Presentation Schedule
Re-assessing Wilson’s Race Relations Periodization Scheme After a Half Century: Lessons from a Case Study on Educational Policy (104823)
Session Chair: Mark Beeman
Sunday, 19 April 2026 11:30
Session: Session 1
Room: Room 144B (1F)
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
In 1967 Pierre van den Berghe wrote his treatise on race relations entitled Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective. He outlined two eras of race relations in America—the paternalistic race relations era which essentially covered the plantation slavery period, and the competitive race relations era which covered the industrialization period up until the publication of his book. Both periods were marked by the dominance of racial caste stratification. In The Declining Significance of Race, published in 1978, William Julius Wilson added a third period in which he posited that social class had replaced race as the dominant force in predicting life chances for African Americans in the United States. Wilson was convinced that the passage and enforcement of 1960s civil rights legislation had removed the major racial barriers to African American progress, but that class-based remedies were still necessary.
This study focuses on educational policy in Florida as a critical case study to assess Wilson’s thesis. Based on newspaper reports, government documents, and scholarly accounts this study examines recent education policy changes. Are these changes consistent with a post-civil rights era protecting against race-based discrimination, or are they indicative of a longer-term historical pattern of discriminatory race-based educational policy? We find that Wilson may have been overly optimistic about the trajectory of race relations in the United States. He focused on the important contributions of federal policy of the mid-twentieth century, but it appears that he underestimated the long-term influence of states’ rights racial ideology, especially in the southern states. These findings lead us to re-assess Wilson’s racial periodization thesis.
Authors:
Mark Beeman, Northern Arizona University, United States
About the Presenter(s)
Professor Mark Beeman is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at in United States
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