The author of “Between the World and Me” and “We Were Eight Years in Power” gives a searing testimony on the legacy of slavery
Yesterday, when asked about reparations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar reply: America should not be held liable for something that happened 150 years ago, especially since none of us currently alive are responsible. This rebuttal proffers a strange theory of governance: that American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its generations, when well into this century, the United States wasto the heirs of Civil War soldiers.
, enslavement “shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics” of America, so that by 1836 more than $600 million, almost half of the economic activity in the United States, derived directly or indirectly from the cotton produced by the million-odd slaves. By the time the enslaved were emancipated, they comprised the largest single asset in America. Three billion in 1860 dollars — more than all the other assets in the country combined.
Enslavement reigned for 250 years on these shores. When it ended, this country could have extended its hallowed principles — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — to all, regardless of color. But America had other principles in mind. And so, for a century after the Civil War, black people were subjected to a relentless campaign of terror, a campaign that extended well into the lifetime of Majority Leader McConnell.
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