So there was nothing new in the suddenly transracial spirit that saw the country, in 2008, reaching "for the best part of itself." It had done so before-and then promptly retrenched in the worst part of itself. To see this connection, to see Obama's election as part of a familiar cycle, you would have had to understand how central the brand of white supremacy was to the country. I did not. I could remember, as a child, the nationalists claiming the country was built by slaves. But this claim was rarely evidenced and mostly struck me as an applause line or rhetorical point. I understood slavery as bad and I had a vague sense that it had once been integral to the country and that the dispute over it had, somehow, contributed to the Civil War. But even that partial sense ran contrary to the way the Civil War was presented in popular culture, as a violent misunderstanding, an honorable duel between wayward brothers, instead of what it was-a spectacular chapter in a long war that was declared when the first Africans were brought chained to American shores.
( Ta-Nehisi Coates )
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