Bolivians (De Córdoba and Luhnow 2006: A1).To achieve these goals, the government foresees a greater role for public production than the neoliberal model. Morales (and MAS) also reject the status quo with respect to land tenure and note that large holdings were fraudulently transferred to wealthy elites during the military dictatorships of the 1970s. He states that land so acquired or land underused must be confiscated and redistributed to the landless (Reel 2006: A14). Closing the parity gap The gap in educational achievement, occupational status, and income between the highlanders and the non-indigenous population is large. (See Table 7.2.) To what degree the policies of Bolivia’s first indigenous government will

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conduce to close it remains to be seen. The country has enjoyed good fortune in that its main export, natural gas, has been benefiting from high prices while the renegotiated contracts with foreign oil/gas companies have enormously increased the government’s share in profits. The fiscal sector is currently (2008) running a very substantial surplus. Bolivia may be able to greatly expand and improve public education, health services, and nutrition interventions, as well as expand and improve infrastructure at rates and in ways hitherto not feasible. Given very high revenues, government investment (including investment in export industry) might be able to drive the economy to substantial growth rates and substantial increase in employment. Over a generation, it is possible that much of the parity gap would be closed. However, the sudden collapse of hydrocarbon prices beginning in late 2008 is gravely reducing fiscal revenues. Consequently, many of the basic policies promoting highlander socio-economic mobility are no longer feasible at least for the time being. The country also faces grave political problems:  Santa Cruz and the other three eastern departments (in which Aymara and Quechua are a numerical minority) continue to agitate for increased “autonomy” from the rest of Bolivia and want continued integration into the world economy by means of market processes.  The concentration of hydrocarbon wealth in the lowland departments and the lack of consensus on how the returns from that wealth should be distributed among the nine departments further complicate the picture.  The new constitution was initially approved by a rump constitutional assembly which excluded the opposition. Hence, several key articles (including land-reform) never received the required two-thirds approval of the assembly. Nevertheless, the constitution was ratified by national referendum in January 2009 by a majority of about 60 percent. But any attempt to implement large-scale redistribution of the huge and frequently productive modern farm estates located in the “autonomy” provinces would provoke devastating political resistance.  Coca may cause problems. The difference between its value as cocaine and any other use is very large. As noted earlier, coca production is readily manageable by poor smallholders and has at times been the primary source of cash income for many of them. President Morales has stressed the importance of limiting the processing of coca to non-cocaine products. Bolivia is far from a stable equilibrium, political, economic, or social. However the profound shift in power relations among Bolivia’s “social races” is likely to persist. Presumably, those who identify as highland indigenous will continue to mobilize in a cohesive manner particularly with respect to elections.

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The larger context Mass Bolivian protests examined in this chapter succeeded, I believe, because they were supported by roadblocks that paralyzed economic activity, above all cutting off food and vehicle fuel for major urban markets. Road blockage was feasible, in part, because of the dependence of the economy on the two national highways that unify the main centers of production. Successful roadblocks also depended on the previous governments’ reluctance to make an all-out effort to destroy the blockades. Government reluctance had at least two causes: such action would almost certainly have brought in train an escalation of violence and substantial bloodshed that might have proven intolerable. Second, an all-out government “counterattack,” was risky. It could have triggered a civil war as occurred a half century earlier, when the MNR’s armed miners, and others quickly routed the army and the government to make the National Revolution. What worked in Bolivia could not work in the many countries where roadblocks by protesting citizenry would not be tolerated. Bolivia’s highlanders have achieved what SRELIM can rarely achieve. Because Bolivia’s Quechua and Aymara acted as a cohesive majority, they were able to use the ballot to take power. Their use of nonviolent yet menacing protest to achieve certain political goals contributed substantially to mobilization of the largely self-identified indigenous majority that voted the MAS into power. Most SRELIM are too small to significantly harm their dominant majorities, and even less to outvote them. The Highlanders’ success with “social mobilization” is exceptional but not unprecedented. Successful use of mass non-violent action (strikes, boycotts, street protests) to achieve political goals has been substantial. In the last two decades it has involved countries as diverse as the United States (black civil rights movement, 1960s), Madagascar (forced resignation of President Ratsiraka, 1991), South Africa (the elimination of apartheid, 1994), and Serbia (forced reinstatement of opposition victories in local elections by President Milosevic, 1997).51

8

US African Americans Updating the American dilemma

Not alien, just profoundly alienated. (Loury 1997: 154)

Gunnar Myrdal, long the world’s most prominent socio-economist, was both fascinated and appalled by what he described as “the American dilemma”. The dilemma, of course, was the grave contradiction between what he saw as the basic American values of brotherhood, equality, liberty, and justice, and the role forced on African Americans by American society. That role involved neither brotherhood, nor equality, nor liberty, nor justice. The historical material in this chapter demonstrates this very clearly. However, in the last half century the United States has resolved much of its racial dilemma. The election of a black president of the United States is a case in point. Today, perhaps about two-thirds of African Americans are close to parity with the white majority. This is largely the case because the nation has deliberately rooted out most discrimination and stigmatization against blacks. Eradication did not occur automatically but has been a struggle over more than four generations involving a host of actions at the national political level as well as massive self-help by blacks themselves involving much patience, fortitude, and in the last 50 years, rapid social change. Of the five case studies that make up this volume, the US story is distinctive. The huge gap in social distance that characterizes SRELIM vis-à-vis their dominant groups has been reduced to the point where possibly a majority of the citizenry believe that there no longer is a significant gap between the middle-class black majority and other Americans. That is a real achievement. Bringing the remaining one-third to parity, however, is a formidable challenge.

Reconstruction The Civil War ended in 1865. The war also ended slavery. Reconstruction followed until 1877. These 12 years were a formative period as social forces worked with and against each other to engender a new role for the secessionist states. The transition from slaves to “Freedmen” was accompanied by

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much controversy, turmoil, mayhem, and uncertainty. By 1877, violence and other overt strife were mostly eliminated. The postwar constellation of social and economic forces of the resurgent South began to determine more than two generations of slow progress for African Americans. Because it was so decisive and instructive in shaping their mobility path, I review the three phases of Reconstruction in some detail. Although it promised African Americans full citizenship and rapid progress to socio-economic parity, it fell grievously short. To achieve a necessary brevity in a convoluted history, I simplify and probably distort, although my conclusions are in line with those of the revisionist as opposed to the “old racist version of Reconstruction” (Foner 1988: xxii).1 The three phases of Reconstruction In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, the 11 Confederate States of America had been defeated, much of their countryside and cities destroyed, and the population dislocated, many as refugees. The dead, wounded, sick, and hungry were legion. The agrarian economy of “King Cotton,” tobacco, rice, and corn had been laid to waste, the slave-holders dispossessed and fugitive, the slaves in turmoil. How this agrarian economy was to be reconstructed was neither foreordained nor obvious. The slaves had finally been freed.2 There were more than 4 million of them, scattered among a white population of 5.5 million. But what their new roles should be and how those roles were to be determined were highly contested issues. Meanwhile, the North occupied the Confederacy with its army and attempted to legislate and reconstruct a new South from the Congress and White House in Washington. Reconstruction also became a period of violent upheaval in which white Southerners often resorted to murder and other violence to thwart black attempts to assert their rights as free men and citizens. For a brief period, Southern class relationships and social organization were fluid and uncertain, as were the status and identity of the new Freedmen. By 1877, however, the white South was once again in control of its affairs and the Freedmen were mired at the bottom of the otherwise fluid US class structure. By the late 1870s, the new South had also emerged as the “Jim-Crow” South of segregation and white supremacy. Most African Americans were landless, although still dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods mainly as sharecroppers or fieldhands, which is to say also dependent on the white overclass. In a word, they remained a stigmatized, ranked, ethno-racial, low-status, involuntary minority (SRELIM). The South had switched from a slave to a quasicaste society in which African Americans formed the bottom tier. Not until after many decades of migrations of rural blacks to urban work and after World War II, did the majority of blacks escape southern quasi-caste institutions. Following the assassination of Lincoln in April 1865, the former vice president, now President Andrew Johnson, moved quickly to reconstitute government in the Southern states. He issued an amnesty to Southern leaders who had clean

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records, took an oath of allegiance to the Union, and accepted its constitution as the law of the land. He also issued special pardons for a large number of the planter elite and other prominent Confederate leaders. He appointed provisional governors in the Confederate states to establish new legislatures and executive branches. However, only men who had been voters in 1860 were allowed to participate in establishing the new governments. All 11 of the states responded by electing constituent assemblies that established new state constitutions. They also elected new governments (legislators, governors, and members of the US Congress).3 The new officials were of many persuasions, including many legislators who had served the Confederacy although they had opposed secession. In the majority, however, the new political leadership was the old political leadership drawn from the antebellum political establishment (Foner 1988: 186ff). Freedmen were not enfranchised and were given no role in the new governments. Indeed, the new all-white state legislatures universally adopted socalled “Black Codes,” to guide the Freedmen’s behavior. The codes denied the Freedmen basic rights of citizens including voting rights and the right to bear arms. They also limited them with respect to occupation, location of residence, travel, and ownership of property and stipulated that unemployed Negroes could be arrested as vagrants and forced into employment. But Johnson’s presidential Reconstruction was quickly countered by Congressional Reconstruction. In this second phase, the radical Republicans found Black Codes and exclusion of Freedmen from political participation unacceptable and blocked readmission of the Southern states into the Union in late 1865.

Table 8.1 Reconstruction by state, key dates and number of African Americans in office, 1870–76

S. Carolina Mississippi Florida Alabama Georgia Louisiana Texas Virginia Arkansas N. Carolina Tennessee Total

Readmitted into Union

Democratic Party establishes control

State legislators

US Congressmen*

July 9, 1868 Feb. 23, 1870 June 25, 1868 July 14, 1868 July 15, 1870 July 9, 1868 Mar. 30, 1870 Jan. 26, 1870 June 22, 1868 July 4, 1868 July 24, 1866

April 11, 1877 Jan. 4, 1876 Jan. 2, 1877 Nov. 16, 1874 Nov. 1, 1871 Jan. 2, 1877 Jan. 14, 1873 Oct. 5, 1869 Nov. 10, 1870 Nov. 28, 1870 Oct. 4, 1869

190 112 30 69 41 87 19 46 8 30 1 633

6 3 (2 Senators) 1 4 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 17 (2 Senators)

Sources: Number of elected officials derived from Foner (1988) 354–55; for dates, Foner (1988) passim and Wikipedia, Reconstruction Era of the United States (2008). Note: * US Congressmen: 15 elected to the House of Representatives and 2 senators.

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The national legislative elections of 1866 gave the party of abolition, the Republican Party, majorities in both Senate and House sufficient to override presidential vetoes. There followed seven years of Republican dominance (1866– 73) known as Congressional or Radical Reconstruction. During this period Congress passed laws that attempted to redistribute political power by greatly reducing the role of the South’s traditional political elite in favor of poorer classes, both black and white. With the exception of Tennessee, the new legislation also maintained the South under military occupation pending readmission into the Union. The military was charged with keeping the peace, but also with supervising elections, including those of the new biracial state constitutional conventions. The first elections to establish state governments acceptable to the Congressional Republicans were held in 1867. Freedmen voted for the first time. The Republican Party in the South, the party of Freedmen, Southern Unionists, and recently arrived Northerners (many of them Civil-War veterans) took the majority of seats in the new legislatures. These newly empowered Republicans swept away the all-white, old-guard governments which President Johnson had brought to the fore, and imposed black suffrage throughout the South. Under their sway, in the six years 1870–76, 633 African Americans were elected to office in the 11 state legislatures; in addition two became US Senators and fifteen US Congressmen (Table 8–1). The Republican-dominated US Congress also generated several laws to support radical restructuring. The Civil Rights Acts of 1870, 1871, and 1875 gave blacks political and legal status equal to that of whites. For example, the acts bestowed the right to sue (and be sued), to hold real and personal property, and to give evidence in courts. They also attempted to protect the voting rights of the new citizens. In addition, the Congress generated two bills that became the 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution, which have proven of fundamental importance in the long struggle of African Americans to achieve political equality. (See Table 8.3 for their content.) During the first years of Radical Reconstruction education for Freedmen expanded rapidly, as did settlement of black independent farmers on abandoned lands and those confiscated by the federal government. Republican Party domination ended with the third phase of Reconstruction when white Southern voters (who outnumbered blacks) brought the Democrats to power. Beginning in Virginia, immigrants from the North, Southern Unionists (disparagingly called “scalawags”), and Freedmen, who had comprised most of the Radical Republicans were expelled from government state by state. By 1877 “Negro Rule” and “military despotism” were brought to an end and the Democratic Party controlled every state of the former Confederacy (Table 8.1). The resurgent South then set about revoking Freedmen’s civil rights and “encouraging” white immigrants to leave the South. Even before white supremacy was firmly re-established, Freedmen were prevented from voting, and asserting their rights, by mob and vigilante violence, above all that of the Ku Klux Klan. Most prominent and active

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from 1867 to 1872, the Klan’s secret militias of silent, white-sheeted, midnight riders were initially meant to frighten superstitious Freedmen as ghosts of fallen Confederate soldiers. Throughout the South, they intimidated, whipped, and at times murdered their victims, primarily the black citizenry but also scalawags and carpet baggers (recent immigrants from the North including businessmen, teachers, and new plantation-owners). From 1867 to 1872, the Klan, in its many manifestations, was responsible for the lynching deaths by hanging, shooting, and burning of more than 1,000 African Americans (Tuskegee Institute 1959). Vandalism, e.g., burning down homes and destroying printing presses, and intimidation, e.g., burning large white crosses in plain view, were also common. Using such tactics, the Klan, mobs, and other white-supremacy groups stopped blacks from voting. At times, blacks who even approached ballot boxes were surrounded and beaten. Armed whites were known to turn blacks away from polls while voting repeatedly themselves. Stamping out civil rights was part of a larger upheaval. From 1868 to 1871, violent reaction swept the South triggered by white perception of the excesses of Reconstruction. Blacks who won elections were whipped. Others were arrested for delivering incendiary speeches. Churches and schools were burned down and teachers (of both races and genders) attacked for teaching “niggers to be like white men.” Occasionally scalawags were also killed (Foner 1988: 425–28). Many whites took as their mission recreating a social order with blacks “in their proper place,” including forcing them to work for white employers without “insolence” (Foner 1988: passim, footnote 5). Generally, neither the states, nor local governments, nor the remaining few thousand federal troops4 were willing or able to stop the atrocities and depredations. The Klan and others operated with impunity until 1872 when the federal government indicted hundreds of Klan members under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which quickly caused a dramatic decline in their operations throughout the South. But Southern terrorism of a similar nature and with similar objectives continued sporadically for the next 70 years. The Tuskegee Institute (1959) estimates that there were more than 2,500 lynchings of blacks in the 11 states of the South between 1880 and World War II. Conflicts concerning ownership and management of means of production also strongly penalized the Freedmen. By the end of Reconstruction, white planters again controlled most arable land5 and thereby most access to employment for blacks. True, emancipation meant that blacks were formally free to choose occupation and geographic residence. But blacks were usually rural residents with agricultural skills and no history of other employment. They were without land or other assets and generally illiterate. They had experience neither in working for wages nor in market transactions, including acquisition of food, shelter, and other necessities. Frequently they were destitute. Hence, the former slaves largely saw themselves as having one recourse: to return to farming on land held by white owners. In lieu of slavery, they became sharecroppers or landless workers, e.g., fieldhands for cotton producers.

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In most cases they were dependent on the goodwill of white landowners, frequently former slave-owners. For the remainder of the nineteenth century, emigration out of the South was usually not an option. Moreover, in this new world, blacks who did not “stay in their place,” continued to suffer serious consequences. In Charleston, during the election campaign of 1868, landlords threatened to evict from plantations “any negro who will not swear never again to vote the Radical ticket” and a Democratic party leader told negro voters that “We have the capital and give employment. We own the lands and require labor to make them productive … . You desire to be employed … . We know we can do without you. We think you will find it very difficult to do without us” Foner (1988: 341). The Freedmen’s Bureau During Reconstruction, one federal institution proved effective in supporting the freed slaves: the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Established by law in early 1865, the Bureau aided Freedmen refugees, and others in need. Initially it carried out emergency relief and depended on the army for staff and funds. It soon took over army hospitals and dispensaries and established new ones. It treated about half a million Freedmen and many others in need. Hunger was a serious problem in much of the South through 1867. The Bureau developed a basic ration of cornmeal, flour of a second grain, and sugar sufficient to feed an adult for a week. It distributed more than 13 million such rations. It also played an important role as an adjudicator on behalf of black plaintiffs. To this end it established many temporary courts. Later, with reconstruction of local and state courts, it monitored their performance on behalf of blacks who had no experience of legal procedures (Foner 1988). By 1868, the relief role had ceased and the Bureau concentrated on the conversion of 4 million former slaves into independent, self-sufficient, law abiding citizens. There was a near consensus that education was of the highest priority in achieving the transition. This was most obviously the case among the Freedmen themselves whose zeal for education was remarkable.6 Schools were set up in churches, basements, private homes, and even outdoors. Moreover: Throughout the South, blacks … formed societies and raised money among themselves to purchase lands, build schoolhouses and pay teachers’ salaries. Some communities voluntarily taxed themselves, while in others black schools charged tuition … . Black artisans donated their labor to construct schoolhouses and black families offered room and board to teachers to supplement their salaries [notwithstanding the fact] that blacks were a large impoverished community. Contemporaries could not but note the contrast between white families seemingly indifferent to education and blacks who “toil and strive, labour and endure in order that

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US African Americans their children ‘may have a schooling.’” As one Northern educator remarked: “Is it not significant that after the lapse of one hundred and forty-four years since the settlement of Beaufort North Carolina, the Freedmen are building the first public school-houses ever erected there?’” Nevertheless, poverty undercut black educational efforts, forcing many schools to turn to the Freedmen’s Bureau and Northern societies for aid. (Foner 1988: 98)

The response came from several directions. Religious organizations, particularly the American Missionary Association, worked with the black churches. Northern benevolent societies recruited teachers, most of them women from New England. Oliver Otis Howard, the general in charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau, saw education as the “foundation upon which all efforts to assist the Freedmen rested.” The Bureau, after its tenure was extended in 1866, funded expansion of black education, but it also played a leading role in coordinating the activities of Northern societies committed to black education and established the first colleges7 for development of black professionals and leaders. These became important sources of black teachers for the expanding educational system. By 1869, “nearly 3,000 schools, serving over 150,000 pupils reported to the Bureau” (Foner 1988: 144, 97, 145). The question of school integration did not become an important issue although it was debated and considered in several contexts. Both blacks and whites believed that segregated schools were preferable. (At this time racially mixed schools were rare in the North.) Black preferences for segregated schools were based on the desire to control their own schools and the teachers they employed. There was also concern with avoiding hostility from whites who loathed and feared social equality as well as concern that theoretically integrated schools would likely lead to strong restrictions on black enrollments (Foner 1988: 145, 322, 366–67). After 1868, state governments provided most of the funding for black education and gradually a tax-financed public-school system evolved in the South. “Republicans had established for the first time in Southern history, the principle of state responsibility for public education” (Foner 1988: 366, 144). Nevertheless black education in rural areas lagged substantially behind urban areas. In 1880, 70 percent of the black population was still illiterate, as was a substantial proportion of Southern whites. The second developmental mission of the Freedmen’s Bureau was immediate in impact: how to assure that the new citizens found their way to remunerative employment. There was much concern in both North and South, that the former slaves, given their history of exploitation and meager consumption, would choose production that yielded the minimum needed for survival and the maximum of leisure. Republican legislators in Congress had faith in the Freedmen’s desire for improvement and foresaw creating a new class of producers by settling them on confiscated and abandoned lands that the Bureau had acquired. Under General Howard’s leadership, by the end of 1865 the

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Bureau had gained control of 850,000 acres and was settling Freedmen on farms of their own as well as planning further distributions. On learning of Howard’s initiative, President Johnson countermanded all actual and planned black settlement. He ordered that all lands under control of the Bureau be returned to their owners and added a “rash of special pardons to former Confederates” whose lands had been confiscated. As a result, at least 40,000 Freedmen already settled were either evicted or signed work contracts with the newly empowered former owners.8 Nearly all land in Bureau hands reverted back to former owners. No additional lands were acquired. “Johnson had in effect abrogated the Confiscation Act and unilaterally amended the law creating the Bureau. The idea of a Freedmen’s Bureau actively promoting black land ownership had come to an abrupt end” (Foner 1988: 158–62). In response to Southern hostility to the Bureau, Congress terminated it in 1872. Historians have long debated the efficacy of the Bureau. Many judge it a futile undertaking. Some single out the failure of land reform as particularly regrettable since a class of independent black farmers would have led to more rapid black progress. Whether land reform was politically feasible, given the array of political and social forces arrayed against it, is questionable. Foner stresses that “the assumption of its own impermanence severely limited the scope and effectiveness of Bureau policies”. Short tenure was particularly disadvantageous in the Bureau’s efforts to guarantee black civil rights: to vote, act as jurists, hold public office, and exercise free speech (ibid.: 148). The Bureau’s limited scope and short life also made it impossible to even safeguard Freedmen’s life and property. All things considered, the cost of defending Freedmen from Southern depredation would probably have required a large, expensive, and permanent army of occupation. It possibly would have provoked guerrilla warfare. Nevertheless, in addition to preventing starvation and providing medical care, the Bureau enormously aided the slaves in their initial transition to Freedmen. The work of the Bureau in establishing schools for black children contributed substantially to the establishment of tax-supported public schools in the South and to black education. It also established the black colleges that trained black professionals and those who became black leaders who, among other things, inspired and guided the protest and litigation of the twentieth century. Reconstruction also left a legacy of civil-rights legislation, including the 14th and 15th amendments. (See Table 8.3.) The latter formed much of the basis for the new statutes and litigation that were essential elements in the civil-rights movement of the 1950 and 1960s. The final word, however, applies to the Freedwomen and men who anticipated a new beginning as full citizens, equal in status to the majority. Many expected to gain the same rights as whites to vote and hold public office, use public transportation, act as jurists, educate their children, own land, bear arms, and exercise free speech. Those expectations were crushed. The rejection by the larger nation was traumatic. Not until the 1950s, more than 75 years later, is it possible to talk about this outcome being reversed.

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After Reconstruction Following Reconstruction, the South developed a quasi-caste system in which blacks were at the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy. They were stigmatized and burdened by an involuntary identity from which few escaped. As the nineteenth century ran out, so-called scientific racism also came to the fore with its own brand of stigmatization in the form of specious proofs of Negro genetic inferiority (Gould 1981). Moreover, by the late nineteenth century, African Americans had been deprived of their own cultures so thoroughly for so long that few non-blacks considered such deculturalization an issue, although the psychological need for acceptable roots and origins of their own was then, as now, strong among American blacks. They were also a minority bearing up under institutions and norms of deeply entrenched and universally practiced discrimination, not just in the South. Throughout America, the “color bar” prohibiting entrance by blacks into occupations above the lowest was nearly universal, enforced by custom, unions and professional associations. In the professions, blacks were in the main not welcomed. Those who attained professional status (lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc.) were expected to serve primarily the black population. In support of this system, the South (including the border slave states that had remained in the Union) soon established a superstructure of institutions that restored much of the prewar status quo. Prominent among these was universal racial separation by law and custom. By 1877, “Jim Crow” segregation laws were established by local and state authorities requiring that public facilities (schools, public restrooms, transportation, restaurants, telephone booths, parks, use of vacant lots, etc.) be exclusively reserved for one race or the other. The private provider who wished to cater to all and sundry could only serve one or the other race, but not both without taking measures to keep the two separate. Typically, physical facilities (seats, water fountains, pool tables, buildings, beaches, etc.) were limited in use to a single race. By the end of the nineteenth century, to meet the constitutional stipulation in the 14th amendment of equal protection of the laws (Table 8.3), segregated services provided by public authorities were held to be legal if they were “separate but equal.” This became explicit law in 1896 when the Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, that the 14th Amendment mandated political but not social equality. Segregation of public facilities was legal if they were equally provided to both races. In practice the separate public facilities (public schools, parks, prisons, libraries, buses, trains, beaches, fish ponds, toilets, etc.) reserved for blacks were inferior to those available to whites. Segregation was carried into another realm by anti-miscegenation laws that prohibited intermarriage of the two races. Such contamination of “Caucasian blood” was held to be highly destructive of the genetic quality of the white race. The fear of racial contamination was not restricted to the South. Before World War II a majority of the 48 US states had such laws.

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Table 8.2 US families with incomes below the US poverty line by race, 1940–2005 (percentages)

1940 1960 1970 1980 1990 1995 1999 2005

Black

White

Gap in % points

87 47 30 29 28 26 23 22.8

48 13 8 8 8 9 8 7.5

39 34 22 21 20 17 15 15.3

Source: Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997: 233; US Statistical Abstract 2000: Table 41 and 2008: Table 36.

Economic exploitation and racism took many other forms. Legislation and custom also militated against blacks owning arable land. Without land as collateral, bankers were reluctant to lend to black farmers. In the South, black voters were often disenfranchised because of difficulties in paying poll taxes (head tax levied on individuals) or inability to pass literacy tests or other tests of knowledge. Frequently, these requirements were enforced against blacks but not against whites. Racism also proved to be a national phenomenon. By 1900 there was a merging of the Southern outlook and the national outlook and a general acceptance of white supremacy. This situation would persist without serious disturbance for almost forty years into the twentieth century. (Degler et al. 1979: 103) The most fundamental “positive” during the interim period was emigration out of the South to the North. Given strong impetus by the economic boom associated with World War I, by the 1920s Northern cities (New York, Chicago, Detroit, etc.) had developed large centers of black workers and their families, notwithstanding the discrimination in employment and housing that blacks experienced in the North: Although frequently able to earn more money than they ever had before, the occupants of these black urban communities soon realized that they had not achieved the Promised Land. Usually they had to move into overcrowded, dilapidated tenements where they replaced the most recent, poorest immigrants … . [Moreover] they found themselves looked down on by the foreign-born whites just as they had always been looked down on by the native whites … black workers were often resented as intruders who threatened white employment and wage standards. In 1919 racial violence

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US African Americans broke out in a score of cities all over the nation, and blacks learned that they could not rely on either police protection or justice in the courts. (ibid.: 222–23)

Following the Great Depression, the black rural exodus resurged. It peaked during World War II when by 1944, a million more blacks were employed in urban jobs than in 1940 (ibid.: 299). In the 1960s, it may have received its last major push when hundreds of thousands of black cotton-pickers, displaced by mechanical cotton harvesters, headed out of the South to seek new work. Where did all this leave the black minority in the social hierarchy? Writing in 1944, Nobel Laureate, Gunnar Myrdal concluded in An American Dilemma, that “The economic situation of the Negroes in America is pathological … they own little property; even their household goods are mostly inadequate and dilapidated … they live from day to day and have scant security for the future” (Myrdal 1962: 205). In 1940, at the end of the Great Depression and 75 years after Emancipation, the national poverty rate of African American families was estimated at 87 percent, nearly double the white poverty rate. With 10 percent of the population, blacks accounted for 17 percent of US poverty. Since 1940, although the incidence of poverty has decreased dramatically among both black and whites it has become about three times higher for blacks than whites (Table 8.2). Even excluding those imprisoned as part of the poverty population, Table 8.2 implies that in 2005 with 13 percent of the population, US blacks accounted for over a quarter of US poverty.

Civil-rights movement and the push toward parity World War II marks the beginning of three decades of rapid improvement in black economic and social status. During the war, President Roosevelt created a Fair Employment Practices Committee to investigate and punish discrimination against minorities on defense jobs. By 1950, in response to predictions by black leaders of angry protest marches, President Truman brought about full integration of the US armed forces. There followed many federal interventions, statutory and regulatory, to enable black civil rights. As chronicled below, the civil-rights movement was triggered in 1954 by the Supreme Court reversal of the-separate-but-equal doctrine on which the South had built the segregation that underpinned its caste system. A series of Supreme Court rulings subsequently outlawed segregation of schools, buses, restaurants, hotels, housing, etc. Congress also passed seven Civil Rights Acts from 1957 to 1972 (Table 8.3) notwithstanding strong resistance from states’ rights groups attempting to maintain segregation and other forms of anti-black discrimination. The acts, combined with Supreme Court rulings, implementation mechanisms, litigation, mass protests, and media support, forced the states to dismantle segregation and other forms of discrimination. Lynchings and other violence against black Americans were

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Table 8.3 Pertinent federal civil rights legislation, 1865–1991 1865 1868

1870

1870 1871 1871

1875

1957 1960 1964

1964 1965 1968 1972 1991 1995

13th Amendment to the Constitution. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States.” 14th Amendment. Requires that “no state shall abridge the privileges or immunities of US citizens; nor deprive them of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny them the equal protection of the laws.” 15th Amendment. States that with the exception of Indians, all born in the US are citizens. “Rights of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the US or any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Voting Rights Enforcement Act. Prohibited discrimination against voters. Includes measures to be taken by Federal Government in event of election fraud or conspiracy. Voting Rights Act. Strengthened enforcement powers of Enforcement Act of 1870 in large cities. Ku Klux Klan Act. Designates certain crimes as punishable under federal law including conspiracies to deprive citizens of the right to vote or equal protections of the law. Required federal district attorneys to prosecute violations of the Act. Civil Rights Act. Penalized innkeepers, proprietors of public establishments, and owners of public conveyances for discriminating against blacks in accommodations. Nullified by the Supreme Court in 1883 on grounds that 14th Amendment applied to states but not to individuals Voting Rights Act. Empowers federal judges to jail for contempt anyone who prevents a qualified person from voting. Established Civil rights Commission to investigate violations. Voting Rights Act. Further protection of voting rights for blacks. Civil Rights Act. Prohibits, inter alia, “discrimination for reason of color, race, religion or national origin,” in places of public accommodation in interstate commerce, employment, and labor unions. May withhold federal funds from any state practicing discrimination. Established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 24th Amendment. Outlaws the poll tax and any tax made a requirement for voting in primaries and elections for federal office. Voting Rights Act. Provides for federal officers to register black-voters in any county in which the justice Department finds less than half of eligible voters voting in presidential elections. Civil Rights Act. Prohibits discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. Equal Employment Opportunity Act. Amends Civil Rights Act 1964 to include public employees. Civil Rights Act. Amends Civil Rights Act of 1964. Provides monetary damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination or harassment. Equal Employment Opportunity Act. Prohibits employment discrimination on 14 grounds including race.

Sources: Foner (1988) passim; Degler et al. (1979) passim; Columbia Encyclopedia (2001): 565. Note: List is restricted to civil rights legislation that responds to inter-racial discrimination.

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virtually eliminated by the 1960s. By the 1980s, voting rights were rarely violated and overt job discrimination had disappeared. Federal legislation also encouraged a broad spectrum of preferential “affirmative-action” measures, designed to bring blacks into higher-status jobs, in proportion to their share of the total population. “Busing” (transportation of students from schools of one race to schools of the other race) was undertaken to ensure that blacks attended racially integrated schools. There was also a civil-society dimension. White religious organizations, labor unions, advocacy groups, and individuals supplemented the activities of the black civil-rights organizations and supported many desegregation activities; for example, hundreds of white college students went South to aid in black voter registration drives. Economic growth made a strong contribution. World War II ended the Great Depression and the US economy expanded rapidly. Millions of rural African Americans found work in urban manufacturing and other industries. Black men in white-collar jobs increased from 5 percent of total black employment in 1940 to 32 percent in 1990. Over the same period, the share of white-collar jobs among employed black women increased from 6 to 59 percent. Similar increases took place in relative incomes. In 1940 the gross average wage of black males relative to the white male average was 41 percent. By 1995 this had risen to 67 percent. Relative earnings for black women went from 36 percent in 1940 to 89 percent in 1995. As discussed near the end of the chapter, much of the remaining difference is explained by differences in level of education and cognitive skills. Occupational structure gives a similar picture, in indicating black entrance into numerous occupations from which they had been shut out (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997: 185ff). Economic growth afforded the opportunities that made possible these advances. It clearly facilitated the creation of today’s black middle and upper classes. Much of this improvement in relative black economic status was enabled by expansion in black educational attainment. Table 8.4 shows that by 2005 about 81 percent of the black population graduated from high school while the corresponding statistics for whites was 86 percent. Up to World War II, blacks rarely completed college. Table 8.4 shows the black population with college degrees expanding from 3 percent in 1960 to over 18 percent in 2006, although the interracial gap in college graduates remains large: since 1990, black college graduates as a percentage of total population remain 10 to 11 percentage points behind whites. Intermarriage, that fundamental indicator of intergroup integration,9 has also become a reality. As late as 1965, marriage between Negroes and whites was virtually unknown. In 1967, following the US Supreme Court’s ruling that miscegenation laws are unconstitutional, they were all withdrawn. Today most Americans do not espouse the intermarriage taboo.10 Table 8.5 shows that by 2006 mixed marriages (i.e., with one black spouse) were 13 percent of all black/black marriages. More telling, Table 8.5 implies that black mixed

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Table 8.4 Educational attainment by race 1960–2006, high school graduate or more and college graduate or more (in percent for persons 25 years and older)

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2003 2004 2005 2006

High School Graduates

College Graduates

White

Black

Black/White

White

Black

Black/White

43.2 54.5 68.8 79.1 84.9 85.1 85.8 85.7 86.1

20.1 31.4 51.2 66.2 78.5 80.0 80.6 81.1 80.7

46.5 57.6 74.4 83.7 92.5 94.0 93.9 94.6 93.7

8.1 11.3 17.1 22.0 26.1 27.6 28.2 28.0 28.4

3.1 4.4 8.4 11.3 16.5 17.3 17.6 17.6 18.5

38.3 38.9 49.1 51.4 63.2 62.7 62.4 62.9 65.1

Source: US Statistical Abstract 2008: Table 217. Note: Excludes Hispanics. Table 8.5 US black and mixed black married couples, selected years 1980–2006 (‘000)

Black/black marriages Black/white marriages Black/other race marriages Total black mixed marriages Mixed marriages as % of total black/black marriages

1980

1990

1998

2000

2006

3,354 167 34 211

3,687 211 33 244

3,839 330 43 373

3,989 363 50 413

3,965 403 108 511

6.3

6.6

9.7

10.4

12.9

Sources: Data for 1980/1990/1998 are from US Statistical Abstract 1999, Table 65. Data for 2000/2006 are from US Statistical Abstract 2008, Table 59, except the data for total black/black marriages for 2000 and 2006 which are also data of the US Census Bureau, but accessed online in late September 2008, at http://www.census.gov/ population/www/socdemo/hh-fam.html.

marriages are increasing rapidly. They more than doubled in the 16 years between 1990 and 2006. All in all, perhaps, nearly two-thirds of African Americans can be considered as having moved into upper blue-collar, middle and higher classes, after having remained at the bottom of the socio-economic status structure for nearly a century following Emancipation. Reduced discrimination that opened a large increase in urban job opportunities in a rapidly expanding economy combined with a substantial increase in educational attainment were three necessary elements in the move. The civil-rights movement reduced discrimination, thus facilitating the increase in demand for black labor. The black supply response came via urban migration and increased schooling, which provided the skills to respond to broadened job opportunities and the move into the middle classes.

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Inner cities and the rural Black Belt: slow roads to parity Notwithstanding much progress, black integration into the economic mainstream is incomplete. Income comparisons in Table 8.6 show persistent and large differences in black and white family incomes. For example, 2003–5 data show median white incomes at 1.75 times those of African Americans. Moreover, pronounced unequal progress to parity within the black community is reflected in considerably greater intragroup inequality among blacks than other groups. At least as far back as 1967, inequality among American blacks, as measured by Gini coefficients, was larger than that of either whites or Hispanics. In 1992, the Gini coefficient for money incomes of whites was 0.38, compared to 0.46 for blacks and 0.41 for Hispanics (Darity and Myers 1998: 16). Further, mobility out of poverty for blacks is lower than that of poor Americans in general. Taking US data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Thomas Hertz (2002) constructed an intergenerational transition matrix comparing decile position of parental income with adult offspring income. In the aggregate US population, 3.7 percent of adult children from parents in the lowest income decile were in the highest income quintile and 50.7 percent of such children were in the lowest income quintile. For parents in the highest income decile the probability of their adult children being in the highest tenth is 22.7 percent; and is 40.7 percent for being in the highest fifth. When these data are partitioned into black and white subsets, “blacks born to the bottom quartile attain the top quartile at one half the rate of whites” (Bowles and Gintis 2002: 7–8, reporting on the work of Hertz 2002). In general, Hertz’s transition matrix indicates that poor African Americans are caught in a

Table 8.6 Incomes of black and white families for selected periods in 2005 dollars (percentages and dollars) Family incomes

Below $5,000 Below $15,000 Above $25,000 Above $50,000 Median Mean White/black median income White/black mean income

1967–69

1988–90

2003–05

Black

White

Black

White

Black

White

5 28 50 32 25,682 31,126*

2 10 78 62 42,679 48,807*

6 26 58 44 30,800 40,069

2 8 82 71 53,978 64,800

7 21 64 51 36,086 48,034

2 6 86 75.8 63,265 80,627

1.66

1.75

1.75

1.57

1.62

1.68

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, Table 673. Notes: * These means do not include 1967 as no data were available. Data are three-year arithmetic means. Data for 1967 and 1988 include Hispanics who may be of either race, while data for 2003–05 exclude Hispanics

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poverty trap of limited upward mobility to greater degree than the poor Americans in general. Data in Table 8.6 support this conclusion. For example, the percentage of black families with annual incomes below $5,000 (in 2005 dollars), an amount far below the poverty line, increased from 5 percent in 1967–69 to 6 percent in 1988–90 to 7 percent in 2003–5, notwithstanding an increase in black median income of more than 40 percent over the same period. These outcomes are consistent with developments in the “inner cities,” that is the poor black districts of the largest urban areas, e.g., Detroit, Chicago, New York, and Washington. Much of the poorest third of American blacks is racially segregated in inner cities with educational access limited to mainly low-quality schools. Many of the families in this situation are headed by single-parent mothers. In 2005 more than one-third of all black families were led by single-parent females while the percentage of black children in poverty was 34, compared to 14 percent for white children (US Census Bureau 2008: Tables 690, 694). In general, the inner-city population of African Americans is characterized by poverty, high family instability, low school attainment, high unemployment, and high social deviance (unemployment, domestic violence, crime, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, truancy). They are also locales with a high frequency of oppositional cultures among African American adolescents who frequently do not complete high school and often join neighborhood gangs (Chubb and Loveless 2002: 148 and 155, fn. 23). Slow progress is also consistent with the most persistent pattern of black poverty that concentrates in rural counties that make up the “Black Belt” of the Southern states. These too are characterized by low educational attainment, low labor-force participation, and poverty: in 2002 “non-metro” or rural poverty rates for non-Hispanic blacks were among the highest in the country at 33 percent (USDA Economic Research Service: 2004: 2). For the United States as a whole black women are nearly at wage parity with white women, with a black/white female wage ratio for full-time employed workers that has remained between 90 and 100 percent since 1970. In contrast, Darity and Myers describe black men in the inner cities as caught in “a process of marginalization.” The corresponding black/white ratio for males has failed to converge and remains under 0.8 (Darity and Myers 1998: 43ff). Further, about a million black women are in college or graduate school, about twice the number of black men. Black males have also have had higher rates of unemployment. In 1998, 84 percent of black males aged 16 through 24 included in the civilian non-institutional population (which excludes those in prison) were either enrolled in school or employed. The corresponding statistic for white males was 96 percent (US Census Bureau 1999, Table 656). In 1999 there were about 2 million adults, guilty of felonies, on probation. About a third of these were African Americans, although blacks account for 13 percent of the national resident population (Di Iulio and Tierney 2000).11 More recent data suggest that these discrepancies persist. In 2006, the longterm incarceration rate for black males was more than six times that of whites in federal and state prisons (Sabol and Couture 2008).

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In summary, following the Second World War the majority of US blacks experienced substantial improvements in education, occupational status, and income. They can be considered as having moved into the mainstream of American life. But a third has remained trapped in poverty. Most of these live in either the rural black belt of the old south or inner city ghettos. Glenn Loury describes the latter as “black districts... [that] vie for the dubious distinction of being the most despairing places in the industrial world” and asks “What, then, must we do with and for the one third or so of black America that seems to be permanently alienated from the structures of opportunity in this society?” (Loury 1997: 147, 154). Another black social scientist, Cornel West, strikes a similar chord when he argues that to avoid “nihilism in black America,” We must delve into … the murky waters of despair and dread that now flood the streets of black America. To talk about the depressing statistics of unemployment, infant mortality, incarceration, teenage pregnancy, and violent crime is one thing. But to face up to the monumental eclipse of hope, the unprecedented collapse of meaning, the incredible disregard for human (especially black) life and property in much of black America is something else. West 1993: 12)

Identity, dignity and rhe African roots of African Americans The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future. (Schomburg 1994: 61)12

For many black Americans, substantial progress toward income and educational parity has been accompanied by a reinterpretation of the meaning of African American identity as discussed below. Chapter 2 asserts that SRELIM develop subcultures which contradict the pejorative stereotypes of dominant groups that stigmatize the SRELIM and force derogative identities on them. The remedial subcultures involve narratives of admirable group traits and histories, including reinterpretations of traumatic events that promote formation of alternative identities to generate pride in origins and self-esteem rather than stigmatization and denigration. The resulting “collective memories” and “counternarratives” also serve to rebut falsehoods, distortions in the historical record, and prejudiced beliefs among dominant groups. In the case of Americans of African origins, there is a long history of white historians and other scholars perpetuating and intensifying popular prejudices with “misconceptions, half-truths, and often times unmitigated lies” regarding Africa’s role in world history and stereotypical views of Africans. Derogatory stereotypes of genetic inferiority are prominent among these views, and have been buttressed by alleged “scientific evidence” (Allen 2001: 20, 24, 25). Richard Allen reviews this history and concludes that such views persist despite massive

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countervailing evidence. He also contends that European scholars have misrepresented and minimized African contributions to world history. He finds that many aspects of European cultures are derived from older African and Asian civilizations, while African religions and spiritual systems were sources of major philosophical and ethical principles embedded in the major Western religions (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism). Allen and likeminded scholars emphasize that fuller recognition of Africa’s contributions has important implications for formation of a positive identity among African Americans, who have “tenaciously held on to the historical and psychological bonds to Africa” (Allen 2001: 19, 23). Many other black American scholars and leaders have also rejected dominant white interpretations of African history and sought to rediscover a true African cultural heritage. Shortly before his death in l965, Malcolm X turned to an emphasis on shared African roots, and urged African Americans to “rediscover our history, promote the talents that are suppressed by our racist enslavers, renew the culture that was crushed by a slave government and thereby to again become a free people” (Van Deburg 1997: 109, as cited by Eyerman 2001: 188). The return to African roots has several obvious manifestations. Some African Americans have dropped English-language family names, many of which come down from the former slave-holders, and substituted names of African origin. Many seek to determine the sites, tribes. and cultures of their African progenitors. It appears that about 12 percent of the African American community celebrates the African festival and rituals of Kwanzaa (meaning first fruits in Swahili) during the winter-solstice holiday season (BIGresearch (sic) 2008). Reinterpretation of African history and celebration of African roots are important aspects of black Americans’ progress toward parity, and are not captured by data on incomes, education, and other statistical measures. Even among those blacks who have moved firmly into the middle or upper classes, their achievements may not fully conduce to establish individual and collective perceptions of dignity and self-worth. Given the history and lingering reality of prejudice, the longing for and claim to full self-confidence cannot be entirely satisfied by becoming more and more like the white community. Moreover, asserting a different and admirable heritage is compatible with the pluralist American image of a nation that melds but does not entirely erase the traditions of its many peoples.

Eradicating discrimination The ink is black; the paper is white. Together we learn to read and write. And every child can understand. This is the law of all the land. (From a civil-rights song)

Many public policies, programs, and institutions have been used to help black Americans move to parity with other Americans. Although these evolved over

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a century and a half, the years of most rapid advance occurred in two periods, Reconstruction and the civil-rights movement after World War II to the 1980s. Here the focus is the second period beginning with federal government measures to eradicate discrimination. The Supreme Court and school integration Among the most fundamental changes in the second period was the Supreme Court decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. Linda Brown was denied admission to an all-white public elementary school in Topeka, Kansas because she was black. In 1954, in a unanimous decision(!), the Court decided in favor of Brown on the grounds that the Board’s refusal to enroll her was a violation of the 14th amendment’s requirement that no state shall make any law that denies a US citizen within its jurisdiction “the equal protection of the laws.” The Board of Education had argued that the equal protection clause did not apply because the Board provided a separate but equal alternative black school. That argument had a strong precedent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), when the Supreme Court decided that racial segregation was constitutional if the separate facilities provided to each race were equal. The attorneys of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) who had brought the suit on behalf of Linda Brown argued the contrary. The Court found that the badge of inferiority stamped upon minority students under the segregated school system prevented their full development and thereby denied them equal protection. Indeed, the Court concluded that the “equal but separate” standard was a contradiction in terms. In the South, the reaction to the decisions was shock and a backlash of massive resistance to school integration, including harassing the NAACP and shutting it down in Alabama in 1957 (Ackerman and Duval 2000: 309). The Court’s judgment initiated a paradigm shift in the interpretation of constitutional provisions concerning civil rights. Because of the new interpretation, school segregation (mandated by state laws in the South but customary elsewhere in the nation) had become unconstitutional. This became manifest as the Supreme Court and other federal courts applied the new standard in litigation in the next decade. However, throughout the nation, compliance lagged in 1955 and 1956 and the Court followed up with orders that integration of schools be carried out with “all deliberate speed.” The executive branch of the federal government then sought to accelerate school integration. One approach to encourage states to change a policy or undertake a new activity is to tie federal funding to the desired change. Recurring federal grants to state authorities for education programs are common, e.g., early-childhood development programs discussed later in the chapter. The federal government may withhold transfers of funds to states that fail to comply with desired programs. The threat of such actions occurred in the 1950s when certain states (not just in the South) initially failed to move forward with school desegregation. Generally the states moved to full integration in

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response. Further, on two occasions military forces under federal control were sent to oversee and facilitate school integration in the face of adamant resistance by state governments: Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957, and the University of Mississippi in 1962. Nationwide, integration was also facilitated by “busing.” In urban areas, neighborhoods and their schools frequently are racially segregated because of residential segregation. To overcome this, for a time many urban school systems bused children from one hitherto segregated system to another. By 1971, the proportion of black children in formerly white Southern schools reached 39 percent. School integration in the South had become more thorough than elsewhere in the nation (Degler et al. 1979: 324). Boycotts and sit-ins Following Brown v. Board of Education, black-led actions soon assailed “separate but equal” accommodations and facilities from many directions. Railroad and bus waiting rooms, gasoline stations without toilets for blacks, restaurants and hotels, movie theaters, public beaches, even segregated churches all came under attack. Frequently the actions involved lawsuits for violation of constitutional rights. More numerous were various kinds of consumer boycotts and techniques similar to sit-down strikes that were not necessarily dependent on litigation. The Montgomery, Alabama bus desegregation is an early example of the latter. It involved boycott and other basic techniques most used in later desegregation actions. The action started on 1 December 1955, when Rosa Parks (the secretary of the Montgomery Office of the NAACP) refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a standing white passenger. She was arrested and appealed her fine of $10. The NAACP wished to use the arrest as a test case of the legality of Montgomery’s bus segregation practice. (A city ordinance did not explicitly require segregated seating but gave bus drivers authority to assign seats.) But the arrest also provided an opportunity for a bus boycott to protest the arrest. The organizers advertised the initial boycott via church meetings and handbills asking African Americans to stay off the buses for a single day, Monday, 5 December 1955, four days after Parks’s arrest. The initial boycott was very successful in that nearly all black bus-riders (numbering in the tens of thousands) made other arrangements for going to work while nearly empty buses drove through the city throughout the day. The organizers thereupon undertook an indefinite boycott until the city authorities would agreed to their demands. These were a truly “separate but equal” solution in that half the bus seats would be unconditionally reserved for black people, the other half for whites, although Negroes would continue sitting in the back half of the bus. In addition, blacks asked for courteous treatment of Negroes by the bus-operators and employment of Negro busoperators on Negro-neighborhood routes. They also formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to manage the boycott and chose the young Martin Luther King as leader. Donations from black churches and other sources

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came in from throughout the country and new vehicles for carpools were purchased. Black taxis cooperated by charging bus-fare prices. The extended boycott proved very effective: few blacks rode buses during the boycott. But negotiation was futile, even after dropping the condition that black drivers man routes through black districts. Rather, the city authorities embarked on a policy of resistance including a warning that those who walked to work could be arrested for vagrancy. King received death threats and his home was firebombed on 30 January with no injuries but much damage. The home of a second leader was bombed several days later. The bombings were good publicity and journalists from across the country and the world converged on Montgomery. King became famous. A grand jury concluded that the MIA was a conspiracy to destroy a legitimate business. On 21 February it indicted more than 100 activists led by King, who was convicted and imprisoned for two weeks pending appeal of the verdict. In September, when the city forced local insurers to stop insuring the vehicles in the allegedly illegal carpools, the MIA succeeded in arranging liability insurance with Lloyd’s of London. On 1 February, the MIA reversed its policy of minimal intransigence and with assistance from the NAACP filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutional legality of segregation. Three months later the court ruled on MIA’s suit and announced that bus segregation was unconstitutional. The city appealed to the US Supreme Court, which ruled on 14 November 1956 that Alabama’s state and local laws requiring segregation on public buses were unconstitutional. The ruling took place shortly before a local court was expected to grant an injunction stopping carpool operations on the basis on the city’s complaint that the carpool was “a private enterprise operating without a franchise.” On 21 December, African Americans and whites rode together on integrated public buses for the first time. Initially all went well. But within a few days buses were fired on throughout the city, halting all evening and night transport. On 9 January 1957, bombs were set off that destroyed the homes of two MIA leaders, and damaged four black churches. Shortly thereafter, the violence ceased and the integrated buses resumed normal operations (Paulson 2005: 163–64). The Montgomery bus boycott illustrates one characteristic of actions taken by African Americans to bring down segregation and other forms of discrimination: avoidance of violence. Participants in the boycott were schooled to avoid threatening behavior either in speech or movement, and to minimize harm done to their persons in event of white attacks. In succeeding years the “tool kit” brought to bear by blacks struggling for their civil rights included marches, protest assemblies, and a very large number of “sit-ins.” All of these were nonviolent actions. The sit-ins were initially a novel approach to desegregation. One of the earliest took place at a lunch counter in a Nashville department store. In 1960, several “colored” customers (after careful preparation including training in non-threatening behavior) bought a few store items, then sat down, and requested lunch. They were not served, but remained sitting. The lunch counter

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closed down following their refusal to leave. Following their plan of operations, some days later, blacks returned to the same counter, sat down, but were not served. This continued for days. Some were beaten, others arrested to be quickly replaced by enthusiastic newcomers. Later, the sit-in was supplemented by a black purchasing boycott of stores throughout Nashville’s downtown area. The combined action succeeded and the counter and other restaurants were integrated. Sit-ins received massive media attention and spread quickly. They peaked during the 1960s, involving restaurants, hotels, bus terminals, etc. There were also “wade-ins” at segregated public beaches, and even “pray-ins” at segregated churches. In April 1961, sit-ins (most of which were student-led) took place in 78 cities. “About 70,000 participated in one or more actions during 1960, and well over 3,000 went to jail … business establishments in nearly 100 southern towns were integrated by the end of 1961” (Ackerman and Duval 2000: 328–29). Sit-ins and boycotts proved less feasible in the deep South where authorities were willing to jail participants. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, however, explicitly prohibited discrimination in “interstate commerce” and provided for withholding federal funds from any state that practiced racial discrimination (Table 8.3). In response, commercial establishments and public facilities became integrated in the cities of the South (Degler et al. 1979: 340). Restoration of black voting rights Following Reconstruction, most blacks in the South remained deprived of voting rights, initially by violence, later by subterfuge, including abusive interpretation of legislation and blatant obstruction by state officials. Full payment of the poll tax (a lump-sum tax per person) was often required as a prerequisite for voting. It was outlawed in federal elections by the 24th amendment to the constitution in 1964. In 1966 the Supreme Court declared that poll taxes were unconstitutional as prerequisites for voting in any election. Literacy requirements, selectively enforced, were also widely exploited to prevent blacks from voting. In many situations the authorities simply refused to register blacks as voters. In Mississippi in 1964, three young volunteer civilrights workers were murdered for aiding African Americans in registering to vote. However, by means of the protection and support afforded by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Table 8.3), millions of black adults were registered. By 1970, about two-thirds of eligible blacks in the South had registered. And blacks who registered also voted, nationwide. In 1975, over 3,500 blacks held elective office, an increase of 88 percent since 1970. By mid-decade, scores of cities including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit, Gary, and Newark were headed by black mayors. (Degler et al. 1979: vol. II, 340) Today blacks vote, in the main, with as little difficulty as other US citizens.

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Remedies for labor-market discrimination Equal Employment Opportunities Commission13 Before World War II, nationwide labor discrimination against blacks was the rule. African Americans were excluded from many occupations and positions, whether blue collar, white collar, or professional. As noted earlier, by the 1950s the prohibitions and restrictions were eroding; e.g., the US armed forces were thoroughly integrated while in 1947, the age-old prejudice that had universally kept talented black athletes out of professional sports was breached when Jackie Robinson was permitted to play Big League Baseball. The pace of progress picked up with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which explicitly prohibits racial discrimination in employment and labor unions. It also established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as an independent federal agency to support implementation of the new law. The EEOC was set up, inter alia, to investigate employee complaints of discrimination in the workplace and to bring suit against presumptive perpetrators for violation of employee civil rights. The agency took the lead in developing federal implementation regulations for the antidiscrimination stipulations of the act and in filing lawsuits and investigation of firm employment practices. EEOC lawsuits and other actions in turn gave rise to several decisions by the Supreme Court that defined and prohibited specific discriminatory employment practices. The EEOC also set up a national employment reporting system that required companies with 100 or more employees (accounting for 94 million employees in 1994, 80 percent of total employment) to periodically report on the racial and gender composition of their workforces at each occupational level. The high costs to employers of complying with antidiscrimination legislation and regulation indicates the pervasiveness and durability of the overall effort to deal with US labor-market discrimination. Holzer and Neumark (2000: 544) report on research that estimated these costs in 1976–77 at about $250 (measured in 1976 dollars) per worker per year. Identifying and defining labor discrimination, however, proved difficult. By the 1970s its most obvious forms had largely disappeared, e.g., exclusion from unions and refusal of firms to employ minorities. Other types of labor discrimination have frequently not been clearcut because a simple and readily applicable definition of what constitutes unlawful discrimination in the workplace has not been established. For example, failure to employ a person could be job discrimination, but could also be due to a lack of the requisite skills. Interpretation of wage discrimination (failure to pay equal wages for equal work) may also be ambiguous. Moreover, Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom found that what is routinely considered discrimination may actually be subsidization. They reported on a study of men between the ages of 26 and 33, who held full-time jobs in 1991. In this group, blacks earned 19 percent less than whites who had the same level of education.

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But when the yardstick was how well they performed on basic tests of word knowledge, paragraph comprehension, arithmetic reasoning and mathematical knowledge, the results were reversed. Black men earned 9 percent more than white men with the same education – as defined by skill. (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997: 446)14 An early “solution” to the problem of defining job discrimination was to develop a proportional employment doctrine, defined as number employed of the minority in proportion to the minority share in the population. Most firms employed a lower proportion of blacks than their proportion in the labor force (about 11 percent in the 1980s). Moreover the “underutilization” within firms generally increased with job status. Many civil-rights workers asserted that were it not for prejudice, minorities would be employed proportionately in every job category, although occupational specialization by ethnic groups has been universal over time and place (Sowell 1983). “Underutilization” has been considered the most frequent prima facie evidence of employment discrimination. If a firm or other entity (schools, local governments, churches) employed an “over-proportion” of majority workers in a situation where qualified black workers were available, the firm may have had to show the EEOC why its employment practices were not discriminatory. Further, firms have been required by the EEOC to “validate” practices that resulted in minority “underrepresentation,” such as employment testing or internal promotion, by demonstrating that “business necessity” required the dubious practice. Use of the proportionality assumption as a point of departure for analyzing possibly discriminatory employment practices often led to a requirement by the EEOC that firms set remedial employment quotas for various employment categories. Firms that fell short were required to demonstrate a clear rationale for such outcomes. Poorer employment skills among blacks have been due to earlier discrimination, most clearly in denial of access to education, but also exclusion from many kinds of early work discipline and other kinds of opportunity for acquiring work skills. Based on this reasoning, the EEOC developed a doctrine of “compensatory preferences.” As applied in a number of lawsuits, the doctrine justified job preferences that exceed those required for elimination of discrimination. Although employers were not responsible for such “institutional” or societal discrimination, they could nevertheless be penalized by being required to provide employment, in some situations where the beneficiary was less well qualified than majority candidates. The drift toward compensatory preferences continued into the 1970s notwithstanding the strong repudiation of both preferential and penalizing discrimination in the US constitution and in the civil-rights legislation of 1964. To avoid challenges to their employment practices, many employers adopted affirmative-action policies aiming to increase employment of black workers, including preferential recruitment and promotion practices as well as inhouse training programs. Many firms also sought to avoid using tests or requiring

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minimum levels of education that indicate the presence of skills and knowledge that may be only marginally required for the job. Holzer and Neumark found that employers who use preferential or “voluntary affirmative action plans” “tend to hire minorities who are less qualified,” with lower educational attainment but “recruit more extensively and use more intensive screening of job candidates” (Holzer and Neumark 2000: 492). In addition, they found that among the broad set of establishments using affirmative action in recruiting, the results indicate that minorities and women in these establishments perform if anything better than white males; the ratings differentials are positive for all groups, and significant for black males (at the ten percent level) and black females. They also discovered that in recruiting such firms gave less weight to negative personal attributes and more training to new employees than other firms (ibid.: 537). A factor complicating the development of such employment policies is the constitutional requirement that they not discriminate in favor of blacks and other minorities. This looks like a contradiction in terms which can be resolved only to the degree that the apparent preference is also entirely a case of removing discrimination. An illustration of these issues is furnished by the case of American Telephone and Telegraph. In 1974, ATT settled with the EEOC after it was found that the giant company had long paid blacks, Hispanics, and women substantially less than what they would have paid white men doing similar work. (The total calculated came to $362 million.) One consequence of this finding was permission to ATT to develop a pro-minority affirmative-action plan that discriminated against whites (De Ware 1978). Notwithstanding non-discrimination laws, federal government procurement practice has a history of strong affirmative action for minority individuals and minority-owned businesses. This includes contract bidding preferences (e.g., minority bids as high as 10 percent above the lowest bid win the contract), bonuses for prime contractors that subcontract to minority firms, and exemption of minority contractors from competitive bidding under certain circumstances. Federal procurement regulations have also required that employers who underemploy minority workers provide a written affirmative-action plan that includes time-bound minority hiring goals. Affirmative action under attack The 1990s saw increasing backlash against preferences (including the doctrine of compensatory preferences for past discrimination), by the general public as well as among various stakeholders. According to a national Gallup Poll, by 1991 only 11 percent of Americans favored affirmative action, 8 percent of whites and 24 percent of blacks (Darity and Myers 1998: 144). Lawsuits in which plaintiffs argued that they were victims of discrimination because they

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were passed over in favor of less-qualified minority candidates increased and became increasingly successful. These outcomes applied against firms but also against educational and other nonprofit organizations. As the levels of black education approached parity with majority levels, and the evidence of overt discrimination greatly decreased, under-proportionate racial employment lost support as prima facie evidence of discrimination along with the requirement that firms needed to validate as business necessity employment practices that had “disparate impact” on minority hiring. Widespread publication of information on shortcomings of government procurement contract “set asides” (reservation of certain items of procurement for minorities) and other preference schemes, along with increasing awareness of anti-white discrimination (a necessary corollary of pro-black preferences) further reduced support for affirmative action. Finally, preferences for blacks came under attack by other minorities, notably Asians and Hispanics who did not receive similar benefits. Nevertheless a large proportion of US firms and schools continued to implement “diversity plans” and “equal-opportunity” goals. In 1995, a poll of firms supplying the federal government found that 73 percent of the firms said that they would continue their affirmative-action programs even if contracts with the federal government no longer required them (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997: 452). Support for such plans and goals may serve the firms’ interest by increasing the potential supply of labor available to the firm at a given wage. This would be the case if majority-worker resistance to minority hiring and promotion can be checked, and if training and orientation of new black employees, if needed, quickly bring them to skills parity with other employees. Many employers have welcomed federal-government affirmativeaction directives for minority hiring and promotions as means of managing majority-employee resistance to an increasing role for minorities in their firms (Hiestand 2000). Indeed, during the administrations of Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr (1980–92), the efforts of officials within the executive branch to remove the affirmative-action requirements mandatory for bidding on government contracts were successfully resisted by the larger firms of the business community led by the National Association of Manufacturers (Bergmann 1996: 160). The threat of federally imposed affirmative-action interventions may also have encouraged firms to “over-recruit” blacks for positions, across the board. In certain industries there is evidence that some employers have discriminated in favor of blacks in their new hires including universities and public utilities, although these two sectors were among the “leading practitioners of employment discrimination against blacks during the 1930s” (Sowell 1990: 36). It may also be true of government employment. Governments, local, state and national, accounted for more than half of the increase in black professional, managerial, and technical employment from 1960 to 1979 (ibid.: 115). Let me conclude this subsection by noting that notwithstanding affirmativeaction backlash, the EEOC remains very much “in business.” It received more

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than 73,000 complaints of civil-rights violations in federal fiscal year (FY) 2005, including not just race discrimination but also complaints of sexual harassment and age discrimination. In FY 2006, about 27,000 charges of racial discrimination were filed with EEOC offices, amounting to 36 percent of their caseload. The total number of EEOC employees in FY 2006 was 2,052 and the budget $322 million (US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 1997).15 Approaches to minority disadvantage within the US civil service Decreasing support for affirmative action persists. New approaches for dealing with social disadvantage of blacks and other minorities are being tried within the federal government. Use of the underrepresentation criterion was eliminated in 2003 with promulgation of EEOC Directive 715 requiring that managers of federal agencies eliminate consideration of the racial distribution of staff in taking personnel decisions. As stated in the directive, “Conclusions concerning the existence of workplace barriers cannot be drawn from gross numerical assessment … . Rather the identification of workplace barriers will require a thorough examination of all of the circumstances” (Washington Post 2004: A-37). Discrimination, however, was still seen as a problem and under the new directive managers were required to identify “barriers” to advancement of minorities in hiring and promotions in new reports beginning in 2005. Moreover, in 2004, the federal government initiated a program of competitive examinations to broaden opportunities for minorities, women, and people with disabilities to enter the senior executive service, the corps of about 7,000 senior administrators and technical experts who manage the federal government. So the US civil service itself has moved from classical affirmative action to programs that are remedial in intent and designed to overcome the disadvantages of minorities growing out of a long history of exploitation, stigmatization, and associated weak earning endowments. In response to the concern that the program itself may involve efforts to allocate candidate slots on the basis of some sort of quota, the program administrators have emphasized that the “new program would adhere to rules that require fair and open competition for federal jobs” (Barr 2004: B2). Backlash to preferences in education Since 2000, federal courts have increasingly ruled that integration of schools by compulsory busing so as to achieve racial balance was discriminatory and illegal. In response, some school districts began to diversify student bodies by family income16 and student academic achievement. At the college level, certain schools with predominantly high-income, high-achievement students also sought to increase ethnic and class diversity by enrolling low-income and, if necessary, lower-scoring students (Washington Post 2000: A11).

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Affirmative action and admission to higher education In the twenty-first century, the backlash against affirmative action in university and college admissions has also been pronounced, and often acrimonious. By the 1960s universities and colleges had substantially increased admission of black students by applying lower admissions standards with respect to scores on academic achievement tests. By the 1980s, a number of mainstream students who failed to gain admission to universities and colleges filed suits for discrimination claiming that they had been excluded to the benefit of underqualified black students. Several of these suits were appealed to and heard by the Supreme Court, which ruled that such discriminatory behavior was unconstitutional in violating the “equal protection of the laws” clause of the 14th amendment.17 As a result, schools now routinely stress the educational advantages for students of experiencing diverse student bodies to justify admission of otherwise relatively low-scoring minority students. In response to citizens’ referendums on the issue of discriminatory preferences in university/college admissions, several states have passed laws that ban any form of preferences in admissions based on or otherwise involving consideration of race, gender, color, ethnicity, or national origins. Two states (Michigan and Washington) have extended the ban to public employment and contracting.18 It is noteworthy that since 1997, Texas avoids the issue by automatically admitting to its selective public universities all students that graduate in the top 10 percent of their high-school class. Residential segregation is pronounced in Texas as elsewhere in the United States. Schools reflect the ethnoracial composition of the neighborhoods in which they are located and from which they draw their students. Because residence of blacks, particularly poor blacks, is highly segregated racially, the result is admissions eligibility that is close to 10 percent of the highest-performing students in the total black graduating cohort. So one gets closer to the old proportionality goal as a byproduct of a merit-based acceptance criterion.

How much discrimination remains? In 2000, Holzer and Neumark concluded that affirmative action had played a large role in significantly reducing labor-market discrimination since World War II. They found that “there appears to be compelling evidence that affirmative action does increase employment, enrollments, and contracting for minorities and women in the ways we might expect (Holzer and Neumark 2000: 504). They also concluded that “affirmative action offers significant redistribution toward women and minorities with relatively small efficiency consequences” (ibid.: 559). In 1991, the US Urban Institute measured anti-black employment discrimination in low-wage entry-level jobs. The researchers paired black and white males, aged 19 to 24, with hypothetical identical credentials. The pairs

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applied for 1,052 jobs. The research found that “black males faced discriminatory treatment 20 percent of the time while white males faced discriminatory treatment only 7 percent of the time.” Discrimination against blacks concentrated in white-collar jobs and those involving direct client contacts (Darity and Myers 1998: 51). Holzer and Neumark note that this “audit methodology” has “become a popular means of testing for discrimination in housing and labor markets … . The magnitudes of the net differences favoring whites or males in the probabilities of receiving job offers generally range from 5–20 percentage points … .” Whether these differences measure discrimination is controversial. Holzer/Neumark offer a “conceptual criticism” of the studies in that whites and minorities may continue to differ with respect to “characteristics that remain unobserved (such as cognitive skills) but that employers anticipate” (Holzer and Neumark 2000: 496–97). In addition to the cognitive-skills gap, Akerlof ’s modeling of work-oriented “insiders” and alienated “outsiders” is also pertinent, since it captures unmeasured characteristics that are believed likely to substantially differentiate performance of SRELIM from non-SRELIM. (See Chapter 3.) Regression analysis in which wages are the dependent variable is another common mode of estimating the degree of labor-market discrimination. Recent work estimated the crude arithmetic black to white wage ratio as near 0.8. Holzer and Neumark found that the black wage ratio increases to 0.9 when “human-capital controls” (educational attainment, labor-market experience, etc.) are added. When the gap is calculated solely for males, and using separate regressions for blacks and whites, it has been recalculated at about 0.87 for men aged 22 to 29. Holzer and Neumark concluded that [A]ny residual race/sex differences can be interpreted as discrimination or as unobserved productivity that is correlated with race/sex. Most labor economists presume that certain kinds of unobserved skills are lower among women and especially minorities and that their omission leads us to overestimate race and sex differences in the market. … In fact evidence from several recent studies indicates that residual wage differentials nearly disappear for some groups of minorities and women when we include controls for previously unmeasured skills. For instance, inclusion of Armed Force Qualification Test (AFQT) scores in log wage equations can account for much of the residual black–white difference in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. (ibid.: 495) Moving beyond labor markets, black firms have lower debt equity ratios than majority firms and greater difficulty in general in accessing venture capital. To what degree this “shortchanging” may be due to prejudice, or miscalculation (an exaggerated perception of the risks of lending to black firms due to exaggerated perceptions of the likelihood of failure) and to what degree it is due to objective differences in business success is not nearly as exhaustively

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researched as are labor-market issues. Holzer and Neumark reviewed the work on this topic, but were unable to reach a definitive conclusion on the degree to which black business borrowing takes place on a “level playing field” (ibid.: 503). Whatever the discrimination reality, many Americans, and especially black Americans, remain convinced that substantial discrimination against blacks persists. In 2001, four dozen African American business leaders bought a onepage advertisement in the Washington Post to press for repeal of the estate tax as unfair in general, and particularly unfair to the few blacks who have accumulated high net worth: Unlike most White Americans, many African Americans who accumulated wealth did so facing race discrimination in education, employment, and access to capital, and equal access to government resources. In many cases, race discrimination was supported by governmental policies and failure to enforce equal rights laws. It is unfair and unjust for the government through the Estate Tax to seize a part of the estate of the individuals it failed to provide equal opportunity. (Washington Post 2001: A14) A second illustration: the African American Policy Forum finds that affirmative action was essential for creating the African American middle class and “Raceconscious affirmative action remains necessary to address race-based obstacles that block the path to success of countless people of color of all classes” (AAPF 2007: np).

Closing the black/white skills gap The black/white skills gap Through most of their history, US blacks had far less opportunity for education than the majority population. But by 2003, the educational attainment gap through high school between white and blacks had largely disappeared. As indicated in Table 8.4, in 2006, about 86 percent of the white population had graduated from high school while the corresponding statistics for blacks was nearly as high, 81 percent. The table also shows, however, that the gap in college graduates remains large with little diminution: since 1990 black college graduates as a percentage of total population remain 10 to 11 percentage points behind whites. Table 8.7, however, shows that equal school attainment (as measured by high-school graduation) does not imply equal achievement in cognitive skills. Whites acquire more cognitive skill per year of schooling than blacks. Using test scores of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Table 8.7 shows that by age 17, on average, black students are four years behind whites

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in reading and mathematics. Thus, in 2004, the average reading and arithmetic scores for black high-school seniors were nearly identical with the corresponding average scores for white eighth-graders. The National Urban League, a longstanding black leadership and advocacy organization, sees these skill gaps as explaining much of continuing black disadvantage in contemporary America (National Urban League 2008: 3). Much of the difference in educational achievement at the college level, and the lag in incomes of fully employed blacks are explained by such pronounced differences in cognitive skills. Cognitive skills correlate with several measures of job performance, with squared correlation coefficients of 0.3 to 0.6 (Holzer and Neumark 2000: 543). Current developments with respect to labor-market skill requirements in an ever more technological world suggest that this correlation is likely to increase in the future. Hence individuals and groups disadvantaged in acquiring such skills will continue to be penalized in the quest for socio-economic status. Many experiments and programs to reach disadvantaged minorities have built on one or another theory of the causes for the interracial skills gap. Initially, segregated schools of low quality were seen as the primary cause. But desegregation and physically improved school facilities have had limited impact in reducing the disparity. “Multicultural” approaches to teaching using school curricula especially designed to respond to the specific cognitive style and

Table 8.7 National assessment of educational progress: average reading and math scores, selected years, 1971–2004 Reading

1971 1973 1975 1977 1978 1984 1986 1999 2004

Mathematics

White age 13

Black age 17

261

239

262

241

263

264

267 266

264 264

Science

White age 13

Black age 17

White age 13

Black age 17

274

270

259

250

256

240

272

268

274 283 288

279 283 285

259 266

253 254

Source: Derived from Fox et al. (2005): Tables 13, 15, 17. Their work is based on data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, selected years. Notes: Scores can range between 0 and 500, but are evaluated at performance levels (i.e. 200, 250, 300, etc. levels) that are representative of different skills sets and abilities. For a detailed explanation of what each level implies for each subject, please see the notes in the tables referenced. The data include only those students enrolled in schools (public and private) and excludes those not tested due to disability or lack of English proficiency. Data available for selected years.

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subculture of black students may have had some success. The relatively low income of the bottom third of blacks has been dismissed as a basic cause, both on the basis of statistical inference (Mayer 1997; Heckman 2008) and the US history of impoverished and uneducated immigrants rising to income and status parity within two or three generations. Numerous studies, however, suggest that teacher quality is important in schooling outcomes and that socially disadvantaged children are more likely to have substandard teachers (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 2003). A recent study based on data from all 50 states concludes that teacher quality has a stronger impact on academic performance than do class size, school spending per student, or student race or family income. (Darling-Hammond 2000). Early-childhood development programs As discussed in Chapter 3, a theory that has gained much recent support among US social scientists promotes programs that concentrate on the very young (beginning in infancy) and their parents, while the child’s habits and other behaviors are still plastic and inchoate. In this view, certain home environments, including those of disadvantaged African Americans, result in cultural endowments or family environments that reduce the child’s capacity for learning and handicap her in schoolwork. In the language of James Heckman (2008), many “family environments” result in a failure to develop adequate “cognitive and socio-emotional skills” in the home that are necessary for success in school. Further, much of a child’s cultural endowment is in place by age five so that it is already difficult to modify the child’s culture so as to improve cognitive functioning and academic potential. If disadvantaged children are to become competent students it is necessary to move “upstream” to complement the home environment long before the child is in school (ibid.). Preprimary school programs are needed to compensate for these shortcomings. Support for this position was dramatically provided in the Hart and Risley study reported on in Chapter 3. Their intensive study of language development for a sample of toddlers in Kansas reached the almost unfathomable conclusion that 3-year olds in families with professional parents used more extensive vocabularies in daily interactions than did mothers on welfare. Here is a gap far greater than even the gulf in income that separates the middle class from the poor; it is scarcely surprising that Coleman19 found that the effects of home and community blotted out almost all those of school. (Traub 2000: 8) Even very good schools with outstanding teachers generally will not “work” very well for students highly disadvantaged by their family culture. The Head Start Programs (HSP) take this tack. Started in 1965 by the federal government as a summer program, HSP have evolved and burgeoned

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over the decades. Currently they provide preschool activities to mainly poor children through age five. Since their beginnings, more than 25 million children have been enrolled in HSP, about 8 percent of the current US population. Program design is flexible and varies from state to state: half day or full days, but with a minimum of 34 weeks per year. With the youngest enrollees, there is, ideally, intensive work with the child’s parents. The emphasis is on three areas: cognitive skills, school readiness, and social and emotional development. In addition, every Head Start program center should supply health screening, hot lunches, nutrition education, and social services. Available most abundantly in inner cities, HSP require that parents apply and actively participate in the program. “Family support” in counseling and instruction is part of the program (Zigler et al. 1987: Chapter 8). What are the basic dimensions of the programs? In 1997, 794,000 children were enrolled in federal Head Start Programs. In 2006 the number had increased to 900,000, of which a third were black children (US Census Bureau 2008: Table 555). In 2007, total enrollment was again 900,000, of whom 36 percent were three-year-olds, and 10 percent under three. The latter are enrolled in the “Early Head Start” Programs which offer low-income families day-care, parenting support, and medical care during the first three years of life of the participants. In US fiscal year 2007, the average cost per child was $7,326 for all HSPs. Programs are state-certified, locally managed, and financed by federal grants. Programs are organized by public agencies, private nonprofit and for-profit organizations, Indian Tribes, public-school systems, and “faith-based” (religious) organizations. Staffing of the programs relies heavily on volunteers (in the majority, family members of children in the programs). In FY 2007 there were 220,000 paid staff and 1.4 million volunteers (Head Start Program Fact Sheet Fiscal Year 2008). Who enrolls is locally determined. Local communities frequently subsidize programs by providing physical plant. Program policies with respect to logistics and financing at the federal level are formulated in terms of the need to reach disadvantaged populations in general, rather than specific minorities. An all-encompassing approach has become standard in the United States for programs that compensate for disadvantage, be it physical or mental handicap, poverty, illness, minority status, etc. Targeting, where it takes place, tends to be on behalf of all disadvantaged members of a “universal” category. Hence programs no longer exclusively target African Americans, but rather the poor (defined in terms of an income poverty line) or disadvantaged minorities in general, including but not limited to blacks, Hispanics, and Amerindians. Many of the preferential programs that are of particular benefit to inner-city and other poor blacks are now packaged as part of larger undertakings designed to deal with disadvantaged people who fit more general categories. An analogous approach is also the rule in cases where the federal government attempts to remedy or prevent discrimination of various kinds. In the past there had been some tendency to specifically formulate such programs to deal with discrimination against blacks. Today practices prohibited

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209

as discriminatory apply not just to race, but also to color, national origins, gender, age, disability, religion, and other categories. One reason for this approach is that it generates more political support than more highly targeted programs. The impact of Head Start and other early-childhood programs on educational capacity has been controversial. A 1985 study by the Department of Health and Human Services concluded that “in the long run cognitive and socio-emotional test scores of former Head Start students do not remain superior to those of disadvantaged students who did not attend head-start” (Traub 2000: 8). A later study concluded that there were no differences between siblings who did and did not attend Head Start (Currie and Duncan 1995). Earlier studies had found that Head Start “significantly improved performance on intelligence tests.” But, “[by] the time the children reached the primary grades, the gains on the intellectual performance measures faded.” The implications of this finding, however, have long been disputed on the grounds that defective followup schooling caused fade out (Zigler et al. 1987: 274). Other assessments concluded that some programs are effective in both the short and long run in increasing children’s capacity for learning and in reducing social deviance:  A study of the long-term impact of an early-childhood program for lowincome children found that after 27 years, each dollar invested saved over seven dollars by increasing the probability that children would be literate, employed, and enrolled in postsecondary education, and less likely to be school dropouts dependent on welfare or arrested for criminal activity or delinquency (Schweinhart et al. 1993).  Mustard reports on several studies that contradict findings which show that gains in cognitive skills from early-childhood development programs disappear later in life. Some of these also show desirable impact with respect to marital stability, educational attainment, mental impairment, and arrest rate (Mustard 2000).  A report on the Chicago Child–Parent Center Program indicated that beginning in the early 1980s, early, sustained, and intensive interventions led to improved educational performance and reduced delinquency for participants as compared to a control group. Initially 989 children born in 1980 (93 percent black, and 7 percent Hispanic) participated beginning at ages three and four in programs that emphasized acquisition of cognitive skills. The programs were intensive in providing small classes, involved parental programs (educational workshops, reading groups), home visits, health and nutrition schooling, and continuing school-age services through the first three grades in the form of reduced class sizes, addition of teacher aides, and parent-program activities. The evaluation stresses that the results were more meaningful than those of many other programs because the Chicago program operated on a large scale and tracked former participants over two decades through early adulthood (Reynolds et al. 2001).

210

US African Americans

 Heckman (2008: Section VII and Table 5) analyzes the outcomes of the Perry Program, an intensive preschool program for 58 disadvantaged black children that ran from 1962 to 1967. It provided a daily 2.5-hour class session and a weekly 90-minute home visit by the class teacher. The control and treatment groups were followed through age 40. More than two decades after program completion there were dramatic differences in the two groups with respect to the indicators for high-school graduation, college enrollment, felony convictions, and welfare incidence. Heckman has similar conclusions for the “Abecedarian Program” for 111 disadvantaged children born between 1972 and 1977, with the average age at entry of 4.4 months. In the Perry Program there was fadeout of the substantial initial increases in IQ scores in the following decade. This did not occur with respect to the Abecedarian Program. Heckman stresses that the long-run decrease in social deviance associated with both programs was in large part due to improved socio-emotional abilities of the participants. Perhaps Nobel Laureate Heckman’s major contribution here is his research indicating the necessity for developing adequate non-cognitive skills in the “technology” of learning or of producing human capital.  Earlier, Janet Currie completed a comprehensive review of evaluations of Head Start and similar programs. Her survey included studies of pilot projects, i.e., “model early-childhood programs,” and studies of large-scale public early-childhood programs including ongoing Head Start Programs per se. Following analysis of those studies which met methodological standings, she concluded: These programs have significant short-and medium-term benefits … the effects are often greater for more disadvantaged children. Some of the model programs have produced exciting results in terms of improving educational attainment and earnings and reducing welfare dependency and crime. The jury is still out on Head Start, but a simple cost–benefit analysis suggests that Head Start would pay for itself in terms of costsavings to the government if it produced a quarter of the long-term gains of model programs. (Currie 2001: 213) She deals with the criticism that improvements in school readiness fade long before adolescence, by pointing out that when the evaluations showing fadeout take into account differences in quality of schooling that follows Head Start, most of the fadeout disappears. For example, in one large study, skills fadeout did not affect white children but was concentrated among African American children who attended inferior schools after leaving Head Start (ibid.: 225). More generally, she stresses that Head Start and similar programs cannot compensate for destructive environmental influences that affect earning endowments following Head Start. Presumably adolescent gang culture is also one of the destructive environmental influences that cause fadeout.

US African Americans

211

The increasing enrollment rate in preprimary school educational programs (HSPs, public and private nursery schools, and kindergartens) for more than a generation attests to the increasing acceptance of early-childhood development approaches at the level of national public policy. Table 8.8 shows that enrollment increased from 38 to 64 percent between 1970 and 1997, with the bulk of the increase taking place among three- and four-year-olds. It is noteworthy that by 2008 six states “had mandated preschool for all children” (Matthew 2009: B2). The table also shows that black and white enrollment rates have been very close to equal during the twenty-first century. Of total preprimary enrollment in 2005 of 7.8 million, federal Head Start Programs accounted for 10 percent.20 Nearly nine-tenths of five-year-olds attend preschool or kindergarten programs. Since preschool programs are also childcare programs, it is not clear how much of the increase in enrollments is due to increase in the proportion of employed women in need of childcare: in 1970, 43 percent of American women over the age of 16 (who were neither in institutions nor the military) were in the labor force; by 1998 this had risen to 60 percent.21 Over the same period the number of employed women increased 105 percent (US Census Bureau 1999: Table 651). Presumably most of the programs are dual in function. They supply childcare for working mothers as well as provide educational activities. The children who could most benefit from early-childhood development programs, namely the three-year-olds from the poorest families, are less likely to be enrolled than better-off children. This was a conclusion from a study of the participants in preschool educational programs (Head Start, nursery school, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten) using a set of national data for 1968– 2000.22 It showed that in 2000, less than a third of three-year-olds in the lowest income quartile were enrolled in preschool programs, compared to more than half enrolled in the top quartile (Bainbridge et al. 2005: 724 and 731). Many such programs are private and expensive, so this comes as no surprise. Table 8.8 Preprimary school enrollment rates by race and age, 1970–2005 (percentages)

White Black Hispanic 3 years old 4 years old 5 years old Total

1970

1980

1990

1995

2000

2005

37.8 34.9 n.a. 12.9 27.8 69.3 37.5

52.7 51.8 43.3 27.3 46.3 84.7 52.5

59.7 57.8 49.0 32.6 56.0 88.8 59.4

63.0 58.9 51.1 35.9 61.6 87.5 61.8

63.2 68.5 52.6 39.2 64.9 87.6 64.0

65.1 62.0 56.1 41.3 66.2 86.4 64.3

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States 2008: Table 224. Note: Total population 3 to 5 years old in 1970 was 10.9 million and 12.1 million in 2005. Includes nursery schools and kindergartens. Excludes five-year-olds enrolled in elementary school.

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Conclusions Since the 1950s, the United States has made strong efforts to eliminate discrimination against blacks and to improve black access to adequate education. As a result of these efforts, together with an expanding economy that provides strong job opportunities, about two-thirds of African Americans can be considered as integrated into the economic mainstream. About a third continue seriously disadvantaged and to large degree socially excluded. This is consistent with the overall black poverty rate of 34 percent for children under 18 (US Census Bureau 2008: Table 690) and 23 percent of black families, excluding the black institutional population23 (Table 8.2). Most of the highly disadvantaged black third is resident in the inner cities or majority black rural counties of the Southern states. Weak academic performance is concentrated in these groups and may explain most of the black/ white cognitive-skills gap summarized in Table 8.7. Underdeveloped socioemotional skills contribute to weak academic performance and high social deviance. In other words, family cultural endowments of the most disadvantaged third are such that they are unable to acquire at home skills needed to do adequately in school. In kindergarten they start out behind their more fortunate peers, black or white. The highly disadvantaged grow up to be excluded both socially and from most labor markets. They tend to remain in poverty indefinitely. Review of material in Chapter 3 and this chapter suggests that it is feasible to enrich family cultural environments of the disadvantaged third by earlychildhood development programs (Head Start and others) that can help participants overcome much of their adversity and develop the cognitive and socio-emotional skills needed for success in life. Such programs involve efforts to improve parenting. They need, however, to be supplemented by a supportive academic environment throughout the formative years (particularly during adolescence) to avoid fadeout. Early-childhood programs vary substantially in effectiveness, but their histories show that they can work. However, at present only a minority of black children most at risk are enrolled in such programs. These findings suggests a threefold undertaking : 1 increasing enrollments in Head Start or similar programs to cover the entire at-risk black population; 2 further developing and monitoring such programs to ensure that they are effective; 3 providing an adequate supportive schooling environment in primary and secondary education so that early gains are reinforced and fadeout avoided.

9 Comparisons and conclusions

This chapter summarizes, compares, and concludes.1 I begin with assessment of progress to income parity of`the five stigmatized, ranked, ethno-racial, low-status, involuntary minorities (SRELIM as defined in Chapter 2). There follows comparison of SRELIM “self-help” measures and of the policies and programs that their governments have used to bring them into the economic mainstream. I then apply the mobility model to interpret the mobility history of each of the five cases. The chapter concludes with general findings and a word on the role of governments in fostering the mobility of the five SRELIM.

Outcomes: progress to parity of the five SRELIM2 Table 9.1 indicates that four of the five SRELIM studied are far from parity with their majorities as measured by income of the SRELIM relative to the total population or to the non-SRELIM.3 In contrast, during the 1980s, blacks in Communist Cuba had been roughly at parity with respect to income and education. But this was a brief success. Following the demise of the Soviet Union (1991), Communist Cuba has evolved an economy that is to a degree market-driven as concerns foreign trade, above all tourism. It also tolerates a substantial illegal local market economy. Blacks have not fared well in the highwage tourist industry because of resurgent discrimination against them by other Cubans. The informal local economy may also penalize them. Afro-Cubans have been losing position relative to the Cuban majority.4 Excluding Cuba, Table 9.2 shows that in addition to income, each of the SRELIM have lower levels of education than their dominant groups. For Bolivia and India discrepancy in income and education is partly a consequence of being at an early stage of development, and partly a consequence of discrimination.5 Bolivia’s ranking on the UNDP’s human development index puts it at the 66th percentile (country 117 out of 177), that is almost in the bottom third in “human development.” It is also among the poorer developing countries in the world with 42 percent of the population living on less than US$2 equivalent per day in 2005 (UNDP 2007: Tables 1 and 3). Its rural areas still account for more than a third of the total population while

214

Comparisons and conclusions

Table 9.1 Current parity indicators for five SRELIM 9.1a Bolivia, Highland Indigenous (Quechua and Aymara) 2001–2002

Percentage in poverty Educational attainment in school years % employed and not in school, age 9–11 Relative income per full-time worker

Highlanders

Others

71 5.9 31 46

50 9.6 8 100

Blacks

Whites

9.1b Cuba, Blacks 1981

Completed high-school only (%) 10.1 Completed college/university (%) 3.3 Employment in professions and management (%) 22 Life expectancy at birth in years 70

9.9 4.4 23 71

Note: Relative median incomes are assumed close to parity 9.1c India, Dalits 1999-2001

Literacy rate 2001 Percentage in poverty 1999–2000 Relative median per capita consumption (income proxy) 2000

Dalits

Total population

55 37 82

65 26 100

Note: Dalit account for about 16 percent of total population. 9.1d Japan, Burakumin 1993 and Total Population 1990

Completed elementary school only (%) Completed secondary school only (%) Received advanced education (%) Rough estimate of relative incomes

Burakumin

Total Population

55 32 8 60

32 45 21 100

Note: These survey data apply only to Burakumin living in former ghettos (buraku). 9.1e United States, African Americans 2003–2005

Families below poverty level (%) 2005 High school graduate or more (%) 2005 College graduate or more (%) 2005 Life expectancy in years at birth 2004 Median relative family income 2003–05

African Americans

Whites

22.1 81.1 17.6 73.1 57.1

8 85.7 28 78.3 100

Source for life expectancy in 2004: US Statistical Abstract 2008, Table 98. Note: For sources and explanations of all subtables, see corresponding tables in case study chapters.

Comparisons and conclusions

215

the high plain (Altiplano) and high valley areas are still home to more than half of the highland indigenous, the Quechua and Aymara.6 These home areas are particularly underdeveloped, with low educational achievement reflected in the large gap in educational attainment between highlanders and the remaining population (Table 9.1a). Limited economic development and sparse education and employment opportunities also help explain the extraordinary rate of child labor (presumably mostly in family farming) among the highland Indians of 31 percent, as opposed to 8 percent for the remaining population. Notwithstanding rapid recent growth and an impressive high-technology export sector, India is the least-developed country among the five cases with about 70 percent of the population living in rural areas. It ranks 128 out of a total of 177 countries, which is in the bottom fourth of the UNDP’s human development index. According to the UNDP, 80 percent of the population of India lived on less than US$2 equivalent a day in 2005 while more than 45 percent of the nation’s infants and children under age five are stunted (UNDP 2007: Tables 1 and 3). In part because slow growth implies very constrained fiscal resources, its educational indicators lag those of the other four nations, which have achieved universal literacy while a third of Indian adults are illiterate (Table 9.1c).7 In addition to slow growth from Independence in 1948 until the 1980s, India is characterized by widespread religiously sanctioned discrimination. Dalits are largely confined at the bottom of the class structure, and restricted to the lowest occupations in income and status. About 45 percent of Dalits are still illiterate. Paradoxically, the relative difference in per capita consumption (a proxy for income) of Dalits compared to the entire population is the smallest of the five SRELIM (Table 9.1c). The small consumption gap, however, is probably due to the fact that most of India is still close to rock-bottom in development. Most of India’s population consists of Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, Muslims, and OBCs (Other Backward Castes). Together these total to at least 60 but possibly as much as 75 percent of the total population of India, depending on how OBCs are defined. (Dalits alone account for about 16 percent of the total population.) An overwhelming majority of these groups depends on traditional agriculture. Their variation in incomes (or per capita consumption) is small because most of their incomes are close to the subsistence level. The combined middle and upper classes have much higher incomes but account for about 20 percent of India’s population. Their incomes are typically far above the total-population median. Hence the median income8 for the entire population of India is also very low and close to the subsistence level. Only the Scheduled Castes who account for about 7 or 8 percent of the population, have had lower incomes than Dalits. Hence the Dalits have a lower median income (or median per capita consumption) than the median for the country as a whole. However, the difference is less than that of countries at a higher level of development. This relatively small gap between the Dalit and the total population median is caused by a low

216

Comparisons and conclusions

level of national development. It is not caused by convergence of Dalit and majority with respect to socio-economic status. In Japan, the differences in scores between Burakumin and the total population (Table 9.1d) show a persistent large gap in income. However, probably more than two-thirds of the Burakumin (i.e., more than 2 million persons, including offspring) have left the former ghettos or buraku and moved into mainstream society where they “pass” as mainline Japanese, with whom they are genetically and culturally identical. The data of Table 9.1d apply solely to the less than 1 million Burakumin residents in the buraku districts in 1993 that benefited from special government programs (Chapter 5). Today, most of the people inhabiting the ghettos are recent arrivals, including Koreans and recent immigrants and are not of Burakumin origins, as identified in the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, even the “genuine” Burakumin who remain in the buraku are increasingly marrying out of group. Although the data in Chapter 5 and in Table 9.1d pertain to those long identified as Burakumin, they represent only those Burakumin that actually lived in the buraku in 1993, when the survey was conducted. Hence, though the data of Table 9.1d are official, they are partial and account for less than half of the total population of Burakumin in 1993. Were there data on all those who would have been defined by the authorities in 1993 as the historical Burakumin (not just the Burakumin of the buraku or ghettos), the differences in income and education between Burakumin and other Japanese would be compressed. Presumably those that left the buraku to pass into mainline society had higher educational achievement and higher incomes than those who remained in the buraku. The scores for the US black indicators (Table 9.1e) also show a substantial parity gap, be it measured in terms of family income, education, life expectancy, or incidence of poverty. Today, few analysts see ongoing discrimination as the primary or direct cause of the US income gap. Inadequate education, some of it caused by ongoing discrimination, is part of the causation as suggested by the large gap between educational attainment and educational achievement. For example, black students at age 17 have the same average scores in national tests of mathematics and reading as white students at age 13.9 (See Chapter 8.) In addition, white college attendance is higher than black (59 percent higher in 2005 according to Table 9.1e). Social deviance also contributes. A significantly larger proportion of the black population than other Americans remains outside of the labor force while blacks in the labor force have higher rates of unemployment. Part of the story is captured as well by changes in income generation and distribution within the black community in the last three decades. In the United States, movement out of poverty is slower for blacks than other Americans, while incomes of more affluent blacks have been increasing more rapidly than black incomes at the lower end. Income inequality has increased within the black community. These factors underpin recent descriptions of the black population as about two-thirds integrated into the social and economic mainstream, while the

Comparisons and conclusions

217

most disadvantaged third continues to have high rates of poverty, social deviance, and undereducation. Hence it brings the black median income far below that of the non-black population. The disadvantaged third also has the largest problems with developing the cognitive and socio-emotional skills necessary for advancement. In effect, about one-third of US blacks remain a SRELIM, while two-thirds have moved close to parity. Describing African Americans as dividing into SRELIM and nonSRELIM raises the question of whether this is more than statistical manipulation that can be carried out with any group with substantial variation in key traits. There is, however, evidence of substantive differences in the two groups. The bottom third appears geographically localized as impoverished residents of the inner cities and the South’s Black Belt.10 Among African Americans themselves there is a growing perception of class differences. Such perception may even be expressed in terms of two black “races” according to the following interpretation of a survey sponsored by Pew Heritage Trusts in 2007: Only half of all black people in the country (53 percent) say it is possible to think of blacks as one race … . The growing perception of two races is really a divide over values … . There are significant numbers of people with dark skin … who say black people do not have enough common experiences and values to be thought of as one race. This phenomenon is occurring inside black America as values held by black and white Americans are becoming more similar, according to 72 percent of whites and 54 percent of blacks. But the people who share values are middle-class blacks and whites. The black poor are the ones being left out, and they know it … . The black people most likely to say that blacks no longer share values across class lines have only a high school diploma or less education … . But 70 percent of … well educated black people also acknowledge that they see values increasingly “diverging” between the black poor and middle class … . The Pew poll found that 53 percent of black Americans agree that “blacks who can’t get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition” … . It is getting harder to use political and racial solidarity to hide the division inside black America … . This comes down to black Americans who believe in family, education, and personal responsibility vs. those who point to “the man” or the “system” for the added weight on black Americans.11 Clearly, the black community has class differences. Whether it should be described as more than that is unclear. In this book, I construct only the bottom third of the US African American population as a SRELIM. The bottom third is clearly stigmatized, ranked, low-status, and involuntary. It also experiences far more discrimination than the upper two-thirds. Excepting Cuba, the data show substantial gaps in income and education between the SRELIM and their dominant groups. However, each of the

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2001–02

1981

Total

Blacks

Whites

14

Japan

B

13

India

40

66

81

86

Total

10

Whites

6

Cuba Blacks

Others

Average years of schooling Percent completing secondary school Percent literate Years(s) of data

HI

Bolivia

Dalits

Table 9.2 Educational attainment, SRELIM, and dominant groups compared

55 65 2000

1993

USA

2005

Sources: Derived from Table 9.1. Notes: HI: Highland Indigenous, B: Burakumin

SRELIM of the study has experienced much improvement in its economic situation since their legal emancipation in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries (Table 2.2). For example, Bolivia’s highland indigenous averaged 0.8 years of education in 1950; by 2002 the average had increased to 5.9 years. In 1940, 87 percent of US African Americans were estimated as living in poverty; by 2005 78 percent of black families were above the poverty line. In 1948, nearly all Dalits were illiterate, today more than half are not. A majority of Japan’s Burakumin has “passed” into the general population. The economic wellbeing of these SRELIM has greatly improved compared to their situation many decades ago. But they remain stigmatized, ranked, and of low socio-economic status. One more point on outcomes: the data on income and education of Tables 9.1 and 9.2 provide additional support for the mobility model. The model is built partly on the standard social-science theory that explains differences in income in terms of the amount of human capital accumulated through educational achievement. Education is postulated to generate income in that it produces human capital in cognitive skills, which in turn increase the individual’s productivity and finally her labor income. Hence, the more education an individual absorbs, the more human capital she accumulates, and the higher the income that results. Tables 9.1 and 9.2 are consistent with the standard theory in that the education gaps for three SRELIM (in Japan, Bolivia, and India) correlate highly with their corresponding income gaps. The theory also applies to Cuba in that there was near equality of income and education between black and other Cubans in the 1980s. To put it in terms of the mobility model, Table 9.2 is consistent with causation in which discrimination leads to reduced access to education, which causes reduced accumulation of human capital, which in turn leads to lower income and an income gap.

Comparisons and conclusions

219

In Cuba, complete suppression of discrimination facilitated achievement of educational parity, and later income parity for a time. For the United States the relationship is more complicated, but also consistent with the model. The median income gap of Table 9.1e is far larger than the very small US secondary-school attainment gap between blacks and whites. The income difference is, however, partly due to the higher rate of college education of whites compared to blacks (Table 9.1e). It is also explained by the substantial differences in cognitive skills of US black students compared to US white high-school students of the same age considered at length in Chapter 8.

Actions to increase SRELIM mobility This section summarizes and compares actions to reduce the parity gap of the five SRELIM of the case studies. It concentrates on the two main actors in such undertakings: national governments and the SRELIM themselves. (A second book would be needed to address initiatives undertaken by the thousands of nongovernment organizations, particularly in India, active in improving the lot of the five SRELIM.) Because the cases were selected to include developed and less-developed countries as well as different kinds of economies, there is a large range in kinds of support undertaken by governments as well as by SRELIM themselves. However, two actions are universal. First, all five governments provide access to education at public cost for SRELIM. In all cases, however, educational support is supplied mostly in the context of efforts to achieve national goals that apply to the entire population. Second, all five nations in question have constitutional provisions that prohibit discrimination on the basis of group characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, gender, or family origins. Further, Cuba excepted, the SRELIM themselves have all used protests and demonstrations as well as party politics and electoral processes to improve their situation. Bolivia’s highland indians: rural supremacy, roadblocks, and elections Dispossession of homeland and way of life are rarely reversible for SRELIM. They are too few and too weak relative to their dominant groups to “even the score.” Bolivia’s highland indigenous, however, are exceptional in being the “majority minority.” They are also exceptional in that they reclaimed their land in 1952, acquired control of the state a half century later, and may be striving to establish political domination of the nation. Their success was largely a consequence of their own efforts, frequently in spite of government rather than because of it. Three kinds of tactics stand out:  violent action to repossess their ancestral lands, that is the Altiplano and high valleys;

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 politics in the street, including nonviolent protest with national roadblocks that “strangle” cities;  power via the ballot, including winning control of the national government in the national election of 2005. In 1952–53 the highlanders reclaimed their lands. When the new government took power in the National Revolution of 1952, it destroyed the army that had long shielded the ancien régime. The resurgent Aymara and Quechua seized this opportunity to force the European landlords out of the countryside. Initially they stopped work on the estates. Later, they burned manor houses and in a few cases hacked their owners to death, although most landlords found safety in the cities. By mid-1953, throughout the highlands, land was no longer held by the Spanish-speaking oligarchy. Rather, Aymara and Quechua Indians controlled the countryside for the first time in more than four centuries. Note that the driving force and organization for this takeover came from the campesinos themselves. Much of the leadership for the takeover came from rural sindicatos (unions) led by Indians returning to the countryside from residence in the cities. Rather than violent suppression and bloody retribution, the customary response to Indian uprisings from the Conquest onwards, the new populist government, although surprised by the rural uprisings, acquiesced in the results. It soon legitimized them in the agricultural reform that gave more than a million Indians (more than a quarter of the total population) legal title to their repossessed land. Thereafter, the highlanders pressed their claims for education, rural development, and political equality. Government responded by establishing primary education throughout the inhabited highlands, where before the Revolution, there had been virtually no education whatsoever. It also eliminated land taxation. The highlanders also developed their own vision of good government and economic policy and attempted to achieve it by carrying out “politics in the street.” This increasingly involved demonstrations and mass marches, peaceful yet menacing protests. They coupled major protests with national roadblocks that repeatedly knocked the government off balance because of the resulting fuel and food shortages in the cities. What is illegal and intolerable in many polities12 became the most effective tool in highlander protest and often led to successful negotiation of highlander demands with the national government. In the 1990s, these tactics also enhanced the reputation and increased the following of their political party and its leader, Evo Morales. Electoral politics became the third type of indigenous self-help. Over the half century following agricultural reform, the highlanders, led by the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) and precursor organizations, bolstered by their politics in the street, gradually increased their participation in elections and united behind MAS. In the national presidential election of 2005, MAS won an absolute majority, almost unprecedented in a country that has a history of unstable multiparty coalitions taking and ceding power in rapid succession.

Comparisons and conclusions

221

Afro-Cubans: supporting the Revolution For Afro-Cubans, the Revolution of 1959 marks the onset of rapid progress to income parity. The destruction of the capitalist state and the creation of Cuban socialism were engineered by the revolutionary leadership intent on creating a new society free of race and class (ni raza, ni clase). In achieving that goal, they mostly closed the black income/status parity gap by the 1980s. Throughout this period, Cuba’s blacks championed the revolution as members of the working class. But in contrast to Bolivia’s highlanders and their history of self-help in moving toward income parity, Afro-Cubans did not and could not initiate self-help actions in Cuba’s totalitarian state. Rather than permit or encourage self-help, the authorities insisted that the needs of blacks would be met as part of the working class, in principle Cuba’s only remaining class. Targeting disadvantaged groups on the basis of race or ethnicity was unnecessary and undesirable. The government suppressed discussion of race issues. The state aimed to achieve equality of opportunity and very limited inequality in outcomes by reconstructing the economy according to socialist norms. Access to higher education and higher occupations were to be granted on a meritocratic basis. In supporting this approach, the blacks of Cuba achieved spectacular improvement in education and occupational status, which put them among the primary beneficiaries of a social Revolution that was largely independent of their actions. Because of the exodus to the United States of most Cuban professionals and administrators in the 1960s, an unprecedented number of employment opportunities materialized and newly educated blacks were able to move in large numbers into professional and managerial posts. Following the demise of the Soviet Union and its strong support, Cuba’s commitment to maintaining Communism has weakened. Blacks are living through a substantial increase in discrimination and decrease in socio-economic status. The Communist government of Cuba also developed a mass public educational system that is among the most prominent accomplishments of the Revolution. In Chapter 6, I give it substantial attention in that access to education was a necessary precondition for black advance to parity following the Revolution. The increased quality of Cuba’s schools attracted substantial attention in the late twentieth century. In 2006, their high quality was reconfirmed in UNESCO’s educational assessment conducted throughout Latin America. In the mathematics and reading examinations, Cuba again came away with high scores: 50 percent of Cuban students scored at the highest level, compared to 10 percent of students from other countries of Latin America. Many factors contribute to this outcome including Cuba’s strictly observed, longer school day; intervention between authorities and parents to ensure that students come to school well prepared; a policy of special attention to slow students to minimize retention in grade; well-trained dedicated teachers; small class sizes; and a demanding curriculum.

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Comparisons and conclusions

Japan’s Burakumin: militant self-help and government response Japan is unique among the five cases on two dimensions: first in the massive investments made by the national and local governments to improve Burakumin living conditions and education but also in the refusal to develop government institutions to suppress discrimination against the Burakumin or other stigmatized low-status groups, e.g., Koreans. Human rights, including prohibition of discrimination based on family origins, are enshrined in Japan’s constitution and international conventions. But below that level, there are no laws or regulations that prohibit discrimination with respect to labor market, school admissions, etc. As concerns employment, non-discrimination requirements are viewed as an unwarranted restriction on employer freedom to hire in the best interests of the firm. Civil-rights legislation in the Indian or American mold is unknown in Japan, as are enforcement institutions such as the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Japanese authorities emphasize humanrights education as a feasible mode for bringing people to universally accept others as their equals. There has been some progress in inculcating egalitarian values in the citizenry and non-discrimination in employment, but traditional discrimination against Burakumin persists. As a consequence of this state of affairs, for many decades Japan’s Buraku Liberation League (BLL), the main advocacy organization of and for the Burakumin, has relied on three kinds of self-help:  mass protests by Burakumin, including street marches and demonstrations at discrimination sites;  kyudan toso (denunciation struggle), a kind of Burakumin kangaroo court that humiliates and “educates” mainline parties accused of discrimination;  provision of a reliable Burakumin voting bloc supporting the Liberal Democratic Party (rather than the Communist Party) during its period of hegemony up to the 1990s. As discussed below, the most notable government contribution to Burakumin mobility took the form of  massive expenditures for infrastructure and educational improvement. Beginning in the 1950s, the BLL undertook demonstrations of two kinds: those that informed the general public of the shocking living conditions in the Burakumin ghettos; and those targeted at discriminators. Prior to the demonstrations, many, perhaps even a majority of the Japanese were unaware of the ghettos and the unstable Burakumin work pattern of day labor, cottage industry, and frequent unemployment. The second tactic involved protests frequently at the site of discrimination offenses, including factories, schools, publishing houses, stockholder meetings, and so forth.

Comparisons and conclusions

223

Simultaneously, the BLL, through its 2,000 plus branches, was using denunciation (kyudan toso) to counter discrimination in employment, school admissions, etc. Denunciation sessions begin with aggressive, disrespectful, even insulting interrogation of the accused by Burakumin. (Normally interclass communication in Japan is characterized by a very high degree of decorum by the lower classes.) The proceedings usually lead to agreement between the accused (the actual transgressor and his superiors) and the BLL on the content of the transgression, for example, refusal to hire well-qualified Burakumin. There follows confession and self-criticism by the perpetrator and finally agreement on measures for avoidance of similar behavior in the future. Past sessions left the typically upper-class defendants shaken, intimidated, and profoundly humiliated by the lowly Burakumin. During the 1970s and 1980s kyudan toso was the main instrument in major campaigns to enhance employment and educational opportunities. On rare occasions, defendants took the BLL to court and a few criminal complaints for kidnapping and assault have gone to trial. Most trial cases did not involve actual violence, and the courts generally found for the BLL in that the BLL had a “right to denunciation,” that is had a right to intimidate targeted presumptive discriminators to induce them to submit to the denunciation procedures. The BLL has argued that kyudan toso is self-defense in response to invasion of the most fundamental human rights of the Burakumin. Through protest and denunciation proceedings, plus political pressure, the Burakumin generated sufficient sympathy and support to induce the national government to pass the so-called Special Measures Laws (SML) beginning in 1969. Party politics was also involved. In spite of very vigorous Communist Party attempts to win Burakumin support, the BLL and its membership (which at times exceeded 200,000) remained loyal and staunch supporters of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The SML involved some national but more municipal and local district support for the more than 4,000 Buraku ghettos that had become eligible for government aid. Spending under the laws financed complete transformation of these ghettos (a few of which also included leper colonies), including modern housing, plumbing, piped water, electric power, paved streets, community centers, and so forth. They also included intensive educational programs to bring Burakumin up to par with the mainstream community. The latter included subsidies to parents who kept their children in school through the higher levels; frequent visits from “welfare teachers” to parents to improve parenting skills in supporting children’s education; special interventions in schools with large numbers of Burakumin students; remedial classes; free textbooks; and adult literacy campaigns. SML also directly benefited nearly a million Burakumin. Most expenditures under the laws took place during the 1970s and 1980s but they officially ceased in 2002. The total came to about $134,000 equivalent per beneficiary, or about 5 to 10 percent of Japan’s entire GNP in any single year in the 1970s! As a result of this assistance, in less than 30 years, Japan transformed the equivalent of the inner cities or urban ghettos of the United States into

224

Comparisons and conclusions

acceptable human habitat that has been occasionally envied by Japanese mainliners as providing a better family environment than their own. In addition, the concentration on increasing the human capital of the Burakumin facilitated their “passing” out of the ghettos into the economic mainstream. Such passing is estimated to have taken place with more than two-thirds of the Burakumin. So we have an unusual solution to the Burakumin problem. In spite of the national government’s reluctance to actively suppress discrimination, Japanese governments at various levels were willing to dedicate massive fiscal and other public resources to create infrastructure and attempt to close the human-capital gap of the Burakumin. Because of the special measures in combination with sustained rapid development in general, the Burakumin problem has largely (not entirely) ceased as concerns the offspring of the population identified by the government as Burakumin in the 1950s. India’s Dalits: laws and non-compliance In many ways India is the extreme case. It encompasses the largest SRELIM in the world, more than 170 million Dalits. They are also among the world’s most exploited SRELIM. Since Independence and Dalit Emancipation in 1948, thousands of Dalits have been killed in communal violence, frequently during attempts to exercise rights granted to them in India’s constitution. Caste Hindus annually murder, rape, and maim hundreds of Dalits, usually with legal impunity, notwithstanding the existence of the “Prevention of Atrocities Act” passed in 1989 to prevent such crimes. Historically quarantined outside of villages and denied access to most occupations, these “Untouchable” outcastes continue to be excluded from many activities that involve interaction with other castes because of their polluting nature. Since Independence in 1947, the national government has been engaged in a war on caste and untouchability that relies overwhelmingly on two kinds of measures to increase Dalit income and status:  reservations of civil-service positions, posts in higher education, and seats in the legislatures in proportion to the Dalit share of the total population.  constitutional stipulations and legislation to suppress discrimination and atrocity against Dalits. Voting behavior at the state level has become the most important kind of Dalit self-help:  India’s political parties provide patronage to their constituents including Dalit voting blocks. Dalits seek to join parties that put together coalitions that can win elections and reward their supporters with various benefits including development initiatives for Dalit areas, award of government jobs, licenses and so forth.

Comparisons and conclusions

225

Reservations have probably benefited less than 10 percent of the Dalits since their implementation following Independence. They have also played a small but significant role in further corrupting the nation’s political life and have engendered enormous hostility among those who are not Dalits. The hostility has fueled mass riots with hundreds of deaths and decrease in social cohesion in several Indian states. The national government has attempted to suppress atrocities and discrimination by passing detailed laws that prohibit practices such as atrocities, bonded labor, untouchability, movement restrictions. and occupational discrimination. These efforts are routinely defeated by the majority, which ignores most of this legislation (e.g., bonded labor and manual scavenging, although against the law, continue as standard practice) and continues to exclude and punish Dalits in many ways. Several factors contribute to this outcome:  India is at an early stage in development. About 70 percent of the population lives in traditional rural settings where mores, customs, and beliefs all act to maintain Dalits in their subaltern position. Hence, laws and regulations that radically increase Dalit status, autonomy, and freedom of action are extremely difficult to enforce.  India is predominantly Hindu and many, perhaps a majority of Hindus know that the outcaste Dalits deserve their fate because of bad behavior in previous incarnation and, therefore, the laws prohibiting untouchability in all its manifestations are not legitimate.  Enforcement actions by the police, courts, and other parts of the civil service are weak and at times perverse. The pervasiveness of corruption combined with the lack of sympathy among caste Hindus for Dalits, and the Dalit lack of financial resources to pay bribes, help make non-enforcement the rule. To deal adequately with the high incidence of illegal discrimination and atrocity against Dalits would require a host of costly enforcement institutions including government “watchdog agencies” and massive increases in police and courts of various kinds. It would also be necessary to reform public institutions to improve their competence and reduce corruption. It is possible that the enforcement costs of successfully suppressing discrimination would far exceed the public sector’s fiscal potential. There is substantial and increasing self-help by Dalits, engineered by thousands of advocacy and developmental nonprofit organizations dedicated to their improvement, some entirely domestic and others that are foreign-supported. A good illustration involves the efforts to improve the situation of the hundreds of thousands of extremely stigmatized Dalit women13 (and a few men) who clean non-flush or “dry latrines” and carry the excrement to dump sites in head baskets. Many nongovernment organizations, both local and international, work to free these “manual scavengers” from such employment. Their missions range from improved education for the scavengers and their children, through training for alternative employment, to litigation for violating

226

Comparisons and conclusions

the national legislation that has prohibited the practice since 1993. Among the five minorities of the research, William Graham Sumner’s dictum that “state ways cannot change folkways,” appears by far most applicable to the Indian caste system. US African Americans: the long struggle against discrimination Immediately following the Civil War, the US Congress passed legislation that enabled distribution of abandoned and confiscated arable land in the South to some of the 4.5 million former slaves; encouraged black education; and promoted their political rights, above all their right to vote. Within a dozen years, the initiatives were abandoned as the Southern states were readmitted to the Union and the South’s prewar landowners largely restored themselves to power. To have maintained the measures to keep the “Freedmen” on a road to parity with the general population would have required prolonged and massive military occupation as well as militant support for such policies outside of the South. But rather than militant support, the public wanted peace and reconciliation between North and South. Few were ready to support a long and bitter struggle to help blacks to become mainline citizens in the face of adamant Southern resistance. By 1880 a Southern caste system based on sharecropping, segregation, and occasional violent intimidation of Freedmen by armed vigilantes had replaced slavery. Above all, authorities throughout the South deliberately deprived the Freedmen of their voting rights, leaving them again at the mercy of the dominant white majority. This system of “keeping the Negro in his place,” continued up to World War II. Thereafter, the substantial black migration out of the South, the rise in an educated black leadership, widespread changes in attitudes among the white majority, and profoundly altered economic and social conditions, set the stage for the relaunched efforts that culminated in the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The movement involved a large array of actions to bring about socioeconomic parity for America’s black population. These actions have largely (not entirely) eliminated discrimination in workplace, schools, and political life. Those undertaken by government include:  Passage of Civil Rights Acts.  Actions by enforcement agencies established by means of the Civil Rights Acts, e.g., the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission.  Support for judicial review and litigation in antidiscrimination cases.  Public-school systems that ensure minority access to education.  Conditioning federal government transfers of funds on recipient states taking desired policy and program actions.  Use of federal troops to calm communities or facilitate program actions, e.g., school integration. Although deployed very rarely, the possibility of such action has spurred desired outcomes.

Comparisons and conclusions

227

During Reconstruction (1865–77) the majority of actions to improve the status of “Freedmen” were white-led. Over the decades, blacks became educated and experienced in advocacy work and played an ever-increasing role in defense of their civil rights and quest for parity. Black self-help measures have frequently been facilitated by and coordinated with federal initiatives. Self-help has included:  Mass demonstrations and marches.  Litigation, e.g., for damages from unlawful discrimination. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has been prominent in such work. Some of its cases went to the Supreme Court and led to new legislation.  Boycotts and sit-ins (see Chapter 8) frequently as part of campaigns to end segregation.  Negotiations, e.g., by 1950 President Truman had integrated the armed forces by executive order in response to demands of black leaders backed by a prediction of mass protest and litigation if relief was not forthcoming.  Voting behavior, including voter-registration campaigns.  Research and advocacy inter alia designed to attract media attention. By the 1990s, overt discrimination in employment and education had ceased. Moreover the United States had reached a “post-industrial” level of economic development that facilitated fundamental changes impossible or unlikely in early stages of development. Blacks had gained broad access to middle-class job opportunities and publicly financed universal education through to secondary level, while there was acceptance of meritocratic and egalitarian norms throughout the population. Today, the majority of blacks are integrated into the American mainstream. About a third is not. There is growing conviction that family subcultures need to be addressed among disadvantaged black children through preschool development programs if the disadvantaged third is to move into the economic mainstream.

Basic findings: the mobility model revisited In this section I briefly review the arguments of the mobility model and then recapitulate and interpret basic findings from the mobility histories of the five SRELIM in terms of the model variables. The mobility model constructed in Chapter 3 postulates that four variables largely determine the pace at which SRELIM progress in moving to parity with dominant groups: 1 2 3 4

level of economic development; degree of economic discrimination; educational achievement of SRELIM; family cultural endowments of SRELIM.

228

Comparisons and conclusions

The four variables and their interaction explain most of the status/income mobility of the five minorities studied here. Economic development is the key variable. A high level of economic development in a growing economy is the best scenario for bringing SRELIM to parity. Such economies generate many middle-class jobs and skilled labor positions, which provide opportunities for SRELIM. In addition, substantial education is necessary if the SRELIM are to take advantage of new job opportunities. A high level of development also makes feasible massive increases in government revenues that can be used in part to universalize education, including SRELIM access to education. Further, movement to a high level of development is generally accompanied by a paradigm shift in the traditional norms and customs that underpin SRELIM exploitation. The urbanization and other changes accompanying economic development erode traditional ways of life. The same changes may encourage more egalitarian and meritocratic norms and institutions that facilitate government’s role in reducing discrimination and encouraging SRELIM movement into the modern economy. These considerations indicate that the model also has a corollary: without economic development, SRELIM progress to parity is extremely slow.14 Although the variables of the mobility model interact and in interacting enhance SRELIM mobility, moving forward on any single variable (while the others remain unchanged) has independent impact but at a diminishing rate. Economic development per se will permit or stimulate some individuals from a SRELIM to achieve parity. Elimination of discrimination has similar effects, as does access to education. US African Americans and India’s Dalits US history of early efforts to deal with black disadvantage following the Civil War parallels in many ways the more recent history of India’s efforts to increase the mobility of Dalits. Both early attempts accompanied a very pronounced shift in the organization and modus operandi of social forces, brought about by the end of slavery in the United States and the end of colonialism in India. Both were accompanied by high expectations. Many Indians expected that outlawing untouchability plus reserving positions in schools, the civil service, and legislatures for Dalits would suffice to permit them to achieve socioeconomic parity with caste Indians within one generation. Many Americans expected that destruction of slavery, spread of education, assurance of voting rights, and reconstruction of elected legislatures would lead to a similar outcome in the US South. In both nations, outcomes fell far short of expectations for similar reasons. In both nations, the SRELIM was localized in an agriculturally dependent rural sector with a traditional elite and a dominant population very hostile to measures that would facilitate SRELIM movement out of the bottom tier of the social and economic hierarchies. India’s caste restrictions and US occupational and social exclusion were both very effective means of SRELIM stigmatization

Comparisons and conclusions

229

and exploitation. Since both India and the American South were rural and pre-industrial, there were few alternatives to the traditional life of exploitation via alternative livelihoods. Finally, both countries attempted to move their SRELIM to parity via new laws aiming to eradicate discrimination but provided inadequate means for their enforcement. The US attempt quickly came to a halt with the end of Reconstruction (1877). India is still struggling to enforce the many laws passed since Independence that prohibit untouchability in its numerous manifestations. In India, folkways continue to trump state-ways. Although the US had achieved substantial economic development by the early twentieth century, traditional discriminatory norms continued to place blacks in a highly disadvantaged position. Limited access to education plus customary discrimination, reinforced by discriminatory unions, local regulations, etc. kept blacks out of most attractive occupations even in areas outside of the South up to World War II. These restrictions broke down under the onslaught on discrimination of the civil-rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. That movement was greatly facilitated by both the widespread acceptance of meritocratic and egalitarian norms throughout what had become a largely urban population in a highly industrialized nation and the numerous employment opportunities for blacks which that industrialization had made possible. The support of the US government (along with black self-help) in prohibiting discrimination and in myriad efforts to enforce the prohibition was complemented by universal local-government-funded public education. The latter permitted the majority of the black population to achieve parity of educational attainment through the secondary level by the end of the twentieth century. As a result, African Americans were able to respond to the increasing availability of middle-class jobs and move into the middle classes. Both the expansion in work opportunities and the financing for education were made possible by the rapid growth and diversification of the American economy. These changes have largely, but certainly not entirely, eliminated discrimination in workplace, schools, and political life. Consequently, by the end of the twentieth century about twothirds of the black population had achieved education, occupations, and incomes commensurate with socio-economic parity. About a third remains, however, in the inner cities, and in the South’s rural counties of the Black Belt. Both the inner cities and the Belt have high rates of poverty, low educational attainment, low employment, and high social deviance. No doubt they experience far more discrimination than the upper two-thirds. Because of the cultural endowments of their parents, the children of the lower third begin school with less “homegrown” human capital than others. Governments are attempting to remedy this in part by increasing support for preschool programs that have proven effective in improving parenting skills, in addition to directly instilling cognitive and socio-emotional skills in infants and toddlers. (See Chapter 8.) Notwithstanding its very productive, rapidly growing, “high-tech” sector, India still has a long way to go on three mobility variables. Discrimination is

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deep and pervasive (reinforced by the religiously upheld caste system); educational opportunity is limited (about a third of the total population is illiterate); the employment opportunities and egalitarian social structure associated with a high level of development are still in the future (over 70 percent of the population remains rural). Hence most of India’s Dalits have been unable to escape from stigmatization and their age-old poverty trap. Given the inability to reduce discrimination against the Dalits in their traditional rural setting, rapid economic development appears to be a sine qua non for promoting Dalit mobility. Thus far, rapid development in India has been concentrated among upper-caste Indians. If India continues to grow rapidly the nation will increasingly develop new employment opportunities while broadening and deepening the supply of education. The latter is currently limited by India’s fiscal budget constraints. After discrimination, insufficient Dalit education appears to be the most binding current constraint on Dalit progress to parity. Cuba, the exception that tests the rule The Cuban paradigm shift in 1959 and its structural transformation is the exception that tests the rule that achieving parity is impossible without achieving a high level of development. Cuba briefly succeeded in making blacks nearly equal with others because its exceptional circumstances permitted policies that in effect substituted for development. Cuba’s totalitarian state controlled economic production, the entire labor market, the means of communication, and access to education. Under such circumstances it was feasible to suppress discrimination and the government did so. In addition, it carried through campaigns to alter not only behavior but also discriminatory attitudes. It also expanded education at all levels and made it available to the entire citizenry. As a result blacks greatly increased their educational achievements. In lieu of rapid development producing a large number of middle-class jobs, the government placed numerous Cuban blacks, who had achieved the required level of education, into many of the professional and managerial job openings caused by the exodus of these classes to the United States. The exodus was a superior substitute for a buoyant labor market, in that it provided far more attractive employment opportunities than occur in even the most rapidly growing economies. So elite exodus, the government’s regulations that restructured and flattened the class system, the unprecedented increase in black educational attainment, and the unprecedented scope of attractive jobs made possible rapid increase in black mobility. In the 1980s, Cuban blacks came close to economic parity with the majority. Japan’s Burakumin A majority of the historical Burakumin, have moved out of their former ghettos into the economic mainstream and “passed” into the general population.

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This occurred mostly after governments’ vigorous implementation of the Special Measure Laws, which made possible a very substantial increase in the level of Burakumin education. Passing was also facilitated by the rapid growth of a highly industrialized nation during much of the period in question, which provided numerous job opportunities outside of the buraku. Burakumin are ethnically indistinguishable from other Japanese which of course also facilitates their passing. Discrimination, however, continues against the “new” Burakumin of Koreans and more recent blue-collar immigrants who together increasingly constitute the residents of the former Burakumin ghettos. Bolivia’s Quechua and Aymara Indians In January 2005, Bolivia’s highland indigenous, the majority minority, won the national election and control of the state. They are using state power and resources in a way that is precluded for the usual SRELIM, who as relatively small minorities can escape neither the dominance of the non-SRELIM majority nor their discrimination. Bolivia is also anomalous in exporting primarily hydrocarbons, a resource that has very low production costs and expends little labor in its production but commands a high export price and generates large government revenues. The Highlanders substantially lag the mostly urban Bolivian “blancos” (whites). They might be able to achieve parity in the next two generations by utilising these revenues for education and public production to close the large income and educational gap. The analogy here is with those Arabian Gulf emirates whose high degree of development has been made possible by enormous income from the sale of petroleum. Bolivia differs from the emirates, however, in that it has a large and powerful minority opposed to this course, while the hydrocarbon reserves might prove too small relative to population to sustain such an approach.

Conclusions The reprise suggests several conclusions:  Development is crucial to SRELIM achievement of parity. It finances education, generates employment opportunities, alters economic and social structure in ways that are likely to erode traditional exploitation and prejudice.  Discrimination does not automatically disappear in an expanding economy and changing society. Uprooting discrimination may require explicit efforts, above all if there are to be adequate opportunities for SRELIM in employment and schooling. But it is far easier to address these challenges under conditions of rapid growth in a highly developed economy than the contrary.  Education is crucial for SRELIM to take advantage of opportunities created by growth. Expanded education depends substantially on revenues generated by growth, but growth does not automatically guarantee better education

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for SRELIM. Deliberate efforts to improve SRELIM education may be necessary.  Subculture and oppositional mentality – including habits, values, attitudes, and relationships in part cultivated as ways to preserve self-esteem and solidarity despite hostile larger societies – may persist as obstacles even if the other factors support progress to parity. Where does government and public policy fit into this picture? A central theme of the book is the essential role of economic development to facilitate SRELIM progress. Government policies and programs are vital to induce economic development. But economic development per se does not put SRELIM on high roads to parity because of the persistence of discrimination. In most cases government measures are needed to suppress discrimination. Education, another government responsibility, is also a necessary condition for SRELIM advance. But reliance on general public education that meets the needs of mainline students may not be the best way for SRELIM to access it, especially where there is substantial discrimination in education. SRELIM subcultures may also be a problem. The increasing attention of public authorities to providing early-childhood education to compensate for SRELIM family environments is a case in point. More general programs to eliminate poverty will not necessarily bring SRELIM to parity because they too usually do not address the impact of discrimination and stigmatization, nor ameliorate the idiosyncratic destructive subcultures of SRELIM. Targeted policies and actions guided by the visible hand of government may be needed. However, consideration of the political factors that impede or facilitate effective government action in promoting SRELIM advancement opens issues that lie beyond the scope of this volume. Chapter 10, the Postscript that follows briefly considers two key dimensions of the politics of SRELIM progress.

10 Postscript Politics and SRELIM progress Joan M. Nelson1

The mobility model helps to explain the timing, pace, and trajectory of SRELIM advance toward parity, but makes no explicit reference to political determinants of their progress. Yet it is clear from the five case studies in this book that political factors play a major role in each story. Closer examination of the politics in each case, followed by a systematic search for common themes concerning the role of political factors, would be a major undertaking, indeed the focus of a new research project. Short of that undertaking, it may be helpful to augment the model-based conclusions of the book by briefly indicating what and how a more political orientation would contribute to our understanding of SRELIM mobility history.

What incentives drive dominant-elite efforts to promote SRELIM welfare? One theme suggested by the accounts of SRELIM progress concerns the circumstances and incentives that lead governments to promote their advance. The history of SRELIM oppression always implicates ruling elites and governments. In other words, SRELIM – whether originally slaves, outcastes, or conquered indigenous peoples – become stigmatized and oppressed partly because ruling elites acquiesce in or actively enforce oppression. Stories of SRELIM progress necessarily entail, and often begin with, a favorable shift in the perceptions and actions of at least part of the ruling elite. In the five cases of the book, a more striking pattern emerges: constitutional changes or emancipation declarations establishing the formal basis for SRELIM progress were adopted in each case in the context of revolutionary changes in the governing elite or fundamental crises in national unity. In the United States in l865, in the aftermath of the Civil War, the 13th constitutional amendment abolished slavery, although roughly 80 years would pass before the national government began to successfully address obstacles to black progress. In Japan, the Meiji Restoration of the l860s replaced a disintegrating feudal system with a new, Westernizing elite dedicated to defensive modernization: as part of that scenario, the Emancipation Edict of l871 declared that Burakumin were henceforth to be treated as “new common

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citizens.” In India in 1948, the national political elite replaced the colonial power and the new constitution of independent India proclaimed an end to outcaste status. Bolivia’s 1952 Revolution was not focused on the plight of the indigenous rural highlanders, but the revolutionary government was prompt to legitimize their land seizures and to declare equal rights of citizenship in a new constitution. In Cuba, the 1959 Revolution replaced the entire ruling elite, and the new constitution proclaimed the equal and extensive rights of the entire working class. In four of these cases – Japan, India, Bolivia, and Cuba – equalized formal status for SRELIM was part of the new elite’s much broader vision of a transformed society. Constitutional and legal measures formally eliminating SRELIM subordination are important, but do not automatically bring effective government efforts to remove the obstacles to SRELIM parity. Indeed, the condition of Japan’s Burakumin initially worsened as a result of angry farmers’ reactions to the Emancipation Edict. Similarly, the period just after the Civil War in the United States saw the construction in the South of a system almost as oppressive as the slavery it replaced. Chapter 4 reviews disheartening evidence of the persistent repression of India’s Dalits. As indicated in the brief case reviews below, the forces identified in the mobility model operate substantially through political channels. Whether and when a government adopts active policies and programs to promote SRELIM progress depends on a range of political factors. So do its choices among various strategies and policy options to that end. The summary reviews of the five case studies below suggest three kinds of incentives that are particularly important in shaping elite commitment and strategy: ideology or principle, electoral incentives, and fear that failure to address continuing discrimination and oppression may contribute to political unrest or strengthen subversive forces. In most cases, all three incentives are at work. Their relative importance varies reflecting many underlying factors, including the size of the SRELIM group relative to the larger population, its geographic concentration or dispersion, the degree and character of SRELIM political mobilization and cohesion, and broader features of party and political systems.  Among the cases in this book, ideology played the determining role in shaping Cuban policies. Indeed, the character of the larger political system left little room for either electoral considerations or fear of unrest to play a role.  In Japan, electoral concerns were probably paramount in prompting government action to improve Burakumin status and welfare. By the 1960s, the Burakumin Liberation League had developed a durable link with the dominant Liberal Democratic Party. The LDP’s interest in Burakumin votes was reinforced by substantial concern that disgruntled Burakumin might turn to the Communist Party, which was energetically courting their support. Beyond votes and fear, however, there is also evidence of principled interest: postwar redemocratization encouraged and the constitution of 1946 reflected new principle-based concern about discrimination against

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Burakumin. Many members of the larger community worked to improve Burakumin education, and local governments contributed the bulk of the substantial funds used to upgrade Buraku settlements.  From the beginnings of India’s long drive for independence, some among the political elite regarded untouchability as incompatible with a modern social democratic nation and state. This commitment was reflected in the constitution of 1948. But this view was not widely shared at the national and particularly the state and local levels. Fear of a Dalit threat to civil order has also been minimal in the Indian case, in part because the several strong state-level Communist Parties are not extremist, while neither they nor those political groups prone to disruptive or terrorist tactics have made a pitch for Dalit support. In contrast, electoral incentives have played a growing role in India’s highly decentralized and caste-based politics. Indeed, in some of India’s states, Dalit support has become an important element in party electoral strategies; in a few, Dalit-controlled parties have become dominant. However, appeals for Dalit votes are part of a complex broader scene of shifting coalitions among low-caste and non-caste groups (including numerous tribal groups and “Other Backward Castes” as well as Dalits) or alliances between Dalits and higher-caste groups. Even where Dalit-dominated parties have won control of state governments, they have focused on immediate goals of distributing government jobs and other patronage to relatively small numbers of Dalits, with minimal attention to larger issues such as Dalit education or civil rights.  In Bolivia, the early decision of the revolutionary government (1953) to legitimize highland Indian land seizures probably reflected both principle and recognition that attempting to reverse the seizures would prompt widespread violence. Electoral considerations (desire to attract the Indian vote) played a modest role in government strategies in the early decades after the 1952 Revolution, but by the 1990s mobilization among the highlanders made their votes central, culminating in the electoral victory in 2005 of the party of the indigenous peoples, the MAS (Movement toward Socialism). In the years just before that victory, indigenous-led mass demonstrations – and corresponding fear of possible violence – not only shaped government policies but forced the abdication of two presidents.  In the United States, following the collapse of federal activity on behalf of the newly freed blacks, there was virtually no effective federal action until the economic shifts and cumulative effects of the migration flows of the 1940s began to generate significant electoral incentives to woo the black vote. From the 1950s forward, organized black protests and demonstrations (occasionally surging out of control, as in the “long hot summer” of 1969) also raised the perceived costs of inaction. At the same time, principled commitment to equal opportunity for blacks became stronger and more widespread not only at elite levels but also among the broader public, especially among younger whites. In sum, all three types of incentives for positive measures became much stronger after World War II.

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The structures and trends underpinning shifts in incentives in each of these cases were largely domestic, though the US occupation played a major role in shaping Japan’s post-World War II constitution. However, in recent decades shifts in elite attitudes are increasingly likely to reflect external as well as domestic factors: international declarations of principle, formal pressures from multilateral institutions and other governments, and networks of transnational nongovernmental organizations.

What circumstances encourage SRELIM political mobilization? In almost all cases (again Cuba is an exception), the politics of SRELIM progress entails not only actions by governments but also pressures from SRELIM themselves. Yet just as SRELIM progress requires a shift in elite goals and attitudes from enabling or perpetuating oppression to promoting SRELIM advance, so progress also requires a parallel shift from passivity or retreat to organized assertion on the part of SRELIM. That shift is not easy. By definition, SRELIM are profoundly oppressed. Before their rights are formally recognized, and in many cases even long after that recognition, efforts to resist or protest bad treatment or assert rights risk brutal suppression by local if not national elites. Beyond this fundamental and formidable obstacle are other disincentives to collective action. Probably one of the most basic of these is the perception, among SRELIM strongly committed to improving their lot in life, that the most promising course of action is individual rather than collective: for instance, finding a patron or moving to the city. For some SRELIM, the absence or compromised nature of group identity may pose an additional obstacle to collective action. SRELIM comprised of conquered and sometimes displaced indigenous groups share culture and history, often including language and religion. Collective action for such groups is likely to be far easier than for SRELIM with origins in slave or outcaste status. Slaves in the Western hemisphere (and elsewhere, for instance Madagascar or the Middle East) typically were imported from many tribes and cultures, and did not share language, religion, or history. Efforts to appeal to an “African nation” to create cohesive and assertive black communities in general have had limited success. Outcastes are perhaps still more constrained in developing a cohesive group identity: they are defined as outside the boundaries yet inextricably part of the larger societies in which they are embedded. Neither Dalits nor Burakumin assert a separate identity to be preserved and celebrated, and to bind them together in collective efforts to improve their status. Rather, they seek to erase their outcaste identity and assert their sameness with the dominant majority, in order to be absorbed into the larger community. A better understanding of the politics of SRELIM progress therefore must examine how and why specific groups were able to engage in organized collective action, protesting discrimination and demanding better treatment. The histories vary, but almost always entail the factors analyzed in this book.

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Economic development and concomitant social change expand not only individual economic opportunities but space for collective SRELIM action. Education builds human capital, facilitating not only employment but also increased self-confidence and organizational skills. Reduced discrimination lowers the risks of collective SRELIM protest and improves the prospects for constructive responses by the larger society and government. Changes in family and neighborhood subcultures may encourage political assertion within the system, rather than withdrawal and/or oppositional mentality. Supportive attitudes among dominant elites also serve to promote and encourage SRELIM participation and pressures. The Buraku Liberation League’s mock court proceedings shaming those guilty of discriminatory behavior were feasible because the national government and (real) courts upheld the tactic. The success of Martin Luther King’s emphasis on nonviolence rested in part on the values and attitudes of much of the American national elite and the public, which was inspired by peaceful protest and shocked by the violent reactions of some local authorities and private groups. It is doubtful that such a movement could have been successful in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. More speculatively, SRELIM capacity for collective action may be shaped by social organization and leadership patterns within SRELIM communities. Social cohesion and the role of black churches in many African American communities, especially in the South, made an important contribution to the emergence and strength of the US civil-rights movement. In Bolivia, the persistence of certain traditional social customs and relationships, including paths to local leadership in rural highland Indian communities described in Chapter 7, apparently provided a foundation for the emergence of larger political organizations and movements that demanded radical changes to improve their collective status and welfare. In contrast, India’s 180 million Dalits are fragmented into thousands of localized traditional groups (jati), historically associated with specific occupations, which tend to divide rather than unite them to other Dalit groups. (Some jati have sought to raise their members’ status by Sanskritization–that is, adopting the customs and behavior of caste Hindu (non-outcaste) groups. But this collective effort entails rejecting the group’s association with other Dalits.) If that surmise is valid, it may help to explain the pattern that has emerged in a number of India’s states, where political parties appeal for Dalit votes and elect Dalit politicians, but when in office focus mainly on the distribution of jobs and other benefits to individual Dalits rather than broader policies and programs that might reduce discrimination and broaden opportunities for all Dalits. Patron–client politics is endemic to India’s political system, but weak social and autonomous political organization among Dalits may help to perpetuate the pattern. SRELIM political mobilization is also increasingly affected by aspects of globalization. Just as international and transnational trends have influenced the metamorphosis in dominant elite attitudes toward SRELIM groups throughout the world, so formal multinational and less formal transnational

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charters, networks, pressures, and assistance programs have also encouraged SRELIM groups to claim their rights and organize to win them. This brief discussion cannot begin to probe the political dimensions of SRELIM progress or lack thereof. Each case presents its own complexities and subtleties. However, these few pages do frame two political issues essential for a deeper understanding of each case: How, why, and to what degree have political elites become committed to SRELIM advance? And how and why have SRELIM themselves united to press their cause – or failed to do so? In conjunction with the model developed in this book, the answers to those two questions would do much to advance our understanding of SRELIMs’ slow road to progress.

Notes

1 Introduction 1 From the inscription at the foot of her statue on Manhattan Island, New York City, at 72nd St. and Riverside Drive. 2 Scarcity of statistical data precludes statistical analysis. 3 Another variable of interest is the question of what causes discriminators to discriminate. Presumably psychological needs are met, such as for status (Geltungstrieb), which could possibly be redirected. 2 Stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities 1 Slow progress to parity with their dominant majorities has other dimensions. Inuit teenagers in northern Quebec have one of the highest suicide rates in the world; child mortality among Mexico’s indigenous peoples is close to 20 percent (Minority Rights Group International 1997: 4); in India hundreds of Dalits are killed annually by caste Indians who go unpunished (Chapter 4); unemployment among Australian aborigines typically exceeds 35 percent, notwithstanding their very low labor-force participation (Myers 2003: 72). 2 Sowell (1994: xiii–xiv) adopts a similar definition, but uses the term “race” in lieu of “ethnic group.” Thernstrom (1980: vi) presents a more differentiated concept of ethnicity. 3 Jewish can be defined as ethnic or religious. 4 Outside of Sub-Saharan Africa and Austral Asia, and taking a 2,000-year perspective, slavery or serfdom or the equivalent was the status of many (or even the majority) of the ancestors of people now living. For most people living in high-income countries today, slavery and serfdom are far in the past and negative cultural “inheritance” induced by them has long disappeared. 5 Bowles and Gintis discuss the intergenerational cultural “inheritance” within lowincome families. They note that to some degree “a sense of personal efficacy, work ethic, or rate of time discount (present orientation)” as well as the “intergenerational persistence of fatalism” appear imparted from generation to generation. Moreover, “parent-child similarity in measures of social maladjustment … such as aggression and withdrawal … may be quite high” [and] “strong predictors of earnings at age 33.” Further, “deviant forms of behaviors of U.S. mothers were strong predictors of the same behaviors in daughters, including drug use, violent behaviors, early sex, suspension from school and criminal convictions” (Bowles and Gintis 2002: 20–21). 6 Loury finds that in the United States, discrimination is not “politically correct” but is covertly lived out in many ways by many Americans (Loury 2002: passim). Raphael (2002: 1203) agrees with Loury that “racial stigmatization of blacks is

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embedded in the public consciousness and racially biases socially cognitive processes to the severe detriment of African-Americans.” 7 Myrdal may have believed that eliminating overt economic and other forms of discrimination would suffice to permit African Americans to achieve economic parity with the American majority. He noted that “White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards of living, health, education, manners and morals.” His “principle of cumulation,” implied both vicious and virtuous circles: If … for some reason white prejudice could be decreased and discrimination mitigated, this is likely to cause a rise in Negro standards, which may decrease white prejudice a little more which would again allow Negro standards to rise and so on through mutual interaction. … In the end, the cost of raising the status of the Negro may not involve any ‘real costs’ at all for society but instead may result in great ‘social gains’ and actual savings for society. (Myrdal 1944: 76 and 78) 8 Scheduled Castes or “Untouchables,” earlier Harijan (children of the Great God, Vishnu). 9 Light-skinned US African Americans have frequently passed into white society. Some, however, have claimed Amerindian identity. 10 This construction of ranked but ethnically diverse societies is congruent with the classification of Pierre Van den Berghe of societies that are, in his language, culturally homogeneous but ethnically diverse and socially pluralistic. See Van den Berghe (1967: 34–36). 11 Ghurye (1980: 23) divided India’s Scheduled Tribes into three parts: those largely assimilated and fully integrated into India’s mainstream communities, those still isolated and living unimpeded in their tribal culture, and a third group degraded and partially “Hinduized,” at the lowest level in Indian society. The latter have recently suffered loss of tribal lands, cultural autonomy, and self-confidence. 12 Nesiah (1999: 48–53) provides a capsule history of India’s hill tribes that documents their many “economic and cultural reverses,” notwithstanding the various protective measures for the Scheduled Tribes written into the constitution of India. 13 Part of the unfavorable indicators for health and longevity of SRELIM are caused by high stress which correlates with low rank. Stress dramatically reduces the effectiveness of the immune system by so altering biochemical functioning that it becomes less effective in resisting the incidence and severity of disease (Deaton 2003; Ridley 2003). 14 Nathan Glazer discusses some of the political and social costs of “interracial and intergroup distrust and conflict” in the United States and the role of education in mitigating such civil disharmony (Glazer 1997: 45–49). 3 A mobility model for stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities 1 Many US blacks believe that the AIDS epidemic was expressly launched by the majority to reduce the population of the inner cities. 2 From a total US black population of about 31 million (1992), there were about 650,000 black-owned firms, including one-person establishments. This implies that about 6 percent of the black labor force is self-employed, frequently in low-income pursuits, e.g. farming. Increasing the number of black entrepreneurs is desirable, but cannot be the main engine for reducing black poverty (Harrington and Yago 1999: 7). 3 For a Malaysian example, see Meerman 1979: 299. 4 The belief, widespread among scholars and scientists, posited in this study is that much of the cultural endowment is in place by age six, but remains plastic and

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8

9

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does not become nearly immutable until after adolescence. As the child matures, her cultural endowment is increasingly affected by non-parental factors, notably the influence of peer groups. Nesiah recently carried out an exhaustive study of affirmative action in the United States, Malaysia, and India. He too stresses cultural variables in explaining persistent differences in achievement between different ethnic groups while also emphasizing the role of discrimination in checking the achievement of SRELIM but states that “Cultural characteristics shaped by recent history (of slavery or caste oppression or various other forms of exclusion or deprivation) … may be transformed within a short period” (Nesiah 1997: 7). Morgan (1975: 321–24) provides context and detailed references for the above citations and assertions. Shahin Yaqub (2000) has carried out an international review of the empirical statistical literature on intergenerational relationships in earnings and wealth. The review also covers the literature on the substantial sibling correlations in earnings, which are interpreted to be due to a shared cultural heritage that similarly affects siblings’ earning endowments (ibid.: 29ff). Becker and Tomes (1993) do not address the question of taste for non-pecuniary income. Empirically, for any given group of individuals with equal quantities of similar human capital there corresponds an entire distribution of incomes with substantial variance. Much of the variance results from individuals’ choice of occupations with lower pecuniary income than they could earn given their human capital but which, presumably, provide extraordinary non-pecuniary income. Because of intergenerational differences in tastes for non-pecuniary income, supply and demand are brought into equilibrium in labor markets at wages that are not congruent with the human-capital requirements for those occupations. What can be interpreted as limited heritability of earnings endowments may also be due to systemic intergenerational differences in the taste for non-pecuniary income. George De Vos developed a “psychocultural” theory of cultural endowments in the context of his analysis of the impact on personality structure of Japanese cultural values. He describes how these lead to “very strong patterns of need achievement,” that persist over generations in “adaptive patterns” of “educational and occupational responses,” that have proven impervious to “external denigration.” The theory stresses the nature of intrafamilial interaction, and in particular the values and attitudes inculcated in the young through mother–child relationships. This work is based on a study of the behavior of Japanese immigrants in Chicago and study over two years in Japan “using survey techniques and psychological tests with an overall sample of 2,400 subjects in both urban and rural settings”(De Vos 1992: 208–13). As quoted in an article by John Lahr, “Speaking across the Divide,” appearing in the New Yorker magazine, 27 January 1997: 36. Compare Pettus 2007: 47. Ashley Pettus reports that in a 1988 survey of Chicago employers, the sociologist William Julius Wilson “found that employers overwhelmingly preferred to hire immigrants for entry-level positions over blacks – and especially over black males ‘Because [Wilson states] black males are perceived as dangerous, belligerent, unreliable, and somewhat lazy, employers do not want them interacting with consumers.’” Jeffrey Rosen, an American law professor, reached a similar conclusion in reviewing “NOT GUILTY, Twelve Black Men Speak Out on Law, Justice and Life,” (Asim, Jabari, editor, HarperCollins 2001). Rosen states that “The most vivid essays in ‘Not Guilty’ succeed by … confounding stereotypes rather than resorting to them. Not all black men mistrust the police, we learn from this collection, nor do all black families consider themselves to be victims” (Rosen 2001: C4).

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4 The Dalits and human rights 1 Cited by Eleanor Zelliot (1992: 161). 2 India’s so-called Scheduled Tribes (autonomous native peoples), accounting for close to 8 percent of total population, have the lowest income and status indicators. 3 Soon after Independence, the Untouchables named themselves “Dalit.” It has become the generally accepted name of these groups. It is interchangeable with “Scheduled Castes,” referring to central government lists or schedules of those castes certified as eligible for reservations and other preferences. Gandhi’s “Harijans” (Children of God) is widely seen as patronizing. The “Scheduled Tribes” (ST) are groups of historically autonomous groups not integrated with mainline communities identified on government schedules and also eligible for reservations and other preferences. 4 This conclusion holds although the original meaning of the word jati is tribe. 5 In 2001, non-Hindu religions – Buddhism (1.1 percent), Christianity (2.2 percent) and Islam (13.4 percent) – together accounted for 16.7 percent of the total population (Census of India 2001). Both Christian and Muslim communities have retained or redeveloped caste systems similar to Hindu caste practices, including the designation and stigmatization of large numbers of Dalits. 6 Srinivas (1962) is an excellent reference for this paragraph. 7 Historically widowhood could be punishment for bad behavior in earlier incarnation(s). 8 Alleged Dalit impurity and depravity have another dimension: in some states there is a traditional belief that they cause natural catastrophes. Certain Dalit women are seen as having capacity for witchcraft and may deliberately cause disease, drought, death, etc (Shah et al. 2006: 133). 9 I refer to their publication, Untouchability in Rural India (2006). The book presents, inter alia, the results of sample surveys conducted in 11 states in 565 villages that document the current content, range, and incidence of untouchability offenses and atrocities throughout India. In the next section, I present evidence on these violations in large degree derived from their pioneering work. Their descriptions also describe the techniques and tactics that Dalits use to defy subjugation. 10 Bhimrao Ambedkar was one of the first Dalits to complete higher education, in his case as a lawyer at Colombia University. Revered as a saint, Dalits have erected hundreds of statues of him throughout India. 11 As cited by Luce (2007: 13). 12 In 1999, the Washington Post reported on the death from undernourishment of two Dalit toddlers of a very poor mother who was unable to gain entry into the public primary health center in a village, Varanasi, in Uttar Pradesh. See A ‘Broken People’ in Booming India by Emily Was (1999: A1 and A20). 13 Luce provides strong evidence of judicial corruption in India (2007: 93); he also states that the backlog of lawsuits is more than three centuries, citing the McKinsey Report on India 2001 for this statistic (ibid.: 93 and 360). 14 Smita Narula wrote the text of the report. The report is based on the statements, memoranda, descriptions, etc. of hundreds of witnesses and participants marshaled by Human Rights Watch. 15 In the course of his narrative, Luce (2007: passim) furnishes many examples of police abuse and atrocity. 16 Reprinted from the citation by Narula (1998: 33). 17 This section is based on Tables 4.4 through 4.8 of the text. Tables 4.4 through 4.6 are derived from similar tables in the Annual Report 2006–07 of the Government of India, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. Table 4.7 is based on a similar table in Shah et al. (2006: 43). Table 4.8 is inferred from 2001 census data as reproduced in ibid. (37). 18 India’s census for 2001 found that the rural population accounted for 72.2 percent of the total population (2008 link: http://hetv.org/india/population-2001.htm) and

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31

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that 53.4 percent of the total population were directly dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods (Table 4.4). This implies that 74 percent of employment in the rural sector in 2001 was in agriculture, i.e., (53.4 /72.2) equals 74 percent. Amartya Sen asserts that 40 to 60 percent of India’s children are chronically undernourished, while maternal undernourishment is also extremely high (Sen 2005: 5). This is consistent with data from India’s National Family Health Survey-3 of 2005–06, which found 43 percent of children under three years of age seriously underweight, as reported by Himanshu (2007: Table 12). See also UN data for 2005, which state that 47 percent of India’s children under age five are underweight. The UN puts India one percentage point below the worst (highest) score on this variable worldwide (UNDP 2005: 228). Presumably the incidences of poverty and of under-nutrition correlate strongly and positively. Given the far above average poverty rate of Dalits, the incidence of under-nutrition or stunting of Dalit pre-school children no doubt exceeds the corresponding national mean. Personal communication, K. Sreedhar, Director, Holdeen India Program, Washington, DC, 1999. Much of the material in this section is also covered in Nesiah (1997: 56–74, 280–88, passim). The state here is the central and state governments including their parliaments, plus local authorities as spelled out in Article 12 of the constitution. “Backword” is in common use in Indian jurisprudence, journalism, advocacy work, etc. The several reservations were to lapse after 10 years. They have been legislatively renewed on a 10-year basis to the present. This is also the first amendment to the constitution, passed in 1951 by 243 for to five opposed, when the Congress Party still dominated parliament. The outlines below exclude considerations of implementation impact and issues. The cases of manual scavengers and atrocities are taken up later in the chapter. Nehru wanted an India that was state-led, and highly dirigist, in which modern industry would be mostly public undertakings. His vision held sway for a generation after Independence. Since corruption is common and the Scheduled Castes are poor, “naturally rich people, most of whom are high caste Hindus can bribe the administration” (Austin 1995: 121). Bribes have kept some SC from being admitted to higher schools. In India most affirmative action takes the form of reservations. Civil servants account for about 10 million (3 million central government, plus 7 million states) and include both railways and police. Public-sector employees also include military personnel (1.4 million); many teachers, no doubt some additional millions. Additional public-sector employment is accounted for by postal workers, employees of government-owned enterprises, e.g, oil and coal production, most banking, as well as publicly owned manufacturing of various kinds. Luce agrees that these sum to about 21 million (2008). India’s census of 1991 projected the population to be 1.023 billion in 2001. These data are commonly extrapolated to the present on the assumption of Dalit population growth close to but exceeding average population growth. Total population data from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India provides the pertinent demographic references along with the demographic data. Wikipedia online reference, 19 January 2008: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demo graphics of India gives 64 percent of population between ages 15–64 years. Table 4.9 shows that Dalits at Grade IV (net of sweepers) in the central government are “overrepresented” at about 20 percent of the total. Presumably, many of these posts were won by Dalits in open competition with other castes, since 20 percent exceeds the reservation quota of 15 percent.

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34 Sowell also emphasizes that the university places and reserved positions in the civil service have been acquired to a far higher degree by the upper echelons of the Dalit castes (1990: 102–3) 35 Rent-seeking may also be legal, e.g., a producer who gains high tariff protection for his output. I ignore “legal” rents but they are no doubt also very substantial in India. 36 This is an extrapolation from Tamil Nadu data showing that Dalits held less than 3 percent of the professorial slots in the state’s university system. 37 Luce provides information concerning a wide array of corruption practices in the judiciary, politics, police force, and commerce. In his index there are 26 references to corruption and 12 references to bribery (Luce 2007). He refers to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s estimate that 85 percent of development spending was “pocketed by bureaucrats” (ibid.: 78). In 2007, India ranked as 72nd in perceived degree of corruption (out of 179 countries),with a Corruption Perceptions Index score of 3.5 (with 1 being most corrupt and 10 being of the highest probity). (Transparency International 2007.) 38 I have not referenced some of the material in this section because it is both common knowledge and available in numerous publications, including those of a large number of private advocacy organizations. Both Shah et al. (2006) and Narula (1999) offer well-documented accounts of manual scavenging. 39 They include Chuhras of Punjab, Dumras of Rajasthan, Mehtars of Bihar, Bhuimalia of Bengal, Bhangis of Gujarat, Pakhis of Andhra Pradesh, Sikkaliars and Thotis of Tamil Nadu. 40 The three boarding schools are open to the general population but no caste Indians have applied. Those that inquired found the requirement that their child live and eat with Dalits an insurmountable obstacle. 41 The Supreme Court, like all courts in India, has a large backlog of cases. Publicinterest cases are given preference and jump the multiyear queue of cases waiting to be heard. 42 Interview with K. Sreedhar, Director, Holdeen India Program, Washington, DC, 17 December 2007. 43 At least they were completely clean on the days that the reporter visited them 44 At least one-quarter of 1 percent of human populations have weddings per year. One-quarter percent of India’s total population of approximately 1.1 billion is 2.75 million. Assuming monogamy, this translates into having at least 1.375 million weddings per year. The total number of intercaste weddings per year where one party is a Dalit is probably less than 10,000 based on the data given in the Ministry of Social Justice annual report for 2007. So Dalit intercaste weddings account for less than one percent of other weddings. 45 These are generalizations. Disaggregating Indian developmental indicators by state would show that some states have progressed very substantially on the road to development and/or equality while others have progressed very little. 46 These four groups echo the intraparty coalition of the BSP, the party that currently governs Uttar Pradesh. 47 The director of the first class of Dalits under the program described it as a “Pygmalion undertaking.” While meeting the parents of his Dalit students he saw almost “an anger in their eyes.” For the first month the students were unresponsive. Their English was dismal. [It was necessary] to introduce a course in self-presentation. The low-caste lot … gained confidence. At a bonding session, filled with meditation and dancing they wrote themselves a slogan: “As good as any, better than many.” Eighty five of the 89 who completed the course quickly found jobs, 17 of them with Infosys. The 89 were urban residents, many of the middle–classes. ( Economist, 6 October 2007: 82–81)

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48 In some cases, corruption kept Dalits from attractive posts, but far more important factors have been their lack of skills and credentials. 5 The mobility of Japan’s Burakumin: militant advocacy and government response 1 As cited by Upham 1987: 117. The original citation is in a newspaper article (Asaki Shimbun, 10 December 1976: 2). 2 The word Burakumin has long been used as a euphemism for the traditional names of two progenitor groups of today’s Burakumin, the eta (the filthy) and the hinin (the less than human or animal), two extremely derogative nouns. The usage makes sense since the eta/hinin were confined to ghetto villages that became known as special buraku. Recently the word “Burakumin” has also become less politically correct and has been eschewed by government, and by many writers. Circumlocutions are used instead, e.g., Buraku people, Buraku struggle, etc. In these, “Buraku” becomes an adjective meaning “of the Burakumin”. This leads to confusion since sometimes buraku means solely the village in general or village of the Burakumin. It is also misleading since the majority of those living in the historical buraku are no longer Burakumin. Most recently, some writers in English employ “Buraku” as a noun meaning Burakumin, compounding the confusion. Moreover, the Buraku Liberation League has started to substitute the word burakujumin (residents of the buraku(s)) for Burakumin (McLauchlan 2000: 1). 3 The word dowa is made of the kanji characters for same and harmony. It has been long used by government and others to identify programs designed to reduce Buraku discrimination. 4 The League gives the following definition of Burakumin: “Dowa-related residents [i.e. Burakumin] are defined as people living in Dowa areas and situated in poor conditions economically, socially, and culturally and whose socio-economic positions are considered to be unjustly hampered by discrimination based on the social class system institutionalized in the historical process of the development of Japanese society.” Using this definition, the League also states that 41 percent of the residents of the dowa districts are Burakumin (Buraku Liberation News, various 1997: 449). 5 For detailed comparison involving a single buraku see Su-Lan Reber 1999: 321. 6 One of the most widely used was based on the National Census of 1872–73 that listed the names and addresses of “all new commoners,” i.e., Burakumin. From this it was possible to derive the addresses of all buraku. The address list was updated with the publication of the “General List of Buraku Districts,” compiled by the government in 1935. A more recent list, of more than 200 pages, purports to provide an up-to-date list of all buraku including the number of households per buraku, and the occupations of their residents (Su-Lan Reber 1999: 311–12). 7 The right to school attendance and other social benefits requires registration of the newborn in a community registry. 8 Tomohiko Harada’s definition is precise: those people who were born, brought up and living in buraku, those who were not from burakumin family but came to live in buraku in the recent past and those who are living outside the buraku but have blood relationship with burakumin—all these are considered the burakumin minority by the majority Japanese. (Tomohiko Harada, “Long Suffering Brothers and Sisters Unite!” (Buraku Liberation Research Institute 1981, cited by Su-Lan Reber 1999: 300) 9 The Labor Standards Act of 1947 prohibits wage and other forms of labor discrimination, but is not enforced.

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10 It is possible that independent research on the Burakumin reported in English is further developed than similar work published in Japanese. 11 Under US law these might include battery, kidnapping, and slander. 12 Several teachers at the Yata Middle School supported a candidate for political office who had circulated an election pamphlet that the BLL considered discriminatory. In the course of the denunciation procedure the teachers were held against their will until three in the morning, were intimidated in many ways and described by League officers as rats, and prejudiced bigots, inter alia. However, food was provided during rest periods, and the restroom was available (Upham 1987: 87–89, 99). 13 In 1973, for example, the Prefecture of Osaka budgeted the yen equivalent of 245 million dollars for Burakumin improvements (Rohlen 1976: 689). 14 Zendokyo, a national advocacy organization of teachers, officials, and parents has been particularly active in working with Japan’s disadvantaged students, above all the Burakumin (Hirasawa 1989: 100, 104). 15 In Osaka prefecture, which accounts for a tenth of the Burakumin, 51 percent of those taking literacy classes in Buraku community centers in the 1980s were adults in their forties and fifties (Hirasawa 1989: 59). 16 This presumes that the PPP rate of exchanges is stable over time. 17 The BLL points out that in addition to the 4,442 dowa districts with a Burakumin population estimated in the government Somucho surveys in 1993 as 892,751, there are (or were) another 1,558 special buraku with similar Burakumin populations that did not participate in the SML programs as dowa districts. In some cases city authorities prohibited participation while some of the highest-income buraku decided to forego the benefit of participation and thus avoid official classification as a dowa district. See Buraku Liberation News (May 1997: 440). 18 “Intermarriage may well be considered the last step in assimilation. Sociologists have so considered it … . Intermarriage is so crucial a final step, because it marks the highest degree of social acceptance … it is an indication that everything else in bringing groups together is working (Glazer 1997: 128). 19 Interview with Kenzo Tomonaga, Director of the Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute, 21 March 2000. 20 Some rural buraku are depopulating; others are slated for “mountain development”; parts of others have been sold for upscale housing development. See website of the Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute, http://blhrri.org/ blhrri_e/bpb/buraku_problem_basic04.htm, accessed 3 March 2008. 21 “The percentage of high achiever buraku children is similar to the national average, but there are a significantly high proportion of low achievers and relatively small number of middle-range performers in relation to the national average” (Okano and Tsuchiya 1999: 125). 22 Complicating the situation is the fact that some of the modernized, upgraded, buraku are more attractive than other blue-collar neighborhoods. Presumably some Burakumin remain in their traditional places because housing and other alternatives open to them outside of the buraku are less attractive. 6 The Afro-Cuban story: a brief success 1 To the present (2008), in Cuba, certain goods and services (notably food rations, housing, education, and healthcare) are unconditionally available to all citizens, although housing is increasingly of poor quality and the monthly food ration covers about half of basic food consumed. The food ration card is provided to everybody regardless of political sympathies or job status (De la Fuente 2008). 2 Poverty and Mobility in Low-status Minorities: The Cuban Case in International Perspective.

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3 The comparisons of Afro-Cubans with other SRELIM have been moved to the comparison chapter at the end of this volume. 4 Fidel Castro has ceded his leadership position to his brother, Raul. Revolutionary Cuba’s founding fathers (the Castros and their peers) have not yet ceded power to the younger generation with presumably a different ideology. 5 Myrdal emphasizes “the fallacy of the general theory that law cannot change custom.” See Myrdal (3rd edn, 1962: 20 and 1031ff). 6 See Cubanet News Inc. at http://www.cubanet.org to view the entire constitution. The initial post-1959 constitution was proclaimed in 1976 and amended in 1992. 7 This section on Cuban education draws heavily on Martin Carnoy et al. (2007) Cuba’s Academic Advantage: Why Students in Cuba Do Better in School and Carnoy (2008). 8 These data are from Bowles (1971). The original source is Cuba, Junta Central de Planificación (1968) Compendio Estadístico de Cuba, Havana : Direcci?on Central de Estadi?stica: 30–35. 9 Some observers question whether or not the student sample for Cuba was randomly derived. Carnoy et al. (2007) evaluated parts of Cuba’s educational system in depth and found no evidence of biased sampling. 10 The sources for this material are Carnoy et al. (2007) and Carnoy (2008). 11 Social promotion may help explain some of the variable achievement across US schools where cognitive skills achieved may lag behind school attainment by as much as four school years. 12 In the US, during 1997–98, 18 percent of children aged five to nine were moved from one residence to another, usually changing schools in the process. The children with the highest probability of moving were the poorest, who also had the lowest academic achievement scores. See US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the US (2008): Tables 30 and 31. 13 Comparison involving the two prior decades is impossible since the Cuban government did not collect data by race during the 1960s and 1970s. 14 Applying US practice, which also defines mulatto as black, might imply a black majority in Cuba today. Some researchers reach this conclusion (Moore 1988b: 358ff). In the censuses of 1945, 1953, and 1981, those counted were asked to state if they were white, black, or mulatto. In all three censuses a majority identified themselves as white. But Carlos Moore asserts that in both 1953 and 1981, the census enumerators classified many blacks into the white race (Moore 1988b: 358ff and 1988a: 177). Other observers stress that race is a social construct wherein class and pigment are confounded: “Few Cubans are either ‘pure’ white or black. Definitions of ‘colour’ are as much the result of social criteria as of somatic classification” (Minority Rights Group International 1997: 82). In contrast, Alejandro de la Fuente finds that the 1981 census data on population by race are consistent with time series on births, deaths, and fertility by race (blacks, mulattos, and whites) back to 1841 (De la Fuente 1995). Note that the mulatto population possibly “misclassified” as white is unlikely to have lower socio-economic status than the 34 percent officially classified as mulatto or black, given the traditional positive correlation between lightness of skin and status. Redefining light-skin mulattos as black may reduce socio-economic status disparity. It will most probably not increase it. The census of 2002 also used self-identification in distribution of the population. The results were consistent with earlier censuses: 65 percent white; 24.9 percent mulatto; 10.1 percent black (Data and documentation for 2002 census available in Wikipedia article on Cuban demographics (2008).) 15 Before 1959, sections of the rural population enjoyed full-time employment for less than six months per year. This was overwhelmingly the case for cane-cutters (most of whom were black) who accounted for about a fifth of Cuba’s labor force in the early 1950s. Malnutrition was extensive during low-wage periods. Infectious diseases

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16 17

18

19

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(cholera, typhoid, malaria, yellow fever) result in higher death rates among the poorly nourished than among the well fed. This situation implied large differences in life expectancy between blacks and whites. Table 6.2 would be improved by excluding the part of the 1981 population that had completed its schooling or non-schooling before the Revolution in 1959, which is nearly everyone over the age of 42 in 1981. For any occupational category, the index of black occupational status is defined as the percentage of blacks employed in the occupation divided by the percentage of whites employed in the occupation. Black status parity for the category is achieved when the ratio equals one. Table 6.3 indicates that Cuban blacks lost out in one category: management. This was recognized as a problem at the third party congress in 1986. In general, blacks have been underrepresented in the highest councils of state: the upper echelons of the Communist Party, the council of ministers, and the party central committee (Buró Politicó). In 2000, however, there were six “Afro-Cubans in the Buró Politicó, compared to zero 40 years ago.” Blacks are also heavily represented in the officer corps of the Cuban armed forces. Military officers manage six ministries: sugar, commerce, fisheries, transport, interior, and the armed forces (Aspen Institute 2000: 3– 4). A 1987 survey of directors (dirigentes) of state establishments at the municipal, provincial, and national level found that whites accounted for 72.5 percent of all directors, mulattos for 15.4 percent, and blacks 12. This corresponded to adult population shares of 66.1 percent for whites, 21.9 for mulattos, and 12 for blacks (De la Fuente 1998c: 29–31). Alejandro de la Fuente discusses the literature on this topic as it concerns Cuba. Some writers insist, in pre-revolutionary Cuba institutional racism did not exist, as compared in particular to the United States, and that the long term trend [in Cuba] was toward genuine integration of blacks and mulattos in all aspects of economic, social and political life.

20

21

22 23 24

Others assert, “Cuba had been essentially a racist country where opportunities for upward mobility were seriously limited in the case of blacks.” De la Fuente notes that the entire discussion has a “very precarious empirical basis” (1998c: 23). Historians have studied and discussed in some detail the broader question of the “virulence” of Anglo-Caribbean/US slavery relative to Iberian slavery beginning with Frank Tannenbaum’s 1947 book (Slave and Citizen) comparing US and Brazilian slavery. There is support for the position that “no other society in the Western Hemisphere in which black people were introduced in bondage equals the record of racism of the United States” (Degler 1987: 6). Self-purchase schemes were often in installments typically with a half or a third down. The purchase price may have been decided by lawsuit, where the slave usually argued that the just price was the original purchase price while the owner insisted on the current (higher) price (Klein 1986: 228). For the biennium, 1997–98, total imports of goods and services were at least a third lower than for any two-year period between 1985 and 1990 (Comisión Económica para América Latina y El Caribe 2000: Tables A-1 and A-2). But in the twenty-first century it has become routine for firms with substantial foreign participation to pay monthly bonuses to Cuban employees in foreign exchange which have far larger purchasing power than their peso wages. In October 1999, The Economist weekly stated that household payments for official food rations, apartment rent and utilities were still very low, typically accounting for about a third of a monthly salary of 300 pesos, or $15 at the market exchange rate (Economist, 23 October 1999: 37).

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25 As discussed early in the chapter, Afro-Cubans or blacks are defined as the total of those who self-identified as blacks or mulattos in recent censuses. In the latest census, that of 2002, they equaled 35 percent of the population of Cuba (10 percent black plus 25 percent mulatto). 26 These data help explain rampant pilferage by the citizenry of state-owned property in Cuba. A popular joke builds on a man’s excitement at finally getting a better job in a government enterprise. When he proudly informs his wife of their good fortune, she does not waste time on the usual, “How much does it pay?” but demands, “And how much can you steal?” 27 Peters 2008. 28 Cubanet News Inc. (2008) Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, 1992: Chapter VI, “Equality”, Article 42. 7 Bolivia’s highland Indians: oppressed but not conquered 1 Presidential inauguration speech, 1952 (Dunkerley 1984: 41). 2 Caste is used here, instead of class, since initially Bolivia’s system of status stratification was racially and therefore hereditarily defined. Further, before the Revolution (1952) the Indian actually had little choice of occupation. In any one generation, very few Indians escaped peasant status. 3 I use the word “Indian” with caution, because of its multicentury accumulation of negative connotation. Recently, however, the word has been rehabilitated and is now widely and respectfully employed by social scientists to mean individuals whose ancestors were pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Western hemisphere. 4 Mary Waters finds that the impact of being black in countries where blacks form the political majority, as in Jamaica or Trindidad and Tobago, leads to identity, attitudes, belief, and institutions more conducive to upward mobility. Certain problems of an ethno-racial nature (e.g., perceived hidden discrimination) and their undesirable impact on behaviors are greatly attenuated (Waters 1999). 5 This uses the criterion of ethno-racial self-identification for the population then over 15 years. 6 Many of the lowland indigenous may be SRELIM. For example, the Sirionó Indians of Bolivia’s Beni province experienced traumatic victimization in the 1920s. In conflict with white cattleranchers, they lost all access to land and were imprisoned by Bolivia’s military. Thereafter they were forced into servitude on ranches in the area (Mann 2005: 10,413). 7 This section draws heavily on the account in Klein (1992: 35–55). 8 In 1757, the Spanish monarchy brought Jesuit missions to a close by expelling the Jesuits from Latin America. The change presumably provided new opportunities for land acquisition to the local Spanish elite. 9 See “Finca Ingavi – A Medieval Survival on the Bolivian Altiplano” by Frank Keller (1950: 42). Keller provides a revealing general social and agronomic analysis of Altiplano farm life including its institutional setting in 1950. 10 Censo Nacional Agropecuario, 1950 as reported by Dunkerley 1984: 20. 11 This number is derived from Klein’s Table 1, itself a compilation of data from five sources (Klein 1992: 319). 12 Dalence estimated average size of the campesino family as 4.5 persons in 1846 (Dalence 1851: passim). In the census of 1950, 72 percent of the population was engaged in agriculture. 13 One hectare equals 2.47 acres. 14 Good-quality land on the Altiplano could be cultivated for three years in annual crop rotation followed by a fallow of ten or more as pasture (Keller 1950: 45). Keller estimated that about one-tenth of the estate he reported on in detail (Finca Ingavi) was “under cultivation” on average. He considered this representative of the

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15

16 17

18 19 20

21 22

23

24 25 26

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fincas of Ingavi province. Total arable land may also include land in permanent pasture. Before 1967 there were no paved roads deep into Bolivia’s tropical lowlands. In 1950, most settlement was on the Altiplano, plus a number of people living in subtropical valleys that connected to the Altiplano. The tropical lowlands of the Amazon basin were sparsely inhabited. Malloy(1970: 357, fn. 10). He cites David H. Zook. Jr (1960) The Conduct of the Chaco War, New Haven, CT: Bookman Associates. After the war many campesinos preferred residence in La Paz to returning to the countryside, even residence as vagrants without work. The government “felt compelled to issue compulsory work decrees” (Malloy 1970: fn. 12, 357). The original source for the text quote is Herbert Klein, The Impact of the Chaco War on Bolivian Society, unpublished Ph.D. thesis University of Chicago, 1963, p. 333). Since 1953, 2 August is celebrated in Bolivia as “El Dia del Indio”, the Day of the Indian, a national holiday. The large “modern” agro-enterprises were and are located in the tropical lowlands, particularly of the Department of Santa Cruz. Some of the largest such enterprises may be subjected to a new land reform. Bolivia, Legislative Decree No. 03464 relative to agrarian reform, 2 August 1953 (FAO translation). At paragraph 12, the Reform Decree also provides a telling application of the Marxian concept of surplus value: “The state does not recognize the latifundium which is a rural property of large area … either undeveloped or substantially underdeveloped … with the use of obsolete implements and methods resulting in the waste of human effort … its profitability owing to the disequilibrium [among] the factors of production is fundamentally dependent upon the extra yield which is contributed by the peasants in their capacity of constituting a system of feudal oppression reflected in the agricultural backwardness and a low standard of living and culture of the peasant population” (as reprinted in Karst 1966: 479). In 1959 the sugar plantations, which accounted for the largest part of Cuba’s arable land were expropriated and converted into state enterprises. Cuba’s small farmers did not directly benefit from the nationalization. Following the agricultural reform, many highland campesinos migrated from the Cochabamba Valley into the nearly tropical Chapare area to increase the production of coca and other sub-tropical crops. In 1967, the pace of migration into the lowlands substantially increased with the completion of a paved highway that connects Santa Cruz to Cochabamba and the western highlands. A survey of Aymara households in six cantons (counties) carried out during 1964– 66 estimated that the average educational attainment of the 368 male heads of households who were over 26 years old at the time of the 1952 Revolution was 0.71 years (Kelley and Klein 1981: 146, 227, 239). In similar surveys conducted in 1966 in the same six places, the average attainment was 1.97 years for the 103 Aymara male heads of households over the age of 24 who had come of age after the Revolution, i.e., were born between 1936 and 1942. If on average each teacher taught 50 children and the rural population in 1965 was 3 million, this would mean teachers for 12 percent of the entire rural population. Total population in 1965 was less than 3.5 million. The local government office for birth registration of hijos naturales (natural sons) was prominently located in downtown La Paz during the 1960s. The data of Table 7.3 on languages spoken force this conclusion. In 2000, more than 71 percent of the population self-identified as indigenous (6 percent lowland and 65 percent highland indigenous). But only about 45 percent of the population were able to speak Aymara or Quechua. Hence about 20 percent of the total population identified themselves as highland Indian notwithstanding being unable

Notes

27 28 29

30 31

32

33

34 35 36

37

38

39 40

41

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to speak the language of their identity. (The data in Table 7.3 on languages spoken are broadly consistent with those of Table 7.2, when adjusted for numerical rounding and small differences in date of measurement.) This statement holds in the Bolivian case and for the four SRELIM cases included in this book. Dunkerley’s reference for this is Bautista Saavedra, El Ayllu – Proceso Mohoza (La Paz, 1971). Carter’s study of seven Altiplano haciendas found more than three-quarters of the arable land of the seven was in peasant usufruct holdings as well as virtually all “wastelands” (Carter 1964: 71). Keller found that in 1949 campesinos held about three acres per family, in three to five parcels, in 20 haciendas of Ingavi province. Total campesino holdings were, therefore, a miniscule part of the entire estates, which typically exceeded 1,000 acres each. But the amount of land actually plowed and cultivated was about equal between landlord and campesinos usufruct parcels on these estates (Keller 1950: 41–42). The “fiesta system” was still in widespread operation on the Altiplano in the 1960s. Passing was noted briefly in the subsection “Involuntary identity” in Chapter 2. In Victor Villaseñor’s memoir, Burro Genius (2004) many of the Mexican immigrants in his American elementary school, who were among the best students, denied Mexican heritage and claimed Spanish or French ethnicity. In Latin America a kind of explicit cultural “passing” has been common. In Brazil traditionally one speaks of how “money whitens”, while in countries of Hispanic origin the definitions of indígena, mestizo, and blanco have shifted from one based on race to a definition that is de facto based on income and status. Researchers have also defined “social races” in defining variables for statistical modeling (Kelley and Klein 1981). The censuses of nine Latin American countries taken between 1972 and 1990 defined ethnicity by language spoken in five countries and by self-perception in the four others (CELADE 1992). Census definition by self-perception did not occur or only rarely occurred before the twentieth century. Data reproduced in Psacharopoulos and Patrinos 1994: 26. Chiswick et al. (2000) carried out an econometric analysis confirming this in Bolivia. See notes to Table 7.2. The parity gap also persists with respect to infant mortality. According to recent data, infant mortality at birth by mother’s native tongue was highest for Quechua (84 per 1,000); 72 for Aymara and 55 for Spanish-speakers (Instituto Nacional de Estadística 2003: 46). In 1781, following an Indian uprising in Peru, Tupac Katari (nom de guerre, Tupac being a Quechua word for Inca) led a revolt that aimed to form an independent Indian republic. Nearly 80,000 Aymara Indians besieged La Paz for three months, until defeated by Argentine troops. Katari was captured and killed. The Banzer government, seeking to remain in power in 1978, attracted campesino votes in the countryside by “provision of beer, sandwiches, and a free ride in army lorries for those campesinos prepared to vote for el general” (Dunkerley 1984: 247). The actual results of the 1978 election are unknown because fraud was prevalent and blatant. To register as voters, individuals need to prove identity. In the census of 1992, 52 percent of the men and 38 percent of the women in rural areas, and over 15 years of age, had identity documents (Albó 2002: fn. 7, 99). Bolivia’s population in 1950 was 2.7 million (Table 7.2). On the eve of the Conquest in 1530, it may have been higher (Mann 2005). Non-growth over four centuries is a consequence of the catastrophic impact of European diseases on the highland Indian population compounded by undernutrition. Official Bolivian export statistics for the period 2001–3 do not estimate cocaine exports.

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42 The total value of mineral production in Bolivia for the three years (2001–3) accounted for less than a quarter of official foreign-exchange earnings (exports and services), and tin accounted for less than a sixth of the total value of mineral production (Banco Central de Bolivia n.d.). 43 This outline of the “water wars” is based mainly on (Kohl and Farthing 2006: 162– 68). It is supplemented by material from the account in Finnegan 2002. 44 The two paragraphs immediately above are based on reports of the protests published in the Washington Post in the sequence: 1 June 2004: A-15; 4 June: A-13; 7 June: A-19; 9 June: A-16; 10 June: A-16 and the text on the Bolivian gas war from Wikipedia. The two accounts corroborate each other. 45 Up to and including the most recent election in December 2005, candidates for president and vice president ran on the same ticket. The winner had to obtain a majority vote. If no candidate had a majority, the winner was chosen by runoff election in the bicameral legislature where each member (since 1994, 27 senators plus 130 deputies) got one vote. Between the return to democracy in 1982 and the election in 2002, no candidate received a majority of the popular vote. To facilitate the legislative runoff, majority coalitions were negotiated among frontrunners, with the exception of Evo Morales in the election of 2002. 46 “MAS quiere presidir un gobierno desde las calles,” quoted in La Razon (5 July 2002: 1), a daily newspaper published in La Paz. The other material in this paragraph concerning the election of 2002 is derived from Singer and Morrison (2004). 47 “Podemos,” meaning “we can” in Spanish, is an acronym for Poder Democrático y Social (Democratic and Social Power). 48 Conclusion of Eduardo Gamarra (2008), a Bolivian political scientist specializing in Bolivia politics. 49 The content of the MAS election platform in 2005 was published in “Bolivia, Enter the Man in the Stripey-jumper”, Economist, 21 January 2006: 38. 50 Items 4 to 7 are discussed and documented in Molina 2008. 51 Sharp (2005) provides case studies of successful application of non-violent techniques. 8 US African Americans: updating the American dilemma 1 Foner provides a detailed, comprehensive, and analytical treatment of the entire period in Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863–1877 (1988). I draw on it heavily. 2 The 13th amendment of the US constitution (“Neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States … ”) was formally ratified by the states in December 1865, eight months after the surrender of the Confederate Army. 3 The US constitution mandates that only republics can join the Union. 4 From May of 1865 to the fall of 1866, the Union Army decreased from 1 million to 38,000. Many of the latter were on the Indian frontier (Foner 1988: 148). 5 Early in Reconstruction, blacks were given the legal right to occupy public lands but those available were worthless because of inaccessibility and poor quality (swamps, rocks, etc.). 6 Strong desire for education seems also to have been present among black troops serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. Close to 200,000 slaves fled plantations to join the Union Army and formed infantry units led by white officers. Every black regiment had a “schoolhouse,” operated by missionaries. Black soldiers made eager students and many learned to read, write, and spell (Hine and Jenkins 2001: 53) 7 Including Howard University, named in honor of General Howard. 8 In October 1865, General Howard visited Edisto Island in South Carolina to apologize, discuss alternatives, and attempt to ease the shock of land expropriation

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at an assembly of newly settled Freedmen gathered at a local church. The assembly loudly expressed consternation, anger, and sorrow, until united by the voice of a Freedwoman they began singing spirituals, including “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen” (Foner 1988: 160). This example of fortitude and resignation is also a good illustration of traumatic victimization. Because marriage marks the highest degree of social acceptance between the contracting parties, sociologists and others see intermarriage as “the last step in assimilation” (Glazer 1997: 128–29). By 1994, 88 percent of blacks and 65 percent of whites thought “It’s all right for Whites and Blacks to date each other; 85 percent of whites under age 25 thought inter-racial dating was all right” (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997: 525). By one estimate, in 1998, a third of black males between the ages of 16 and 24 were in jail or prison (Washington Post, 30 November 1998: A-10). Primary source: American Civil Liberties Union, National Prison Project. As cited in Eyerman (2001: 97). Much of the material in this subsection is derived from the Federal Equal Employment Opportunities Laws section of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website. See also footnote 85, p. 646 in the same volume for analysis of a number of additional studies with similar findings. See also EEOC Performance and Accountability Reports for various years. Enrollment in subsidized school-lunch programs provides schools with data on family income. See US Supreme Court Cases: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 1978; Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003; Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003. State of Washington Initiative 200, 1998; State of Michigan Civil Rights Initiative or Proposal 2, 2006. Both of these were ballot initiatives, that passed with large margins. Coleman organized and led a pathbreaking national study of US black/white educational and other differences in the 1960s (Coleman 1965). US Census Bureau 2008: Table 224. Total Head Start enrollment minus Early Head Start enrollment of two-year-olds of about 90,000 leaves 810,000 Early Head Start beneficiaries aged three to five. This translates into 73 percent of the civilian, non-institutional female population between the ages of 25 and 64 inclusive being in the labor force in 1998 (US Census Bureau 1999: Table 653). Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey education supplement from 1968–2000. Mainly people in prisons or asylums.

9 Comparisons and conclusions 1 In this chapter I frequently cite material from earlier chapters without references. They are provided in the corresponding earlier chapters. 2 In this chapter it is convenient to define Bolivia’s highland indigenous as a SRELIM notwithstanding the group’s recent change in status. 3 The ideal comparison is with the corresponding non-SRELIM, i.e., dominant groups. For two of the studies, data partitioned by non-SRELIM are not available. 4 Comprehensive economic indicators for Cuba have become scarce and analysis of recent trends is speculative. 5 Explanation for this conclusion in terms of the mobility model is provided at the end of the chapter. For fuller explanation see Chapter 3. 6 Defined here as the 40 percent or so of the population that can speak one of these languages. Self-identification puts the total at about 60 percent.

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7 The government expects Bolivia to achieve universal literacy by 2009. 8 The median income is defined as the income such that half of all incomes are higher and half are lower. 9 Part of the black/white differences in educational achievement at similar levels of schooling are due to white schools enjoying on average higher teaching quality than majority black schools. In some cases this may be due to majority discrimination against blacks. 10 I use the definition of Black Belt as black-majority counties involving parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and the southern tip of Virginia. 11 Juan Williams, a black journalist and author, reporting on a Pew Heritage Trusts poll done in association with National Public Radio in 2007 (Williams 2007: A19) 12 In the United States, secondary boycotts are against the law (Taft Hartley Act), let alone street blockades. 13 Estimates vary from about 700,000 to more than 1 million. 14 Human history before the industrial revolution can be interpreted as consistent with the corollary. 10 Postscript 1 Joan M. Nelson is a political scientist with long-standing interests in political participation and poverty reduction in economic-development contexts. She is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center of the Smithsonian Institute and a Scholar-in-Residence at the School of International Service of the American University, Washington, DC.

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Index

assimilation: Chinese indigenous peoples 19; forced 9; intermarriage 8, 22, 88–90, 114–15, 188–89, 244, 246, 253; SRELIM 8, 9, 22, 43–44; US African Americans 43–44; voluntary 8; see also integration; parity; SRELIM Australasia 11, 117, 239 Bolivia 250, 252; caste system 137, 144, 145, 150–52, 249; constitution 137, 157, 171, 172–73, 174, 234; cultural dualism 144–45; economy 139, 146, 166–67, 168, 170, 173, 174, 231, 252; education 159–61, 163, 173, 174, 254; human development 213; Inca Empire, culture 139, 154, 155, 157; Independence 140; indigenous people 139–44, 158, 160, 162, 249, 250–51; land, land reform 139–43, 148–49, 174, 234, 235, 249–50, 251; languages 158, 159–63, 164, 173, 250–51; Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) 146–47, 150, 164–65, 175; National Revolution 137, 138, 139, 144, 146–50, 152, 157, 159, 164–68, 175, 234, 249; population 142, 146, 148–49, 152, 160, 250, 251; poverty 213, 215; religion 138, 140, 144, 157, 167, 173; rural 142, 144–45, 149–50, 152, 160, 213, 215, 250, 251; see also Bolivia’s highland Indians Bolivia’s highland Indians 3, 21–22, 137–75, 219–20, 250–51; abuse of 141, 153; Aymara 21, 22, 137, 138, 139, 141, 152, 158, 159, 165, 167, 175, 215, 220, 250, 251, 253; campesino (peasant) 137, 139, 140–42, 144, 145, 151, 164, 249; Chaco War 144–46,

250; child labor 156, 163, 214, 215; cholos (mestizos) 151–52, 153, 157, 162, 250; citizenship 157, 234; coca, cocaine trade 157, 166–68, 173, 174; colonization 138, 139–40, 143–44, 154–55; cultural endowment 150, 158–59; deculturalization 138, 150, 154–57, 159; economic development 28, 215; education 145, 149–50, 152, 159–61, 163, 173, 213, 214, 215, 218, 250; emancipation (National Revolution) 21, 146–50, 157, 159, 163, 219, 220; employment, occupation 139, 142, 144, 146, 154–55, 156, 215; exploitation 139–44, 145, 151, 153 (taxation and forced labor 143–44, 154); evolution away from SRELIM 8, 22, 150–73; health 163, 166, 251; homeland dispossession 139–43, 144, 155, 160, 173, 249; identity 160, 162, 175 (pride in 150, 157–58, 159); income 138, 163, 174, 213, 214; Indio, Indian 137, 139, 151, 249; Klein, H.S. 151–52, 166, 250; land, land reform 148–49, 150, 163, 166, 219, 220, 234, 251; languages 137, 145, 149, 151, 158, 159–63, 164, 173, 250–51, 253; migration 149, 166, 250; mobility model for SRELIM 218, 231; Morales, Evo 137, 141, 168, 169–73, 174, 220, 252; Movement to Socialism (MAS) 168, 169, 170–71, 172–73, 175, 220, 235; parity 137, 159–64, 173–74, 214, 231, 251; ‘passing’ into mainstream society 151–52, 158; politics 146, 158, 164–75, 219–20, 235, 237 (politics in the street 165, 168–72, 175, 220, 235; power 137,

270

Index

138, 150, 158, 159, 163–64, 168–73, 174, 175, 219–20, 231; sindicatos (unions) 148, 164–65, 220; voting 147–48, 164, 165–66, 251, 173, 174, 175, 220, 235); poverty 144, 160, 163, 214; promoting socio-economic mobility 164–73, 219–20 (self-help 219–20, 221); Quechua 21, 22, 138, 139, 152, 167, 175, 215, 220, 251, 253; race, caste and status 150–52; resistance 141, 168–72, 175, 219; serfdom 21, 139–42, 144; Spanishspeaking elite 137, 139, 145, 146, 147, 151, 153, 155, 163, 220; SRELIM 138, 150–59, 175, 251, 253 (numerical majority 138, 175, 219, 249); stigmatization 153–54; see also Bolivia; mobility model for SRELIM; SRELIM case studies 3–4, 21–22, 213–32, 233–38; Bolivia’s highland Indians 3, 21–22, 137–75; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 3, 21–22; India’s Dalits (Untouchables) 3, 21–22, 46–95; Japan’s Burakumin 3, 21–22, 96–117; US African Americans 3, 21–22, 176–212; see also names of specific case studies; mobility model for SRELIM; SRELIM cast out 10–11, 18–19; endogamy requirements 11, 50, 88–90, 97, 104, 105, 184; India’s Dalits 7, 10, 11, 19, 21, 46, 47–48, 49, 54, 94–95, 138, 224; Japan’s Burakumin 10, 11, 19, 21, 97, 99, 138; movement restrictions 11, 49–50; native Africans in Apartheid South Africa 10; Roma 10, 19; SRELIM 7, 11, 12, 22, 236; stigmatization 12; traumatic victimization 10–11, 138; see also caste system; India; India’s Dalits; Japan’s Burakumin; SRELIM; traumatic victimization caste system: Bolivia 137, 144, 145, 150–52, 249; India 47, 49–50, 51–56, 69, 70, 90, 215, 226, 228, 230; Japan 97–98; religion 10, 52, 54–56, 94–95, 97–98, 104–5, 215, 225, 242; US African Americans 184, 186, 226; see also cast out; India child/teenager: child labor 50, 68, 97, 156, 163, 214, 215; Cuba 121, 122, 128; cultural endowment 26, 34–35, 241; early-childhood development

34–35, 207–11; earnings and education 36–37, 241; education 25–26, 31–32, 34–35, 37–38; mortality 239; peer group 24, 29, 40–41, 42, 122, 210, 241; poverty 20, 37–38, 60, 212; social deviance 239; suicide 239; United States 207–11, 212; see also education; SRELIM citizenship 1; Bolivia’s highland Indians 157, 234; Jews 16, 17; US African Americans 177, 178 colonization 19; Bolivia’s highland Indians 138, 139–40, 143–44, 154–55; deculturalization 10–11; homeland dispossession 10, 12, 22; indigenous peoples 1, 7, 8, 9; land expropriation 20; Mexico 8, 138; slavery 10; SRELIM 10–11, 236; traumatic victimization 138; see also Bolivia’s highland Indians; indigenous peoples Cuba 246; Castro, Fidel 118, 247; Castro Revolution 31, 118, 119, 121, 123, 128, 221, 234, 250 (policies 120, 234, 246); constitution 119–20, 135–36, 234, 247; economy 120, 128–31, 134, 213, 248 (from socialist to market-oriented economy 119, 129–30, 132, 213; remittances 129, 130, 131, 132, 134); education system 118, 120–22, 123–24, 128, 130, 221, 247; employment, occupation 124, 125, 129–30, 248; exploitation 120; health 120, 123, 247–48; paradigm shift 119–25; political system 120–22, 135, 221, 230, 234; race issues 120, 123, 126–28, 135–36, 221, 247; religion 126, 127; Republic 127; rural 123, 134, 247–48, 250; see also Cuba’s Afro-Americans Cuba’s Afro-Americans 3, 21–22, 118–36; Afro-Cubans, blacks, mulattos 123, 247, 249; child/teenager 121, 122, 128; cultural endowment 119, 125 (earnings endowments 125–28); discrimination 132, 135–36, 219, 221, 230 (employment 132–34, 135, 213); economic development 28; education 31, 118, 123–24, 131, 134, 217, 218, 219, 221 (system 119, 120–22, 128); emancipation 21, 126; employment, occupation 118, 124, 131, 132–34, 221, 248 (elite exodus 123, 131, 221, 230); Fuente, Alejandro de la 123, 130–31, 133, 135, 247, 248; health

Index 123, 247–48; income 31, 118, 130–31, 217, 219, 221; marriage 128; mobility model for SRELIM 28, 119, 123, 125, 131–32, 218, 230; Palestino migration 134–35; parity 31, 118, 119, 120–21, 123–24, 128, 130–32, 135–36, 213, 214, 221, 230; race issues 126–28, 133, 135, 248; slavery 21, 119, 125, 126–27, 138, 248; social deviance 124, 135; socio-economic mobility 221, 230 (Afro-Cuban reversion 132–36; and Cuba’s changing economy 128–31, 248; and Cuba’s paradigm shift 119–25, 230); see also Cuba; mobility model for SRELIM; SRELIM cultural endowment 9–10, 29, 241; as cause for slow progress 2, 3, 4, 9–10, 23; capacity to learn 28–30, 36, 37–38, 207; cultural stability 30; earnings endowments 29, 36–37, 44, 125–28, 210, 241 (Cuba’s Afro-Americans 125–28; Japan’s Burakumin 102–3); early-childhood development 34–35, 207–11, 232; education 39–40; human capital 10, 18, 28–30, 31, 36; India’s Dalits 47; the Jewish exception 15–18; low income 239; low-status minorities 1–2; mobility model for SRELIM 23, 28–32, 34, 37–39, 44, 45, 227, 232, 237; oppositional culture 39–40, 102–3, 154, 191, 232, 237; ‘psychocultural’ theory 241; slavery, serfdom 239; social deviance 35, 103, 239; SRELIM 2, 3, 4, 9–19, 23, 28–32, 232, 241; subcultures 2, 9, 39–40, 192, 227, 232, 237; US African Americans 30, 207–8, 212, 227, 229; see also deculturalization; mobility model for SRELIM; SRELIM deculturalization 10–11; Bolivia’s highland Indians 138, 150, 154–57, 159; colonization 10; culture eradication 10; involuntary process 10; Jews 15–16; measure 11; Mexico 8; slavery 10; SRELIM 8, 9, 22; US African Americans 184; see also cultural endowment; indigenous peoples; SRELIM developed countries: costs of majority-over-minority systems 20–21; discrimination 24; egalitarian ideology 1, 14, 20; meritocracy 20 developing countries: economic development 1; indigenous peoples 20

271

discrimination: as cause for slow progress 2, 4, 23–25; covert 6, 10, 11, 13, 24; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 132, 135–36, 219, 221, 230; economic 1, 2, 7, 10, 12, 25, 28, 45, 227; education 9, 10, 24, 26, 37, 99, 213, 227, 232; government 232; illegal 13, 24, 26; India’s Dalits 47, 93, 213, 225, 230; indigenous peoples 20; Japan’s Burakumin 96, 99, 103–5, 107, 111, 115, 222, 231, 245; low-status minorities 1; mobility model for SRELIM 23, 24–25, 218, 227, 228, 231, 237; overt 6, 9, 10, 240; prejudice 9, 13, 24, 41, 42; rationale 2, 103, 239; state 18, 24; SRELIM 2, 4, 7, 23–25, 241; US African Americans 24–25, 41, 42, 128, 184–85, 189, 203–5, 212, 216, 226, 227, 228–29, 239–40, 254; see also Cuba’s Afro-Americans; Japan’s Burakumin; mobility model for SRELIM; social exclusion; SRELIM; race issues; US African Americans dominant majority 2, 4, 10; costs of majority-over-minority systems 20–21; identity 13; exploitation 7 (rationale 2, 9, 32); land expropriation 20; numerical majority 7; SRELIM 7, 22, 44, 233–36, 237; see also case studies; government; politics; SRELIM economic development: as cause for slow progress 2, 4, 23; Bolivia’s highland Indians 28, 215; collective action 237; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 28; discrimination 231; education 26, 28, 228, 231–32; government 232; India 46–47, 90–91, 92, 94, 244; India’s Dalits 28, 47; Japan’s Burakumin 28, 224; labor market 26–27, 28; mobility model for SRELIM 3, 23, 26–28, 123, 227, 228, 231–32, 237, 254; parity 2, 4, 5, 26, 28, 228, 231–32; SRELIM 1, 2, 3, 4, 23, 26–28, 228, 237; urbanization 14, 26, 28, 94, 228; US African Americans 28, 188, 212, 229; see also discrimination; employment; mobility model for SRELIM; SRELIM education: as cause for slow progress 2, 3, 4, 23–24; Bolivia 159–61, 163, 173, 174; Bolivia’s highland Indians 145,

272

Index

149–50, 152, 159–61, 163, 173, 213, 214, 215, 218, 250; capacity to learn 28–30, 36, 37, 207; cast out 10; children 25–26, 31–32, 34–35, 37–38; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 31, 118, 123–24, 131, 134, 217, 218, 219, 221 (education system 119, 120–22, 128); discrimination 9, 10, 24, 26, 37, 99, 213, 227, 232; early-childhood development 34–35, 207–11, 232; earnings and education 36–37, 241; economic development 26, 28; empirical studies of educational attainment 35; government 232; human capital 29–30, 31, 36–37, 237; India’s Dalits 47, 49, 50, 66, 67–68, 69–70, 73, 75–77, 80, 82, 86, 91, 92, 93, 94, 213, 214, 215, 218, 230, 244 (literacy 46, 65, 67–68, 80, 214, 215, 218, 230); Japan’s Burakumin 96, 97, 99, 100–102, 108–9, 110, 112, 113, 214, 218, 231, 246; Jews 16, 17–18; mobility model for SRELIM 23, 25–26, 32–33, 34–35, 37–38, 218, 227, 228, 231–32, 237; oppositional culture 39–41; poor education 1, 10, 12, 24, 25; poverty 25, 31–32, 37–38; ranked ethnic systems 14; socio-economic status/educational attainment 36–37, 38, 241; SRELIM 2, 3, 4, 9, 12, 23–24, 25–26, 240; US African Americans 25, 26, 37, 39–40, 123–24, 181–82, 183, 188, 189, 194–95, 199, 202–3, 205–11, 212, 214, 216, 217, 218, 219, 227, 229, 252, 254 (black/ white skills gap 188, 198–99, 201, 204, 205–11, 212, 217, 219; capacity to learn 30, 207; early-childhood development programs 207–11, 212, 227, 229; school segregation 182, 184, 194–95, 206, 226); see also cultural endowment; discrimination; mobility model for SRELIM; SRELIM emancipation 8, 24, 217–18, 233; Bolivia’s highland Indians 21, 146–50, 157, 159, 163, 234; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 21, 126; India’s Dalits 21, 30, 46, 47, 90, 215, 224, 228, 234; Japan’s Burakumin 21, 99, 113, 114, 116, 233–34; legal 24; US African Americans 21, 176–77, 180, 186, 226, 228, 233, 252; see also discrimination; SRELIM employment 39; Bolivia’s highland Indians 139, 142, 144, 146, 154–55,

156, 215; Cuba 124, 125, 129–30, 248; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 118, 124, 131, 132–34, 221, 248; India 65, 79, 80, 243; India’s Dalits 64–65, 69–75, 79–81, 91–92, 93, 243, 245; Japan’s Burakumin 97–99, 100, 101–2, 231; SRELIM 1, 27, 28, 29; unemployment 12, 39, 239; United States 124, 125, 211, 253; US African Americans 124, 125, 177, 178, 180–81, 182, 184, 186, 188, 189, 216, 229, 240, 248; see also economic development; SRELIM equal opportunity 1, 5, 27, 32, 205, 235; Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) 112, 198–200, 201–2, 222, 226; see also parity ethnicity, ethnic groups 7, 26; concept 7, 158, 239, 251; disparity 27; ethnic conflict 15; ethnic conflict/SRELIM conflict 5; Horowitz, D. 5, 7, 13–14; religious term 7, 239; see also ranked/ unranked ethnic systems Europe: colonization 19; Jews 16, 17–18; medieval 14; ranked ethnic systems 14 exploitation: Bolivia’s highland Indians 139–44, 145, 151, 153, 154; Cuba 120; India’s Dalits 52, 60, 224; indigenous peoples 20; rationale 2, 9, 32, 52, 153–54; socially excluded 1, 4; SRELIM 2, 6, 32, 117, 153, 154, 228; US African Americans 182, 185; see also discrimination; SRELIM government: actions to increase SRELIM mobility 219–27; Bolivia’s highland Indians 172–73, 220; discrimination 232; economic development 232; education 232; incentives driving the promotion of SRELIM welfare 233–36; India’s Dalits 47, 48, 63, 68–94, 224, 225 (acts to protect Dalit constitutional rights 60, 61, 63, 72–73, 224, 225, 229; India’s constitution and reservation policies 68–71; intercaste marriage 88–90, 244; land reform 48; manual scavenging 83–88, 225, 244; reservations 73–83, 90–94, 224, 225, 228, 243); Japan’s Burakumin 96, 99, 105, 222–24, 234–35, 245 (dowa 100, 109, 111, 112, 113, 116, 245, 246; programs to reduce discrimination 108–12, 216, 246; Special Measures

Index Laws (SML) 100, 108–12, 113, 117, 223, 224, 231); mobility model for SRELIM 5, 24, 44–45, 228, 232, 233–38; socially excluded minorities 6; SRELIM integration 21–22, 213, 228; SRELIM parity 3, 4, 5, 232; US African Americans 193–203, 207–11, 212, 226–27, 229 (backlash to preferences in education 202–3; early-childhood development programs 34–35, 207–11, 212; remedies for labor-market discrimination 198–202; restoration of black voting rights 197, 226; the Supreme Court and school integration 194–95); see also India’s Dalits (Untouchables); Japan’s Burakumin; mobility model for SRELIM; politics; SRELIM; state; US African Americans health: Bolivia’s highland Indians 163, 166, 251; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 123, 247–48; disability 9, 12, 20, 102; India’s Dalits 59–60, 85–86, 88, 242, 243; SRELIM 9, 12, 20, 240; see also SRELIM homeland dispossession 19, 219; Bolivia’s highland Indians 139–43, 144, 155, 160, 173, 249; colonization 10, 12, 22; India’s Dalits 25, 50, 52, 65; indigenous peoples 20; Japan’s Burakumin 97; land expropriation 20, 139–40; ranked ethnic systems 14; SRELIM 7, 9, 12, 22; US African Americans 177, 179, 180, 182–83, 252–53; see also SRELIM; traumatic victimization human capital 28–29, 204; capacity to learn 28–30, 36; cultural endowment 10, 18, 28–30, 31, 36; earnings endowments 29, 36–37, 44, 125–28, 241; education 29–30, 31, 36–37, 237; socio-economic status/educational attainment 36–37, 241; see also cultural endowment; education; mobility model for SRELIM human rights: Buraku Liberation League (BLL) 116, 222–23; socially excluded minorities 6; see also India’s Dalits (Untouchables); Japan’s Burakumin identity: Bolivia’s highland Indians 150, 157–58, 159, 160, 162, 175; dominant

273

majority 13; involuntary 4, 6, 7, 13, 158, 251; loss 9; oppositional identity 40, 41, 42, 44, 102–3, 113; ‘passing’ into mainstream society 13, 112–16, 117, 151–52, 158, 218, 224, 230–31, 240, 252; SRELIM 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, 43–44, 157, 158, 236, 251; US African Americans 192–93; see also assimilation; integration; SRELIM immigrants 8; East Asian 37; forced 13, 16; integration 8, 13, 42; involuntary 37; Jews 16, 17; voluntary 8, 13, 22, 37, 39, 42, 119; see also migration; United States income 31, 32; Bolivia’s highland Indians 138, 163, 174, 213, 214; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 31, 118, 130–31, 217, 219, 221; economic development 27–28; India’s Dalits 50, 57, 60, 61, 66, 67, 213, 214, 215; intergenerational statistical studies of earnings and education 36–37, 241; Japan’s Burakumin 102, 112,117, 214, 216; low income 7, 17, 24, 27, 117, 207 (cultural endowment 239); mobility model for SRELIM 32–34, 218; parity 23, 32–34, 213–19, 221; SRELIM 2, 7, 9, 23, 24, 117; US African Americans 185, 188, 190–91, 214, 216, 219, 229; see also economic development; mobility model for SRELIM; parity India 48; caste system 47, 49–50, 51–56, 69, 70, 90, 215, 226, 234 (caste/ occupation relationship 50, 51, 52, 88; cultural stability 30, 47, 49, 51, 52, 88; intercaste marriage 54, 88–90; moving up 53–54; religion 52, 54–56, 94–95, 215, 225, 242; Sanskritization 53, 237); constitution 68–71, 224, 234, 235, 243; economic development 46–47, 90–91, 92, 94, 215–16, 225, 244; employment, occupation 65, 79, 80, 243; Gandhi, Mahatma 50, 55, 94–95, 242; human development 215; Independence 30, 46, 57, 59, 63, 83; Indian Dilemma 49; jatis 51, 52, 53, 242; literacy 65, 67, 214, 215; Luce, Edward 60, 78, 242, 243, 244; minorities 56, 66, (Other Backward Castes (OBC) 65, 66, 74, 76, 215; Scheduled Tribes 19, 64, 69–71, 215, 240, 242); Nehru, Jawaharlal 74, 90, 243; population 79, 215, 243; poverty

274

Index

66, 67; public sector corruption 61, 64, 81–83, 225, 242, 243, 244; rural 15, 25, 46–47, 52, 89, 90, 225, 242–43; rural/urban population 67, 215; see also India’s Dalits (Untouchables) India’s Dalits (Untouchables) 3, 10, 21–22, 46–95, 224–26, 242; Ambedkhar, B. R. 52, 55, 56, 242; cast out 7, 10, 11, 19, 21, 46, 47–48, 49, 54, 94–95, 138, 224; caste system 47, 49–50, 51–56, 69, 70, 85, 215, 228, 230; cultural endowment 47; description 49–51, 52; discrimination 47, 93, 213, 225, 230; economic development 28, 47, 215; education 47, 49, 50, 66, 67–68, 69–70, 73, 75–77, 80, 82, 86, 91, 92, 93, 94, 213, 214, 215, 218, 230, 244 (literacy 46, 65, 67–68, 80, 214, 215, 218, 230); emancipation 21, 30, 46, 47, 90, 215, 224, 228, 234; employment, occupation 64–65, 69–75, 79–81, 91–92, 93, 230, 243, 245; exclusion 49–51, 53, 54, 84, 224; exploitation 52, 60, 224; forced migration 13; Gandhi, Mahatma 50, 94–95; government policies regarding Untouchability 47, 48, 63, 68–94, 224, 225 (acts to protect Dalit constitutional rights 60, 61, 63, 72–73, 224, 225, 229; India’s constitution and reservation policies 68–71; intercaste marriage 88–90, 244; land reform 48; manual scavenging 83–88, 225–26, 244; reservations 73–83, 90–94, 224, 225, 228, 243); Harijan 50, 240, 242; identity 236, 237; income 50, 57, 60, 61, 66, 67, 213, 214, 215; integration 13, 47, 158; landless 25, 50, 52, 65; mobility model for SRELIM 47, 86, 218, 228–30, 253; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 48–49, 57, 83, 86, 87, 219, 225; obstacles to parity 230 (caste system 47, 63, 225; police behavior 60, 61, 62, 63–64, 225, 242); parity 80, 94, 214, 215–16; politics 77–79, 224, 235, 237; polluted, polluting nature 49–50, 51, 53, 55, 58, 84, 224, 242; poverty 65–66, 67, 214, 230, 243; public sector corruption 61, 64, 81–83, 225, 242, 243, 245; ranked ethnic system 15; resistance 55; rural/ urban population 67, 81; self-help 224, 225; SRELIM 7, 10, 11, 13, 48,

228 (‘lock in’ 64; world’s largest SRELIM 46, 48, 224); Untouchability 46, 47, 50, 52, 57–59, 69, 72, 228; Untouchability violations 48, 51, 56–64, 83, 224, 235, 242 (consumption violations 57–58; crimes and violent atrocities 60, 225; denial of access to government services 57, 58–59, 60, 242; economic violations 57–58; killing of Dalits 57, 61, 62, 224, 239; rape 57, 60, 62, 224; stigmatization and humiliation violations 58, 60); see also cast out; India; mobility model for SRELIM; SRELIM indigenous peoples 18–20; Australia 5, 19, 239; Bolivia 139–44, 158, 160, 162, 249, 250–51; China 19; colonization 1, 7, 8, 9; deculturalization 8, 9; discrimination 20; exploitation 20; homeland dispossession 20, 249; land expropriation 20; Mexico 8, 239; mortality 239; SRELIM 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 249; traumatic victimization 19–20, 249; unemployment 239; United States 8; see also Bolivia’s highland Indians; discrimination; SRELIM integration: Bolivia’s highland Indians 151–52, 158; government 21–22, 213, 228; India’s Dalits 13, 47, 158; Japan’s Burakumin 13, 96–97, 112–16, 117; ‘passing’ into mainstream society 13, 112–16, 117, 151–52, 158, 216, 218, 224, 230–31, 240, 252; SRELIM 3, 8, 20; United States 8; US African Americans 43, 158, 190, 212, 216–17, 227; voluntary immigrants 8, 13; see also assimilation; economic development; government; mobility model for SRELIM; parity; SRELIM Japan: caste system 97–98; constitution 105, 234–35, 236; cultural endowment 241; De Vos, George 40–41, 102–3, 117, 241; discrimination 41; education 100–102; employment 102; Meiji era 99, 233; minorities 40, 41, 105, 116, 216, 222, 231 (‘new’ low-status minorities 116, 216, 231); religion 97–98, 104–5; Tokugawa period 97–99, 104–5; see also Japan’s Burakumin Japan’s Burakumin 3, 21–22, 96–117, 222–24; Buraku Liberation League

Index (BLL) 96, 99–100, 105–8, 112, 116, 117, 222–23, 234, 237, 245, 246; Burakumin 96, 100, 113, 114, 245; cast out 10, 11, 19, 21, 97, 99, 138; caste system 97–98; discrimination 96, 99, 103–5, 107, 111, 115, 222, 231, 245 (Burakumin lists 104, 105, 112, 245; education 99, 103–5, 112, 115, 222; labor market 103–5, 112, 115, 222, 245; marriage 97, 104, 105, 112, 114, 115, 116); earning endowments 102–3; economic development 28, 224; education 96, 97, 99, 100–102, 108–9, 110, 112, 113, 214, 218, 231, 246; emancipation 21, 99, 113, 114, 116, 233–34; employment, occupations 97–99, 100, 101–2, 231; exclusion 97–98; government 96, 99, 105, 222–24, 234–35, 245 (dowa 100, 109, 111, 112, 113, 116, 245, 246; programs to reduce discrimination 108–12, 216, 246; Special Measures Laws (SML) 100, 108–12, 113, 117, 223, 224, 231); history 97–100; identity 236; income 102, 112,117, 214, 216; integration 13, 96–97, 112–16, 117; landless 97; mobility model for SRELIM 218, 230–31; parity 99, 101–2, 112, 117, 214, 216 (obstacles to 102–3, 104); the ‘passing’ of 13, 112–16, 117, 158, 216, 218, 224, 230–31; policy 99; polluted, polluting nature 97–98; poverty 100, 103, 116–17, 246; social deviance 98, 103; SRELIM 96, 113; Suheisha 99–100; unranked ethnic system 14; see also cast out; Japan; mobility model for SRELIM; SRELIM Jews: cultural endowment 15–18; education 16, 17–18; identity 16 labor market: child labor 50, 68, 97, 156, 163, 214, 215; Cuba’s AfroAmericans 132–34, 135, 213; discrimination 9, 24, 25, 27, 37, 184–85, 188, 198–202, 203–5, 213, 216, 227, 228–29, 241; economic development 26–27, 28; US African Americans 24, 25, 27, 37, 184–85, 188, 198–202, 203–5, 216, 227, 228–29, 227, 241; see also economic development; employment Malaysia 6, 13, 14 Mexico: colonization 8; deculturalization 8; evolution away

275

from SRELIM 8; indigenous peoples 8, 239; land reform 149; mestizo identities 8; ‘passing’ 251; see also indigenous peoples minorities 6, 7, 18–19, 28, 119; assimilation 19; at war 6, 15; costs of majority-over-minority systems 20–21; ethnic 2, 6, 13, 40; India 56, 66, (Other Backward Castes (OBC) 65, 66, 74, 76, 215; Scheduled Tribes 19, 64, 69–71, 215, 240, 242); Japan 40, 41, 105, 116, 216, 222, 231; ranked/unranked 2, 13–14; self-respect 2, 9, 42; United States 200, 201, 202, 208; voluntary immigrants 13, 119; see also case studies; discrimination; SRELIM mobility model for SRELIM 2–5, 6, 23–45, 119, 218, 227–32, 233–38, 239; Bolivia’s highland Indians 218, 231; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 28, 119, 123, 125, 131–32, 218, 230; government 5, 24, 44–45, 228, 232, 233–38; income parity 32–34, 218; India’s Dalits 47, 86, 218, 228–30, 253; Japan’s Burakumin 218, 230–31; research supporting the model 34–44 (empirical studies of early-childhood development 34–35; empirical studies of educational attainment 35; intergenerational statistical studies of earnings and education 36–37, 241; research of anthropologists and sociologists 38–41; work by psychologists 37–38; work on black oppositional culture in the United States 41–44); US African Americans 189, 192, 219, 228–29; variables 2–3, 23, 24–32, 33–34, 44, 47, 132, 218, 227–28, 231–32, 237 (cultural endowment 23, 28–32, 34, 37–39, 44, 45, 227, 232, 237; discrimination 23, 24–25, 218, 227, 228, 231, 237; economic development 3, 23, 26–28, 123, 227, 228, 231–32, 237, 254; education 23, 25–26, 32–33, 34–35, 37–38, 218, 227, 228, 231–32, 237; key independent variable 123, 228, 231, 254); see also cultural endowment; discrimination; economic development; education; mobility, socio-economic; SRELIM mobility, socio-economic 45; actions to increase SRELIM mobility 219–27; Bolivia’s highland Indians 164–73,

276

Index

219–20 (self-help 219–20, 221); Cuba’s Afro-Americans 119–25, 128–31, 132–36, 221, 230, 248; India’s Dalits 47, 51, 86 (self-help 224, 225); industrial economies 27; Jews 15–18; slow progress 6, 23, 117 (causes 1–4, 9–10, 11; dimensions 239); upward 3, 13, 16, 17, 18, 25, 26, 27, 30, 39–40; US African Americans, self-help 227; voluntary immigrants 42; see also case studies; government; integration; mobility model for SRELIM; parity; politics; SRELIM nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 219, 236; India’s Dalits 48–49, 57, 83, 86, 87, 219, 225–26 parity 117; Bolivia’s highland Indians 137, 159–64, 173–74, 214, 231, 251; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 31, 118, 119, 120–21, 123–24, 128, 130–32, 135–36, 213, 214, 221, 230; economic development 2, 4, 5, 26, 28, 228, 231–32; economic parity 23, 28, 240; government 3, 4, 5, 232; India’s Dalits 80, 94, 214, 215–16 (obstacles to parity 47, 63, 225, 230); Japan’s Burakumin 99, 101–2, 112, 117, 214, 216 (obstacles to parity 102–3, 104); Jews 15–16; SRELIM 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 20, 23, 26, 213–19, 231–32, 239, 240; US African Americans 176, 186–89, 190–92, 193, 214, 216–17, 226, 229, 240; see also assimilation; economic development; government; income; integration; mobility model for SRELIM; SRELIM policy see government politics: Bolivia’s highland Indians 146, 158, 164–75, 219–20, 235, 237 (politics in the street 165, 168–72, 175, 220, 235; power 137, 138, 150, 158, 159, 163–64, 168–73, 174, 175, 219–20, 231; sindicatos (unions) 148, 164–65, 220; voting 147–48, 164, 165–66, 251, 173, 174, 175, 220, 235); cast out 10; Cuba’s political system 120–22, 135, 221, 230, 234; India’s Dalits 77–79, 224, 235, 237; SRELIM 4, 11, 219, 232, 233–38 (incentives driving the promotion of SRELIM welfare 233–36; political mobilization 236–38); US African Americans 178,

179 (power 179, 197; voting 178, 179, 180, 181, 185, 188, 197); see also government; SRELIM poverty 26; Bolivia’s highland Indians 144, 160, 163, 214; child/teenager 37–38; ‘culture of poverty’ 11, 39; education 25, 31–32, 37–38; India’s Dalits 65–66, 67, 214, 230, 243; Japan’s Burakumin 100, 103, 116–17, 246; SRELIM 1, 2, 4, 8, 20, 26, 29, 117, 232, 240; trap 20, 116–17, 190–91, 192, 230, 246; US African Americans 185, 186, 190–91, 212, 214, 216, 217, 218, 229, 240; see also government; SRELIM race issues 249; Bolivia’s highland Indians 150–52; Cuba 120, 123, 126–28, 135–36, 247; Cuba’s AfroAmericans 126–28, 133, 135, 248; US African Americans 25, 128, 176, 184–85, 205; see also discrimination ranked/unranked ethnic systems 2, 7, 240; definition 13–14; ethnic conflict 15; Horowitz, D. 5, 7, 13–14; Jews 15; Malaysia 14; Roma 14–15; SRELIM 2, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13–15; see also SRELIM religion: African 126, 193; Bolivia 138, 140, 144, 157, 167, 173; Buddhism 97, 104–5; caste system 10, 52, 54–56, 94–95, 97–98, 104–5, 215, 225, 242; Christianity 56, 126, 127, 140, 144, 157, 173, 193, 242; Cuba 126, 127; ethnicity 7; Hindu 52, 54–56, 94–95, 225, 242; India 52, 54–56, 94–95, 242; Islam 7, 15, 56, 193, 242; Japan 97–98, 104–5; Judaism 17, 193, 239; pre-Colombian 138, 157, 167; Shinto 98 resistance 236; Bolivia’s highland Indians 141, 168–72, 175, 219; India’s Dalits 55; political mobilization 234, 236–38; see also politics Roma (Gypsies) 1, 7, 10; cast out 10; ranked ethnic systems 14–15; SRELIM 117 serfdom 8, 239; Bolivia’s highland Indians 21, 139–42, 144 slavery 1, 19, 239; Cuba’s AfroAmericans 21, 119, 125, 126–27, 138, 248; colonization 10; deculturalization 10; serfdom 239; SRELIM 2, 7, 9, 12, 19, 22, 236, 241; stigmatization 12; traumatic victimization 138; US

Index African Americans 21, 125, 126, 127, 138, 176–77, 248; see also SRELIM; traumatic victimization social deviance 209–10; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 124, 135; cultural endowment 35, 102–3, 239; Japan’s Burakumin 98, 103; Jews 18; poverty 103; SRELIM 9, 12, 20, 22; US African Americans 25, 191, 192, 212, 216, 217, 229, 253; see also SRELIM social exclusion 5, 22; cast out 10–11; India’s Dalits 49–51, 53, 54, 84, 224; Japan’s Burakumin 97–98; minorities 1, 2, 4, 6, 22; ranked ethnic systems 14; SRELIM 12, 24; US African Americans 184, 186, 191, 194–97, 203, 227 (school segregation 182, 184, 194–95, 206, 226); see also cast out; caste system; discrimination; SRELIM South Africa 10, 175 Spain 8, 15, 16; colonization 8, 137, 138, 139–40, 143–44, 154–55 SRELIM (stigmatized, ranked, ethnic, low-status, involuntary minorities) 6–22; anti-SRELIM prejudice 10; assimilation 8, 9, 22, 43; behaviour 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 29 (oppositional culture 39–40, 102–3, 154, 191, 232, 237); Bolivia’s highland Indians 138, 150–59, 175, 251, 253; causes and consequences 11, 12; concept 6, 22, 236; costs 20–21; definition 2, 5, 7–8, 10, 11; discrimination 2, 4, 7, 23–25, 241; distribution across the world 18–19; dominant majority 7, 22, 44, 233–36, 237; economic development 2, 3, 4, 23, 26–28, 228, 237; education 2, 3, 4, 9, 12, 23–24, 25–26, 240; employment 1, 27, 28, 29; evolution away from 8, 22; exploitation 2, 6, 32, 117, 153, 154, 228; globalization 237–38; government 3, 4, 21–22; health 9, 12, 20, 240; identity 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, 43–44, 157, 158, 236, 251 (involuntary 4, 6, 7, 13, 158, 251; oppositional 40, 41, 42, 44, 102–3, 113); India’s Dalits 7, 10, 11, 13, 46, 48, 64, 224, 228; indigenous peoples 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 249; interaction 21, 22, 240; Japan’s Burakumin 96, 113; the Jews exception 15–18; low-status 2, 6, 7, 12, 24; numerical importance 6, 18–20, 21 (numerical majority 138, 175, 219, 249; world’s largest

277

SRELIM 46, 48, 224); parity 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 20, 23, 26, 213–19, 231–32, 239, 240; performance 26, 43, 204; politics 4, 11, 175, 219, 232, 233–38 (incentives driving the promotion of SRELIM welfare 233–36, 238; political mobilization 234, 236–38); poverty 1, 2, 4, 8, 20, 26, 29, 117, 232, 240; slow progress 6, 23, 117 (causes 1–4, 9–10, 11; dimensions 239); social deviance 9, 12, 20, 22; stigmatization 1, 2, 6, 7, 12, 153–54; time dimension 7, 8, 239; traits 2, 6, 7, 8–10, 12–15, 22; traumatic victimization 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 22, 24, 154; US African Americans 117, 177, 184, 204, 217, 228; see also assimilation; case studies; cultural endowment; discrimination; economic development; education; ethnicity, ethnic groups; exploitation; integration; mobility model for SRELIM; mobility, socioeconomic; parity; poverty; ranked/ unranked ethnic systems; slavery Sri Lanka 5, 6, 15 state 14, 18, 24; see also government; politics traumatic victimization: indigenous peoples 19–20, 154; oppositional culture 39; outcast groups 10–11, 138; slavery 138; SRELIM 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 20, 24, 154 (behaviour 7, 29); US African Americans 252–53; see also homeland dispossession; slavery; SRELIM United Kingdom 31–32 United States 92–93, 227, 254; American Dilemma 49, 176, 186; child/teenager 247; Civil War 128, 176, 177, 226, 233, 234, 252; constitution 179, 199, 252; discrimination 24, 208–9, 212, 239–40; education 122, 123–24, 188, 189, 205, 206–11, 247; education and family income 32–33, 36–37; employment, occupation 124, 125, 211, 253; Great Depression 186, 188; health 123, 124; immigrants 8, 42, 207, 241 (East Asian 37; Japanese 241; Jews 16, 17–18); labor market 27; minorities 200, 201, 202, 208; mobility model, research supporting 34, 36, 39; Native American 8; native

278

Index

tribes 8; population 177; poverty 185, 186; race issues 176, 248; ranked ethnic system 14; Reconstruction 176–83, 194, 226, 227; social deviance 18, 239; SRELIM integration 8; see also US African Americans US African Americans 3, 21–22, 111, 176–212, 226–27; abuse of 180, 186, 188; Amerindian identity 208, 240; assimilation 43–44; caste system 184, 186, 226; citizenship 177, 178; civil rights 178, 179, 180, 183, 187, 194, 196, 227, 229 (Civil Rights Acts 179, 186, 187, 197, 199, 226; Civil Rights Movement 183, 186–89, 194, 226, 237); consumerism 30–31; cultural endowment 30, 207–8, 212, 227, 229; deculturalization 184; discrimination 24–25, 41, 42, 128, 184–85, 189, 203–5, 212, 216, 226, 227, 228–29, 239–40, 254; economic development 28, 188, 212, 229; education 25, 26, 37, 39–40, 123–24, 181–82, 183, 188, 189, 194–95, 199, 202–3, 205–11, 212, 214, 216, 217, 218, 219, 227, 229, 252, 254 (black/white skills gap 188, 198–99, 201, 204, 205–11, 212, 217, 219; capacity to learn 30, 207; early-childhood development programs 207–11, 212, 227, 229; school segregation 182, 184, 194–95, 206, 226); emancipation 21, 176–77, 180, 186, 226, 228, 233, 252; employment, occupation 124, 125, 177, 178, 180–81, 182, 184, 186, 188, 189, 216, 229, 240, 248; exploitation 182, 185; Freedmen 176–77, 178–79, 226, 227; Freedmen’s Bureau 181–83; government measures against discrimination 193–203, 207–11, 212, 226–27, 229 (backlash to preferences in education 202–3; remedies for labor-market discrimination 198–202; restoration of black voting rights 197, 226; the Supreme Court and school integration 194–95); identity 192–93; income 185, 188, 190–91, 214, 216, 219, 229; inner cities, rural Black Belt 190–92, 212, 217, 229, 254; integration 43, 158, 190, 212, 216–17, 227; King, Martin Luther 195–96, 237; Ku Klux Klan 179–80; labor market-discrimination 24, 25, 27, 37, 184–85, 188, 198–202, 203–5, 216,

227, 228–29, 241 (black/white wages 27, 188, 191, 199, 204; Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) 112, 198–200, 201–2, 222, 226); landless 177, 179, 180, 182–83, 252–53; marriage 128, 186, 188–89, 253; migration 177, 181, 185, 186, 189, 226; mobility model for SRELIM 189, 192, 219, 228–29; Myrdal, Gunnar 49, 176, 186, 240, 247; oppositional culture 39–44, 191; parity 176, 186–89, 190–92, 193, 214, 216–17, 226, 229, 240; ‘passing’ into mainstream society 13, 158, 240; politics 178, 179, 235 (power 179, 197; voting 178, 179, 180, 181, 185, 188, 197, 226, 227, 235); population 177; poverty 185, 186, 190–91, 212, 214, 216, 217, 218, 229, 240; prejudice 24, 41, 42, 192–93, 240, 241; racism 25, 128, 176, 184–85, 205; ranked ethnic system 15; segregation 184, 186, 191, 194–97, 203, 227; self-help 227 (boycotts and sit-ins 195–97, 227); slavery 21, 125, 126, 127, 138, 176–77, 226, 248; social deviance 25, 191, 192, 212, 216, 217, 229, 253; SRELIM 117, 177, 184, 204, 217, 228; violent conflict 15, 177, 180, 185–86; see also mobility model for SRELIM; SRELIM; United States wage: Cuba 129, 131, 133, 248; India’s Dalits 62, 72, 83, 84, 93; upward mobility 25; US African Americans 27, 188, 191, 199, 204; see also economic development; employment; income war: Chaco War 144–46, 250; Civil War 128, 176, 177, 226, 233, 234, 252; minorities at war 6, 15; Pacific War 99, 103; ‘water, gas wars’ 169–71, 172; see also World War I/II women: Bolivia’s highland Indians 149, 152; Cuba’s Afro-Americans 131; India’s Dalits 50, 61, 62–63, 64, 88, 242 (manual scavengers 84, 225, 254; rape 57, 60, 62, 73, 86, 224); Japan’s Burakumin 97; US African Americans 37, 188, 191, 200, 202, 203, 204, 211 World War I/II 235; India’s Dalits 13; indigenous peoples 19–20; Jews 17; US African Americans 14, 177, 185, 186, 188, 192, 194, 198, 203, 226, 229, 235; see also war