**KIM WOODS** Multiculturalism in the News

Final Project Outline

Multicultural and Social Issues in Psychology/PSY620

Final Project Outline

White Nationalism: Elucidating Attitudes Related to Confederate Statues

1) Introduction:

a) Thesis Statement: In August of 2017, a deadly “Unite the Right” rally to protest the removal of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee exposed the unfortunate underbelly of American culture. The chaotic protest in Charlottesville, VA, opened the eyes of the nation, focusing a spotlight on the stark cultural differences between mainstream America and White Nationalists. The issue is a controversial one, inspiring a selection of complex bipolar attitudes toward a portion of American history that is demonstrably heinous and that is not as lost to history as many Americans would like to believe. The fact is this: White Nationalists view Confederate memorabilia, including the Confederate flag and statues, as part of a grand history that the rest of America would prefer to remain as a skeleton in the nation's closet. More to the point, White Nationalists, who idolize the morally reprehensible historical points of the Confederacy and all it stood for, are evidence of the kind of implicit bias, prejudice, and discrimination that rots America from the inside out. As a fringe group, White Nationalists and sympathizers have been making noise about Civil War-era relics with increasing volume – and the rally in Charlottesville is not even the beginning. Starting in May of 2017 with the Jefferson Davis Monument in New Orleans, it has become increasingly evident that mainstream America is eager to remove the scars left by slavery from our shared national history. There are over a dozen proposals to remove Confederate statues from cities, including from the Capital building in Washington, D.C. More profoundly, efforts to prevent those removals, such as the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017, which was explicitly created to prevent a Confederate statue from being removed, are also making waves in the news and adding to the increasing conflict. From a social psychological standpoint, the cultural diversity between mainstream America and White Nationalists is the root of this controversy; additionally, other concepts, such as deindividualization, ingroup overexclusion effect, and right wing attribution, are also factors that might explain the polarity of the issue.

2) History of Confederate Culture

a) Discuss factors of the Civil War and what Confederacy represents

· Support: the view that despite cross culture collaboration and transnational historical studies being challenging, it is the most exceptional and comprehensive way of studying the past and connecting people to their history. The importance of putting historical events in a transnational approach just like the American civil wars have been studied in a transnational perspective.

b) Discuss Confederate immigration to Brazil

· Support: explores how the confederates migrated to Brazil during and after the civil wars. The views that the study can help us understand the international impact of the War in the western hemisphere and how it affected other areas other than America.

c) Discuss culture of the Confederate flag

· Support: research on attitudes toward the Confederate flag and its public display. Outline the historical timeline of the United States south and the confederate while putting much effort to the politics that rocked the region so as to understand the divisiveness that the flag causes in America.

3) White Nationalism

a) Discuss racial-political attacks on President Obama

· Support: Overt racism

· Support: Subtle racism for biological, religious, or political reasons

b) Discuss right-wing activism

· Support: Defining right-wing activism and including media commentators, such as Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones

c) Discuss the Nationalist Party of America

· Support: It is classified as a hate group; additionally, Billy Roper and green racism/racists

4) Support Three: Points of Conflict

a) Discuss Removed Statues

· Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, VA

· The Jefferson Davis Monument in New Orleans, LA

· Chief Justice Roger Taney in Annapolis, MD

b) Discuss Statues To Be Removed

· Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis, TN

· Busts of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee in Bronx, NY

· Confederate Statues in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

c) Discuss Stalls in Removal

· Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017

· Memorial Wall in Stone Mountain, GA

5) Support Four: Implicit Bias and Discrimination

a) Discuss discriminatory behavior and discriminating against non-white Americans

· Support: President Trump’s Travel Ban, which was first introduced by Trump during the 2016 election as being a Muslim Ban; he also spoke of having “religious tests” for people wanting to enter the country

b) Discuss role of racial identity and implicit racial bias

· Support: Psychosocial stressors, employment, education, and law enforcement

c) Discuss on-going racial tensions caused by support for Confederate flag or White Nationalism

· Support: Tensions in Charleston, SC

6) Support Five: Social Psychology Concepts

a) Discuss relationships between globalization and patriotism, nationalism, and xenophobia

· Support: Countries with higher rates of globalization also have higher rates of patriotism toward the country, nationalism toward homogenous races within the country, and of xenophobia against any looking to immigrate to the country.

b) Discuss affiliative motivation

· Support: Defining affiliative motivation and how it might function for White Nationalism

c) Discuss depersonalization

· Support: Defining depersonalization and how it might apply to the mentality of those at the Charlottesville protest that turned deadly

d) Discuss ingroup overexclusion effect

· Support: Use to explain the attitude White Nationalists form toward other Whites who are sympathetic to other ethnicities

7) Conclusion

a) TEAM: CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM RESEARCH

· Many Americans believe that White support of the Confederate flag stems from racism and hatred, rather than heritage and knowledge of Southern history

· The Confederate flag is one of the most controversial, inflammatory icons of American culture, and even has a significant presence abroad. The flag is the banner of White supremacy groups in the United States, like the Ku Klux Klan, ad is even used abroad by Neo-Nazi groups

· Racism is alive and well within the Republican political party. Extremist and White supremacist groups adopted the Confederate battle flag as their symbol, not because of Southern pride and culture, but because the flag was used during the Civil War by those who fought to preserve slavery and White supremacy over African Americans

· Regardless of whether or not the Confederacy is as a point of pride in Southern history, the fact is that contemporary use of the Confederate flag and symbols has been misappropriated for racist causes – most notably in the rise of White Nationalism as a functioning symbol of white ethnocentrism. Prior symbolic meaning of Confederate memorabilia is moot at this point in time because of the current connotation of those symbols. A statue of Robert E. Lee is not only a statue of a Confederate General of the Civil War; it is a statue that functions as proof that White Americans – specifically White Nationalists - supersede African Americans.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS: The Gainsville, FL shooting, where three White Nationalists shot at anti-racism protesters following a speech made by a White Nationalist