“Our preference for nostalgia and for a history that never happened is not without consequence,” Jeffries writes. “Although we teach [students] that slavery happened…in some cases, we minimize slavery’s significance so much that we render its impact—on people and on the nation—inconsequential.” This, Jeffries continues, “is profoundly troubling” because it leaves Americans ill-equipped to understand racial inequality today, and that, in turn, leads to intolerance, opposition to efforts to address racial injustice, and the enacting of laws and policies detrimental to Black communities and
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