>>> Miles Jackson
We know what came first here; there's no "chicken and egg" problem. The vast majority of Southern whites were opposed to desegregation in the 50s; the end of public segregation occurred prior to that vast majority "changing their minds" about desegregation. ^^^^ CB: The end of public segregation was because of Supreme Court decisions. So, changing the minds of the Supreme Court justices came first ? An elite committee of lawyers, Who woulda thunk it.
^^^^
(Segregation forever!) There is no ambiguity in the data here: The social change--public desegregation--came first; the white population's support for desegregation came later.
^^^^ CB: The key social change being the social group of nine justices ?
^^^^
Now, political mobilization is important; but that's not necessarily about "changing minds". The civil rights movement brought together people with shared goals and beliefs; it did not create those goals and
beliefs from nothing. As andie and I noted, a great deal of the variation in political beliefs is due to family background and long standing religious affiliation, not "road to Damascus" conversions. (Simple example: the liberal Northern college students who participated
in the freedom marches did not have to have their minds changed to participate; given their family and religious backgrounds, they were already on board!) So sure, political mobilization was crucial, but that had little to do with changing opponents' minds.
^^^^^
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From this perspective, spending a lot of time and energy "changing minds" is an ineffective political strategy. The history of social transformations and revolutions is quite clear: a committed and well-organized minority can foment significant social changes, even if
they haven't persuaded the majority. (The American Revolution is another example that comes to mind. Only about 1/3 of the colonists supported the revolutionaries. According to the "first step is to change minds" argument, the revolutionaries had it all wrong to take action before they had majority support!)
Miles
^^^^^ CB: The American Rev had Committees of Correspondence. This seems to support the theory of a vanguard revolutionary party ( See _What is to be done_ by Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov; 1905, on a small group of professional revolutionaries. )
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