October 6, 2022 – 7pm (virtual) – “The Minnesota Paradox: Racial Inequality and Progressive Public Policy“
by Samuel L. Myers, Jr., Roy Wilkins Professor of Human Relations and Social Justice, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota
This is the second lecture in the Economic Department’s visiting speakers series on Race, Privilege, and Inequality.
Dr. Myers’ Lecture summary:
Minnesota is one of the best places in the country to live. But, yet, it has some of the widest racial disparities in economic outcomes in the nation. How can that be?
Dr. Myers’ talk explores the evidence for and against competing explanations for the paradox. It provides a historical perspective demonstrating that white advantages, and not non-white deficits, play essential roles in interpreting the evidence. His talk also explains why the Minnesota Paradox is relevant for understanding racial inequality elsewhere.
History of the Race, Privilege, and Inequality Visiting Speaker Series:
In Fall of 2021, the Economics department will launch a new visiting speaker series on Race, Privilege, and Inequality. The objective of this new series is to bring to campus economists who can speak knowledgeably to current issues surrounding racial inequality.
October 20, 2021 Lecture – How Economists Think About Discrimination: The Green Books and the Geography of Public Accommodations Segregation by Dr. Trevon Logan
Dr. Logan, the Associate Dean and Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University was the inaugural lecturer in October 2021.
Dr. Logan discussed his research project in which he tested for the economic determinants of racial discrimination using a novel data set: the Negro Motorist Green Books, made famous in the recent movie Green Book.
Description: Jim Crow segregated African Americans and whites by law and practice. The causes and implications of the associated de jure and de facto residential segregation have received substantial attention from scholars, but there has been little empirical research on racial discrimination in public accommodations during this time period. We digitize the Negro Motorist Green Books, important historical travel guides aimed at helping African Americans navigate segregation in the pre-Civil Rights Act United States. We create a novel panel dataset that contains precise geocoded locations of over 4,000 unique businesses that provided nondiscriminatory service to African American patrons between 1938 and 1966. Our analysis reveals several new facts about discrimination in public accommodations that contribute to the broader literature on racial segregation. First, the largest number of Green Book establishments were found in the Northeast, while the lowest number were found in the West. The Midwest had the highest number of Green Book establishments per black resident and the South had the lowest. Second, we combine our Green Book estimates with newly digitized county-level estimates of hotels to generate the share of non-discriminatory formal accommodations. Again, the Northeast had the highest share of non-discriminatory accommodations, with the South following closely behind. Third, for Green Book establishments located in cities for which the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) drew residential security maps, the vast majority (nearly 70 percent) are located in the lowest-grade, redlined neighborhoods. Finally, Green Book presence tends to correlate positively with measures of material well-being and economic activity.