Only 38% of those surveyed attribute the conflict to slavery. This attitude is also reflected in a Pew Research Center poll from that same year, which found that nearly half (48%) of all Americans agreed: the Civil War was fought over states’ rights. Loewen, published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, found that 55% to 75% of American teachers-“regardless of region or race”-cite states’ rights as the chief reason for Southern secession. Just how pervasive are these Confederate mythologies? An informal survey conducted in 2011 by James W. Confederate denialism, in the form of states’ rights advocacy, permits sentimentalists to keep their questionable imagery without having to address its unsavory associations. “It’s about heritage”-forgetting, intentionally perhaps, that slavery and its decade-spanning echoes are very much a part of the collective American heritage. “It’s about Southern pride,” they insist. It’s a self-delusion some use to justify neo-Confederate pride: stars-and-bars bumper stickers, or remnants of Confederate iconography woven into some of today’s state flags.
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