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Consider that this is *all* many Americans learn about Reconstruction. We can’t grapple with slavery & its legacy be it is largely relegated to a footnote instead of a central organizing factor of American life. So, in the minds of many white people, that’s what it was: a blip.
The entire conversation around reparations, racial justice, inequality, race-specific policies is warped by how poorly we are taught this history, by the intentional erasure. We don’t even have a basis to start the conversation. And this is intentional, of course.
Many white people truly believe that the experiences of the Irish or Italians or even Mexicans was akin to that of black Americans. It is easy to get mad, but what’s true is it’s because that is literally what we are taught. It’s the only way we can sustain the myth of America.
A true history wouldnt relegate slavery & its badges to a section or a chapter. It wld be in the section on Jamestown, on the Revolution, on Western Expansion and Indian removal, on the Industrial Revolution, on the development of the Republican and Democratic parties, capitalism
I mean, basically everything. Because nothing in this country, at no period of time, has been untouched by our decision to create a system of heritable, chattel slavery and a to develop a distinct type of racism to justify it.
