A Systems Approach to Understanding Community Power in the Debate over Confederate Monuments

Keith Gåddie and Jocelyn J. Evans

Social Science Quarterly, 2021, vol. 102, issue 3, 1128-1150

Abstract: Objective We explore the role of local institutions, public architecture, and Confederate memorialization to institutionalize racialized public spaces. Method Applying an Eastonian model in an American political development framework, data on government development, postbellum county creation, courthouse construction, and Confederate memorialization are examined for 161 Georgia counties. Results Commemorative landscapes, courthouse design, courthouse ground memorials, and other local memorialization reinforce a “Lost Cause” narrative. Conclusions American apartheid policies were translated from culture to policy to the built environment. They remain as echoes of spatial strategies of white supremacy, facilitated by hyperlocalism in government control. The result was a facially neutral, fundamentally unequal public space perpetuated in a dynamic system where marginalized voices and their feedback are diminished and then muted in the political environment.

Date: 2021
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