Practical Symbolic Interactions in the Shrine of the South: Conversations with a Damn Yankee

Practical Symbolic Interactions in the Shrine of the South: Conversations with a Damn Yankee finds that Lexington-Rockbridge, VA, community sentiments toward Southern symbols such as the Confederate Battle Flag and Robert E. Lee are not necessarily reducible to a racial divide. John F. Cataldi uses data to demonstrate that most black and white respondents navigate a social balance between the extremes of conservation and progress as a way to productively coexist and unify as a community rather than maintain an insular posture or cause division based solely on symbolic ideology. These findings challenge conventional sociological and media-provided paradigms and broaden the discussion of what tolerance and situational context mean for a large spectrum of community members who live in the milieu of Confederate symbols every day.

John F. Cataldi teaches sociology of conflict and criminology at Washington & Lee University.