ABSTRACT
Economic and attitudinal factors together help to explain the color line’s creation and persistence. Children were socialized to regard people of color as lacking rights, which reinforced any predisposition to regard them as inferior and properly enslaved. The attitudinal aspect of the color line takes many forms and functions somewhat independently of economic interests. The color line persists, despite campaigns for reform, because it is deeply entrenched in the economy and in attitudes among whites that range from racial hatred to moral indifference. However, the Supreme Court has nullified important provisions of the Act, thereby allowing states to erect new “color-blind” barriers to voting that disproportionately disfranchise Americans of color. Some have succeeded in weakening the color line, some have failed. The continued hold of the color line on official activity is manifested in persistent racial profiling and police killings of unarmed people of color.
