On Native American Boarding Schools, Racial Bias, and “Americanness”

Between 1819 and the 1970s, the United States government forced Native American children to attend boarding schools with the explicit purpose of assimilating them into White American culture. In the present paper, we examined whether the cultural legacy of historical Native American boarding schools persists locally in the aggregated racial biases of modern-day residents. Using the data of 290,593 Project Implicit visitors, we found that counties where Native American boarding schools were located in the past show lower levels of modern-day racial prejudice against Native Americans and view Native Americans as more American compared to counties without historical boarding schools. Our findings are robust across variable operationalizations and analytical strategies, and provide a nuanced perspective on the ways in which historical injustices can manifest in physical, social, and cultural environments.