‘It’s a complicated time to be a white Southerner’ − and their views on race reflect that

Scholars interviewed white Southerners to get past the stereotypes people hold of them. Former Mississippi state flag, CGInspiration, iStock/Getty Images Plus

Historian Nell Painter remarked in 2011, “Being white these days isn’t what it used to be.”

For the past decade, wave upon wave of protests against police violence and mass incarceration have drawn the public’s attention toward the continued significance of America’s color line, the set of formal and informal rules that maintain white Americans’ elevated social and economic advantages.