The price of privilege: The effects of the American caste system on the deep south white

It is usually assumed that the white man benefits from the American “caste” system. A Gallup sample of Northern, Border South, and Deep South whites was compared on the basis of the Tomkins-Horn Picture Arrangement Test, administered in 1954. Differences between the North and Border South did not replicate. More frequent among Deep South whites (compared with Northern whites) after cross-validating and correcting for age, sex, education, vocabulary IQ, rural-urban residence, population density, and degree of industrialization were: low work endurance (i.e., the “horse-driver phenomenon,” a sapping of achievement and motivation by feelings of being unable to compete on equal terms as a consequence of ascribed upper status), submissive authoritarianism, and compulsive negativism. The so-called upper “caste” status thus is psychologically destructive.