[Peace-discuss] Eric Foner says

[Carl G. Estabrook]

The answer I think is that our political history is too heavily mythologized (e.g., “Lincoln fought the Civil War to free the slaves!”) for us to “come to terms with the existence of slavery.”

Any society based on two of the greatest crimes in human history - the extinction of native Americans and the enslavement of native Africans - has to invent a lot of self-flattering lies to make it through the night. Especially when it continues to be the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. 

—CGE

"In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” —attributed, probably falsely, to Orwell 


> On Jun 24, 2015, at 4:18 PM, Carl G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> 
> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/ <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/>
> 
> 
>> On Jun 24, 2015, at 3:55 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>> 
>> …One-hundred-and-fifty years later, we still have a problem in this country coming to terms with the existence of slavery. There’s no museum of the history of slavery in the entire United States. There’s a Holocaust museum; there’s plenty of other museums [about tragedies and atrocities], but there’s no memorial to the victims of slavery in the U.S. We have memorials to the victims of the Irish famine; why don’t we have a memorial to the victims of slavery somewhere? What I want people to learn from history is the depth and importance of slavery, and then 100 years of segregation, in shaping the way American society is today.
>> 
>> http://www.salon.com/2015/06/24/the_face_of_racism_today_is_not_a_slaveowner_eric_foner_on_the_past_and_present_of_white_supremacy/?source=newsletter <http://www.salon.com/2015/06/24/the_face_of_racism_today_is_not_a_slaveowner_eric_foner_on_the_past_and_present_of_white_supremacy/?source=newsletter>
>> 
>> —mkb

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