A Nation Divided: Partisan Polarization, Color-Blind Racial Ideology, & Contemporary Beliefs about the Civil War.

Americans are deeply polarized on a variety of issues facing the United States and the divides largely fall along political party lines. Polarization in the country has significantly increased in recent decades as the parties become ideological cohesive and move away from the center. Extreme polarization has led to dysfunctional government, dehumanization of political opponents, and occasionally violence. Some political experts and historians compare the current political climate to that of the Civil War. In some ways, Americans are still fighting the Civil War. What kind of country should the United States be? Who is American? And who is entitled to enjoy the rights and protections of citizenship and personhood unencumbered by race? These questions continue to divide Americans. The study aimed to understand the role of political party identification and color-blind racial attitudes in predicting white people's beliefs about the Civil War. The authors conducted a survey which asked the respondents to express their worldviews using the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS). It then asked them to share their responses to two images: one with a man holding the Confederate Flag inside the U.S. Capitol during the January 6th insurrection and other of Black Lives Matter Protest. The results showed that while there was common ground in white racial affect among white Democrats and Republicans, our findings showed Democrats more frequently acknowledged individual acts of racism and its structural dimensions. White Democrats were more likely than white Republicans to read the brutal and racist history in the Confederate battle flag and view it as a hateful, white supremacist symbol. Republicans less frequently expressed solidarity with civil rights causes and less antipathy toward Confederate symbols. The divisions carry significant ramifications for how to forge a healthy multicultural, multiracial democracy.