About 160 years after the Civil War, the division between North and South residents remains, according to researchers.
Alauna Safarpour, a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University and participant in the COVID States Project, found that people from former Confederate states were more likely to believe that past political violence could be justified than residents of the Union or border states.
The research also found that residents of the Confederate states are more likely to believe that violent protest is justified today than their counterparts in the Union or border states.
“A surprising portion of Americans seem to think that political violence can be justified and can be justified now,” Safarpour said.
Safarpour and colleagues at The COVID States Project, a multi-university effort to poll people in all 50 states, surveyed more than 20,000 Americans between December 22 and January 17 about their support for violent protests against the US government. Surveyors questioned whether violent protests were justified and whether violent protests are justified today.
The responses were then grouped by their state’s allegiance to the Civil War—Union, Confederacy or border state. The border states were the slave states that did not secede from the Union. Americans in states that did not exist at the time of the Civil War were excluded from the analysis.
The research found that residents of the Confederate states were roughly 2 percentage points more likely than residents of the Union states to say they would “definitely” or “probably” reasonably engage in violent protest against the government. Border state residents are about 3 points more likely than Union residents to say violence would be justified, according to the research.
Asked if it was reasonable to stage a violent protest against the current government, 12% of Confederate state residents said “yes,” the survey found. That’s 2 percentage points higher than the share of yes in border states (10%) and 3 points higher than in Union states (9%).
The authors used a multiple-regression analysis to determine that the results did not reflect underlying social and demographic differences including partisanship, race, gender, education, age, income, ideology and attitudes toward Black individuals.
Safarpour said that although the total number of residents who said that violent protest against the government would be justified is relatively low – almost one in five respondents – that should not ignore the findings.
“What Jan. 6 reminded the country at large is that even a small fraction of Americans engaged in violence against the government can be devastating,” Safarpour said. “We’ve also seen that in other political violence, like the attack on US Rep. Steve Scalise and Nancy Pelosi’s husband.”
Research is at home for Safarpour.
He was a future assistant professor of political science at Gettysburg College, which was attacked by Confederate soldiers and served as a makeshift hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg. He also lived in the town of Gettysburg and witnessed tourists visiting the battlefield dressed in Confederate flag clothing.
“It’s hard to live here and not think about how American history affects American politics today, so I wanted to look at that in this research,” Safarpour said.
He added that research is ongoing.
“I think the nature of political violence is going to be an ongoing theme because I think it has an impact on the health of our democracy,” Safarpour said.
Provided by Northeastern University
Citation: Political violence more acceptable in former Confederate states than Union and border states, research finds (2023, July 24) retrieved 25 July 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-07-political-violence-confederate-states-union.html
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