Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15938
Authors: Elena Esposito; Tiziano Rotesi; Alessandro Saia; Mathias Thoenig
Abstract: We study how the spread of the Lost Cause narrative -a revisionist and racist retelling of the US Civil War- shifted both opinions and behaviors toward reunifying the country and racially alienating African Americans. Drawing on a large set of archival data from between 1910 and 1920, we reconstitute a monthly record of the staggered screenings across US counties of The Birth of a Nation, a blockbuster movie that popularized the Lost Cause narrative across large segments of the population. Our empirical analysis shows that the movie induced (i) a semantic shift in the public discourse toward more patriotic and less divisive language on post-Civil War nation building; (ii) a surge in patriotism with an increased enlistment rate in the US military; and (iii) a cultural convergence between former Confederate and Unionist states with a rise in the adoption of first names traditionally associated with the former enemy's regional identity. We go on to document how the racist content of the narrative helped foster reconciliation through a common enemy rhetorical argument. While we find that the movie strengthened discrimination against African Americans in public discourse and the labor market, our quantitative estimates suggest that 55% of the total effect of the movie on reconciliation was indirectly mediated precisely through this rise in discrimination. All of our findings are detected within both former Confederate and Unionist states.
Keywords: reconciliation; narratives; US Civil War; segregation; African Americans
JEL Codes: D74; N92; Z1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| screening of 'The Birth of a Nation' (Y20) | attitudes toward reconciliation (D74) |
| screening of 'The Birth of a Nation' (Y20) | behaviors related to national unity (F52) |
| screening of 'The Birth of a Nation' (Y20) | semantic shift in public discourse (Z13) |
| exposure to 'The Birth of a Nation' (Y50) | enlistment rate in the US military (H56) |
| screening of 'The Birth of a Nation' (Y20) | cultural convergence between former Confederate and Unionist states (N91) |
| screening of 'The Birth of a Nation' (Y20) | increase in discrimination against African Americans (J15) |
| increase in discrimination against African Americans (J15) | rhetorical framework for reconciliation (D74) |