Democracy and the Commemorated Other: Public Memory, Status Threat, and Democratic Backsliding Among White Americans

Contests over the presentation of history in public commemorations or “public memory” have become flashpoints in American culture wars, as minority groups and their allies push for inclusive representations while racial conservatives resist these changes as threats to national identity. This study examines whether symbolic disputes can erode democratic commitments by fostering political intolerance and whether they do so by shifting the boundaries of inclusion in the “imagined community.” Across two survey experiments, we find that proposals to replace White-centered commemorations with more inclusive alternatives trigger support for undemocratic penalties (e.g., investigations, civil liberties restrictions) among racially conservative White Americans. We also show that racial liberals respond similarly when tsymbols consistent with their own identity are targeted. We find that such threats reliably shift respondents away from strong opposition to undemocratic penalties and toward ambivalence, even in the absence of elite cues. Finally, we demonstrate that this is enabled by reclassifying opponents as “unamerican” and “undemocratic,” thus shifting the boundaries of inclusion in the imagined community. Our findings demonstrate that symbolic politics may activate latent undemocratic impulses across ideological lines, posing underrecognized risks to democracy.