Between Lincoln, Django Unchained and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, there's been quite a bit of slavery discourse lately. Still, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow argues that none of this has made America more racially accepting. In fact, on the contrary, Pew Research Center statistics show that there is a rising number of Americans who yearn for the days of the Confederacy.
Still, the persistence of such a ridiculous argument does not sit well with me. And we should all be unsettled by the tendency of some people to romanticize and empathize with the Confederacy.
A Pew Research Center poll released in April 2011 found that most Southern whites think it's appropriate for modern-day politicians to praise Confederate leaders, the only demographic to believe that.
A CNN poll also released that month found that nearly 4 in 10 white Southerners sympathize more with the Confederacy than with the Union.
What is perhaps more problematic is that negative attitudes about blacks are increasing. According to an October survey by The Associated Press: "In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election."
Read Charles M. Blow's entire piece at the New York Times.
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