 Even if socio-economic advancement depends on informal contacts that involve the sharing and transfer of genuinely useful information and skills among people who enjoy what used to be called “social equality”. But social equality cannot be secured by even the most rigorous protection of the civil and political rights of the freed people; on the contrary such protection can help social inequality to persist since it entitles individuals to choose their friends and associates even if their choice is determined by color prejudice. Since color prejudice remained strong after the Civil War the white immigrants would more readily associate with well-placed and well-educated locals and learn useful information and skills from them. Finally, since social equals tend to marry each other rather than their inferiors, and since immigrant whites were more likely than the freed people and their descendants to become the social equals of prosperous native whites, they were also more likely to marry such individuals and thus to gain access to their wealth, much of it incidentally inherited from the spoils of slavery.