Reprinted with permission Mises Wire•Lipton Matthews
In the vast pantheon of history, black people have been both victims and oppressors. Yet history has been so politicized that we hear endlessly about the former and almost never about the latter. Rhetoric has eclipsed facts. It is a fact, for example, that Africans participated in the transatlantic slave trade. History is now frequently used as a cudgel to hammer white people into submission.
Instead of recognizing nuance and complexity, many who should know better have embraced the simplistic narrative of activists. Mainstream publications like the Atlantic and the New York Times desperately want it to be true that blacks have only ever been victims of whites. Yet editorial sentimentalism cannot change the facts. A proper reading of history shatters the feel-good shibboleths of left-wing activists. READ MORE
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