Racism and pride in attitudes toward confederate symbols

Abstract In this essay, I describe and evaluate the contemporary debate over support for Confederate icons. This debate is often stylized as “heritage” versus “hatred.” In this debate, one side alleges that their favored Confederate symbols represent pride in Southern‐Confederate identity, whereas the other urges that Confederate symbols represent racial hatred and white supremacy. I argue that the “heritage versus hatred” framing that typifies the public debate and the academic literature is not helpful. Additionally, the literature has largely ignored the views of Black Southerners, who have far more negative attitudes toward Confederate symbols compared to whites. Thus, many works implicitly assume a distinctly white southern past. Together, these shortcomings mean that existing research has likely overestimated overall public support for Confederate symbols and overstated the importance of Southern pride or heritage in informing that support, while at the same time underestimating the extent to which racial animus undergirds pro‐Confederate views among whites.