>as Americans we love to talk about democracy and freedom a lot more than slavery / Jim Crow, or whether all of our military endeavors hold up as well as WWII.
There are certainly dark corners that remain in the American psyche expressly because we keep kicking that can down the road. This is how the confederacy and southern identity became intertwined, because it wasn't and still isn't made completely socially unacceptable. Let's not forget the Northern states were damn racist, they just drew the line at slavery. And before all the bodies were buried, before the constitution amended to make slavery illegal, the top Confederates, traitors to the United States, were forgiven.
Instead of the United States completely destroying a mortal enemy that tried to destroy the United States, Lincoln, Grant, Johnson, forgave. Grant should not have sat in a chair with Lee at Appomattox. Robert Lee and Jefferson Davis should have been executed for treason. As well as the all of the officers. The constitution of the Confederacy unquestionably stated slavery to be a permanently protected institution in perpetuity. But let's face it, the North didn't have the moral character to do what was necessary. Northern states were too sympathetic to the ingrained national racism.
The fact is, black folks deserved then and still now the promise of a country that did not and does not exist. Only in some nascent sense does it hopefully exist today. But there has never been a reconciliation, and even in 2022 this country does not live up to its ideals, promises, laws - not to black Americans, and not to native Americans.
This is how you get a president of the United States in 2016 who maliciously and intentionally destroyed the livelihood of a black man who takes a knee to try and make white folks aware of the fact this country doesn't stand for everyone. And I am as shocked and appalled at how even NFL management and owners could just look the other way and go along with that, as I am shocked and appalled that signatories to the U.N. charter that insists only defensive wars against imminent attack are legal, and that wars of aggression to expand borders are the supreme international crime - I did trust Russia and China more than I should have. They're really looking like they're going to be outside the UN charter system of international law. That's really dreadful.