Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, once responded to a similar question, saying, “Your ancestors weren’t here in 1776, but you eat hot dogs on the Fourth of July, don’t you?” What she was trying to convey is that Americans who preceded us fought for our liberty, sometimes giving their lives for it, yet we benefit without making similar sacrifices. When we become Americans, we accept not only citizenship’s privileges that we did not earn but also its responsibilities to correct wrongs that we did not commit. It was our government that segregated American neighborhoods,
...more
