“I don’t think we get it. The bloodiest war in this country’s history was fought over slavery. Two percent of the population died. There were four million blacks in the country at the time of the war, 200,000 of them fought in the Civil War. The mind reels at the price.
And then following that, government—at every level—spent a century going to incredible lengths to engineer a black peasant class. When we ask questions like “Why are we still talking about race?” or “Why are black people still lagging?” or “Why am I responsible for what my grandparents did?” When we use cheap phraseology like “Achievement Gap” or “No Excuses,” terms that reassure our most basic convictions about this country, it’s worth considering that African-Americans spent roughly 350 years in bondage—literal and then virtual. This new thing, this experiment, is only 50 years in the making.
History is the monster. And there is no escape. You can’t talk your way out of them. And at every step we’re confronted by our own laziness. History shows up in odd places. It warps our stories, reduces beautiful and complicated narratives about race, sports, agency into cartoonish fairy tales. It’s sad. I always thought that what we needed in this country wasn’t so much cash payments, but some respect for history. Not history as excuse for hamburgers and chips, but history as a way of understanding who we—despite ourselves— really are.”
