While Americans are nearly evenly divided on whether monuments and memorials to the Confederacy should stay up or be taken down, there is even less agreement about what should be done with those monuments, according to new polling data from Public Religion Research Institute.
Attitudes fall in four camps:
- 26% say they should be left in place as they are.
- 35% say they should be left in place with added information about the history of slavery and racism.
- 28% say they should be removed and put in a museum.
- 10% say they should be removed and destroyed.
Such decisions often fall to government officials at the city, county and state level. And how to treat Confederate monuments has become a hot issue in political debate.
PRRI documented that Republicans are by far the least supportive of taking any action on Confederate monuments and memorials. Only 1% of Republicans say monuments should be removed and destroyed, compared with 8% of independents and 17% of Democrats. And just 8% of Republicans support moving monuments to museums, compared to 44% of Democrats and 30% of independents.
Only 1% of Republicans say monuments should be removed and destroyed.
Half of Republicans (49%) support leaving monuments as they are, compared with 22% of independents and 10% of Democrats.
The intermediate idea of keeping monuments in place but adding instructive content and context on site finds favor with 42% of Republicans, 37% of independents and 28% of Democrats.
These questions produce stark differences of opinion when sorted by race and religion:
- Black Democrats (28%) are more likely to support removing and destroying Confederate monuments than white Democrats (16%) or Hispanic Democrats (11%).
- Nearly half of white Democrats (48%), compared with 42% of Black Democrats and 36% of Hispanic Democrats, support moving monuments to museums.
- Black Americans are the most supportive of removing Confederate memorials: 25% say they should be removed and destroyed, while 39% say they should be placed in a museum, 23% say they should remain in place with added context, and 9% say they should remain in place as they are.
- Only 2% of white evangelical Protestants say statues should be removed and destroyed, along with 4% of white mainline Protestants, 4% of Hispanic Protestants, 5% of white Catholics and 8% of Hispanic Catholics.
- Black Protestants (26%) are the religious group most likely to want Confederate monuments removed and destroyed.
- With the exception of Black Protestants, about a fourth of most Christian groups favor moving Confederate monuments to museums. But only 12% of white evangelical Protestants support this idea, compared to 40% of Black Protestants.
- Only 8% of Black Protestants support leaving monuments in place as they are now, compared with 44% of white evangelical Protestants.
To better understand these differences, PRRI created a four-point “monument reform” scale based on agreement or disagreement with three questions:
- “We should/should not memorialize historical figures who supported the Confederacy or racial segregation in public spaces.”
- “Both Confederate flags and monuments are symbols of racism/Southern pride.”
- “Confederate statues and memorials should be removed and either put in a museum or destroyed/kept in place as they are.”
Based on this scale, a majority of Americans (54%) support monument reform, including 24% who are fully supportive of monument reform and another 30% who lean toward supporting monument reform.
PRRI reported: “Full supporters see Confederate symbols as expressions of racism and nearly universally support reimagining public spaces with an eye to their community’s diversity. Americans in the South are as likely to fully support monument reform (22%) as Americans nationally. Those who lean toward supporting reform believe that Confederate figures should not be memorialized and feel that context should be added to existing memorials.”
And as with other questions about Confederate monuments, the monument reform index found stark differences between Republicans and Democrats — 43% of Democrats fully support monument reform, along with an additional 38% who lean toward support; only 3% of Republicans fully support reform, with an additional 19% leaning toward reform. That’s a combined 81% of Democrats versus 22% of Republicans — a nearly 4-to-1 ratio.
PRRI reported that Christians of color, non-Christians and the religiously unaffiliated are the most likely to fully support monument reform while white Protestants are among the least likely.
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