The Truth can be unpalatable which is why perhaps we don’t know much about it. One fundamental Truth particularly difficult to admit is that we cannot create a sustainable human community based on lies. Any community of any size derives its energy from its worldview, its beliefs, attitudes and values. If one of the basic beliefs is untrue then the clan, tribe or nation rests on a weak foundation which will eventually collapse.
Ideals may seem self-evident as in “all men are created equal” and naturally entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” But since the founders of America did not mean “all men” but only WASPs (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) men, and certainly not women or people of color, the nation was founded on several lies. Let’s focus on one of the major untruths in our Declaration of Independence.
The belief in “race” was a major belief in the American narrative. Without “race” being true, the American dream would have been stillborn. It would have died in the womb. Too many American institutions such as foreign policy, education, criminal justice, government and healthcare would not operate the way they do if the concept of race were not believed to be true. “But the reality is that race is made up. Despite our different physical features, we are biologically the same. ‘Racial categories are created by people in power to explain difference, with the intention of subordinating, excluding or exploiting certain groups,’ says Robin D. G. Kelley, a history professor at the University of California Los Angeles. In other words, humans created the idea of race to separate and rank people.”[i] The result of our founders being disingenuous is that rather than America gaining strength through integration into one community we are disintegrating.
How did the lie of race damage the foundation of America? How has our history been self-destructive? Statues of Civil War “heroes” are being moved or toppled, and Susan Neiman says “Rather than ‘innocuous shrines of history’ protected, in the words of President Trump, by ‘nice people,’ they are ‘provocative assertions of white supremacy’ built when its defenders felt threatened. They lionize men who fought to buy, sell and bequeath human beings. Those who insist that the Civil War was about states’ rights are dismissed by Neiman with a simple query: ‘states’ rights to do what?’”[ii]
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Supplemental Reading: Race, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 2
#12 Stillborn
[i] Eligon, John. “What is Race?” The New York Times. August 30, 2020, p. 5.
[ii] Lipstadt, Deborah. “Confronting the Evils of the Past.” The New York Times Book Review. September 8, 2019, p. 14.
