Germans have a word for ‘working off the past’. Though not a vaccine against racism, facing history is a necessary beginning
It wasn’t surprising that the anger first exploded in the US. The Black Lives Matter demonstrations weren’t only sparked by the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Poverty and poor health in black communities – the reason why African Americans have died from Covid-19 at three times the rate of white people – also contributed to rage. But the problem goes deeper: the falsification of history.
That falsification is especially galling to Americans because, unlike most countries, the United States was built on a set of ideals. Every American schoolchild knows the first line of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” That most of the men who drafted it were slave owners is a truth that was long ignored.
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