A majority of Americans support increased attention on the country's history of racism

A majority of Americans believe increased attention on the history of slavery and racism in the U.S. is a good thing for society, Axios reports per a Pew Research Center survey published Thursday.

Among Democrats and Democrat-leaning adults, 78 percent see the heightened emphasis on the country's racist past as a positive. Meanwhile, 46 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning adults view it as a negative, and 29 percent see it as neither good nor bad. Just 25 percent of conservative-leaning adults view the attention as positive.

When broken down by race and ethnicity, 75 percent of Black adults, 64 percent of Asian American adults, and 59 percent of Hispanic adults believe the spotlight on racism to be a good thing, but only 46 percent of white adults agreed.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Overall, 53 percent of total respondents said they view the increased attention on America's history with racism and slavery as a positive; 26 percent claimed the opposite, per Axios. The poll's results sharpen the already-distinct picture emerging from the cultural wars — that "fights over critical race theory in [the] present are really about defining the past."

Pew Research Center surveyed 10,221 respondents from July 8-18, 2021. Results have a margin of error of 1.5 percent. See more results at Axios and Pew Research Center.