[lbo-talk] Obama's Philadelphia race speech and the American Creed

[Miles Jackson]

B. wrote:
> American history has shown the US public can and has
> been persuaded by things, has changed its mind on some
> things (or at least significant portions of it have)
> --sometimes fundamentally important things (like child
> labor) -- and have even been obnoxiously fickle in the
> frequency with which they can change their minds.
>
> -B.
>   
But the point here is that attitude change is a product of changing 
social conditions.  The social psychological research on this is quite 
clear: attitudes are the outcome, social conditions are the cause.  
--Example: Jim Crow didn't end in the South because all the white 
southerners "changed their attitudes" about race; white southerners 
eventually changed their attitudes about segregation to adapt to new 
legally enforced social conditions.

Perhaps the most pernicious myth about social change is the 
quintessentially American notion that social change is predicated on 
changing individual attitudes.

Miles