In light of our discussion/reading on slavery in American, documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns once said:

“The black-white rift stands at the very center of American history. It is the great challenge to which all our deepest aspirations to freedom must rise. I

f we forget that–if we forget the great stain of slavery that stands at the heart of our country, our history, our experiment–

we forget who we are, and we make the great rift deeper.” 

If Burns is right, then why do Americans continue to deny the central importance of race and racism in their history? Additionally, it is argued that “race is the sharpest and deepest division in American life ….that the struggle over racial slavery may be the predominant theme in American history. And that race and racial division ended with the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. But can America’s over two-hundred and fifty-year history of racial slavery really be erased in a mere generation? Can the wounds of racism and the culture of racism really be pushed aside in thirty years?