Black and White Americans’ Perceptions of Community Equity Efforts Diverge Following the Removal of Confederate Monuments

Abstract

Communities across the United States are removing Confederate monuments from public spaces. Little work, however, has considered downstream consequences of these decisions. Across three experiments and four replications in Supplemental Material, we examine impacts of community decisions on individuals’ perceptions of communities’ efforts toward racial equity. We find that the removal of monuments leads White Americans—but not Black Americans—to believe that communities will sufficiently prioritize policies aimed at redressing racial inequity in the future. Taken together, these findings suggest that the symbolic removal of Confederate monuments may signal different structural equity investments to different constituencies, with Whites anticipating that communities will engage in sufficient racial equity policy efforts and Black Americans remaining skeptical.