Two issues have come to haunt this country since the basis of its founding by European aristocrats. The embracing of slavery as an economic engine and the unjustifiable confiscation of tribal lands and removal of indigenous peoples. The ending of slavery opened the country to European peasants both as labor and to increase the white population. They were provincial but not innately racist until inculcated by the traditions and practices, spoken and unspoken, of their new collective identities as Americans. The slave was at the low end of the social order and emancipation did little to alter that preconceived notion of their status. And the land they were killing the native populations to settle the US government had declared was theirs. The structure of the education system did little to alter the dynamic. What remains is a huge impediment to any meaningful change that is only getting wider.

Two issues have come to haunt this country since the basis of its founding by European aristocrats. The embracing of slavery as an economic engine and the unjustifiable confiscation of tribal lands and removal of indigenous peoples. The ending of slavery opened the country to European peasants both as labor and to increase the white population. They were provincial but not innately racist until inculcated by the traditions and practices, spoken and unspoken, of their new collective identities as Americans. The slave was at the low end of the social order and emancipation did little to alter that preconceived notion of their status. And the land they were killing the native populations to settle the US government had declared was theirs. The structure of the education system did little to alter the dynamic. What remains is a huge impediment to any meaningful change that is only getting wider.

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