Reading the book has definitely given me a more thorough understanding of the politics of racial oppression as it has played out throughout American history. If you are someone who believes that past is prologue, and I am, then the info presented in the book is a clear roadmap for how we got to 2017 and how the people currently in power will attempt to operate through 2020 and/or beyond. I already believed that America has been broken since its founding, but the book has illuminated how the brokenness that the founding fathers enshrined into the Constitution has bedeviled America for the past 241 years.
The Constitution is written proof that our country was founded on explicit racial inequality and the implicit lie of racial and economic parity. The foundation was poured on uneven ground when the colonies built economic success on the backs of forcibly imported African slaves. The cracks began to show when Thomas Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal” in our country’s founding document, yet convinced the Southern colonies to join the new union by allowing them to keep their slave laborers. The cracks widened into chasms with each court case and piece of legislation that implicitly refused to recognize the equal citizenship rights of African Americans and other people of color.
Our forefathers stacked the deck against us. Until we as a nation decide to examine our history and see it for what it really is, and how damaging it continues to be, I seriously doubt we will ever find a solution to the problem of race in America. We will certainly never find a solution to the problem of race in America until we all (but let’s be real; mostly white people) can honestly face and take responsibility for the multitude of horrors upon which America was built.
— Carrmen Wrenn
The Constitution is written proof that our country was founded on explicit racial inequality and the implicit lie of racial and economic parity. The foundation was poured on uneven ground when the colonies built economic success on the backs of forcibly imported African slaves. The cracks began to show when Thomas Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal” in our country’s founding document, yet convinced the Southern colonies to join the new union by allowing them to keep their slave laborers. The cracks widened into chasms with each court case and piece of legislation that implicitly refused to recognize the equal citizenship rights of African Americans and other people of color.
Our forefathers stacked the deck against us. Until we as a nation decide to examine our history and see it for what it really is, and how damaging it continues to be, I seriously doubt we will ever find a solution to the problem of race in America. We will certainly never find a solution to the problem of race in America until we all (but let’s be real; mostly white people) can honestly face and take responsibility for the multitude of horrors upon which America was built.
— Carrmen Wrenn
