Practical Symbolic Interactions in the Shrine of the South

Practical Symbolic Interactions in the Shrine of the South: Conversations with a Damn Yankee finds that Lexington-Rockbridge, VA, community sentiments towards 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 forbearing folks seek ways to find common ground through pleasant and productive interaction.

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. Cataldi suggests that contention over Southern symbols is intensified by the few who are clustered at the ideological extremes, but the controversy may be overrepresented as being a social problem for the many in the middle.