Abstract
Ethnic competition theory provides a powerful explanation for ethnic conflict, by demonstrating how variation in ethnic mobilization relates to intergroup struggles over scarce resources. However, the tendency to capture such relationships at the aggregate level, through macro-level proxies of intergroup competition, offers little insight into the processes through which ethnic grievances mobilize into contentious action. This article integrates insights from the social movements literature to address how competitive contexts crystallize into broader conflicts. Drawing on data from the civil rights-era Ku Klux Klan—perhaps the quintessential case of contentious ethnic organization in the United States—the analysis focuses on the ways in which meso-level arrangements mediate the relationship between overarching competitive contexts and ethnic conflict. Results of a paired comparative analysis of KKK mobilization in Greensboro and Charlotte demonstrate that social and spatial relations within each city shaped the contours of perceived competition and subsequent ethnic organization in ways that were not always predictable through observation of conventional proxies of competition.
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Notes
Indeed, in this particular case “ethnic competition” and “ethnic conflict” might reasonably be seen as euphemisms for vehement racism. The KKK was (and continues to be) a white supremacist organization, and its resistance to civil rights advances during the 1960s was undergirded by a clear sense that African Americans’ racial status precluded legitimate co-existence and competition with whites in economic, political, and social spheres. In the Jim Crow South, such views were widely shared within the white population, though the Klan’s willingness to defend militantly its constituents against the “threat” posed by civil rights reforms was distinctively extreme. In this sense, “competition” becomes a primary mechanism for the activation of organized racism.
Note that, while ethnic identities have been seen as primary determinants of group conflict (especially in labor settings), the general competition logic outlined here can extend to other bases for collective identity: gender, sexuality, nationality, and so on.
Note that deindustrialization, as captured primarily by the outmigration of manufacturing jobs, would shift this calculus in two contrasting ways. On one hand, fewer available manufacturing positions would create more acute competition for a smaller number of those jobs. At the same time, such changes would reduce differences in workforce composition across the two cities, as Greensboro’s traditional industrial base shifted toward the sorts of service industries that were increasingly predominant in Charlotte. While such processes are obviously salient, they emerged in North Carolina in the decades following the KKK’s rise and fall (indeed, according to US Census data, the overall manufacturing sector grew by more than 22,000 jobs in Greensboro and Charlotte between 1960 and 1980). During this later period, increasing ethnic diversity and related emergent patterns of occupational segregation within the overall workforce would also complicate the ethnic boundary-construction processes that affected the sorts of conflict examined here (see, e.g., Okamoto 2003).
Files documenting the American Friends Service Committee’s Greensboro-based program on “merit employment” regularly highlight the significance of the skilled labor force produced by both A&T and Bennett. One AFSC staffer noted that trained machinists were “as scarce in this area as hen’s teeth.” A&T dropouts who had completed their drafting requirements were frequently channeled by the AFSC to openings in the drafting room of Western Electric, one of the city’s largest employers. When the merit employment program yielded businesses willing to consider African American candidates to fill openings as chemists, draftsmen, engineers, or clerical workers, A&T and Bennett became the primary conduits to link to appropriately trained workers (see, e.g., Memos from Behrman to File, 24 January 1955 and 17 May 1955, AFSC Archives, Box: Southeastern Regional Office 1947–1956, Folder: Merit Employment Program, Visits to Businesses, Southeastern Regional Office 1955; “Meeting with counselors at A&T College,” AFSC archives, Box: American Section 1958, Folder: Southern Program—High Point R.O. 1958, Projects—Miscellaneous, Community Relations File; and Memo from Herbin to Fairfax, 3 September 1958, AFSC Archives, Box: Southeastern Regional Office 1957–1959, Folder: Merit Employment Program, Visits with Community Leaders & Orgs., Southeastern Regional Office 1957).
Note that this account of colleges open to African Americans in Charlotte does not include Carver College, which opened in 1949 as a community college intended to serve black residents in parallel with the white Charlotte College. In 1961, Carver was renamed Mecklenburg College and relocated to a new campus, a controversial move in that its de facto function was to reinforce segregated schooling in the post-Brown era. Falling enrollments caused the school to close in 1965, and it therefore did not significantly alter the black educational landscape in the period considered here (Leach 1976, pp. 81–90).
For more detail on Charlotte’s urban renewal efforts, and Alexander’s take on the process, see “Resume of Improvements During Period 1959–1965” and “Brooklyn Area Blight Study,” UNCC archives, Manuscript Collection 91, Box 40, Folder 12; Notes from NAACP Executive Committee meeting, 13 January 1966, UNCC Kelly Alexander Papers, MSS 55, Box 2, Folder 8; “Can Charlotte Have a Race Riot?” flyer for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Council on Human Relations public forum, 8 November 1966, UNCC archives, Manuscript Collection 91, Box 39, Folder 5.
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the American Sociological Association’s 2011 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, and at Sociology colloquia at East Carolina University and the University of Connecticut. I thank participants in those sessions—in particular Bob Edwards, Melinda Kane, Lee Maril, Claudio Benzecry, and Mary Bernstein—as well as Wendy Cadge and two Theory and Society reviewers for their helpful comments.
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Cunningham, D. Mobilizing ethnic competition. Theor Soc 41, 505–525 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-012-9178-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-012-9178-4