The lie doesn’t even flinch anymore.
Not when a president of america stands behind a podium — dripping with energy, drenched in conceitedness — and dares to counsel that slavery had “advantages.” That it taught expertise. That the shackle was someway a syllabus. That the whip was an educator. That the plantation was a vocational college in disguise.
It isn’t merely offensive. It isn’t simply false. It’s harmful. As a result of each empire begins to rot when it forgets — or chooses to erase — how its wealth was constructed, how its partitions had been stacked atop the bones of the crushed.
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This isn’t about historical past. It’s about energy.
When Trump or any politician tries to whitewash slavery, they don’t seem to be partaking in some educational revision of the previous. They’re wielding language like a blade, slicing on the fact to guard a story that retains the highly effective perched excessive and the remainder of us drowning in amnesia.
Slavery was not a job coaching program.
It was theft. Of labor. Of lineage. Of language. Of life.
It was not about productiveness.
It was about possession. It was the cold-blooded, legally sanctioned, generational abuse of human beings for revenue.
It was rape, not romance.
Terror, not coaching.
To counsel in any other case — to spin a blood-soaked fact right into a flag-wrapped fable — is not only miseducation. It’s psychological warfare.
It’s the gaslighting of a complete nation.
And right here we’re, once more.
Slavery was not a job coaching program.
As a result of this nation has a behavior. A behavior of hosing down its sins with patriotism. Of repackaging brutality as benevolence. Of rebranding genocide as “discovery.”
Of telling the enslaved that they need to be grateful.
However what occurs if you let the lie sit too lengthy?
It will get snug. It begins instructing in school rooms.
It begins displaying up in textbooks and coverage briefings and State of the Union addresses.
What occurs when the lie will get a microphone?
It turns into coverage.
It turns into erasure.
They’re laying the groundwork for future atrocities.
And that’s what that is — a calculated erasure.
When Trump and his allies sanitize slavery, they aren’t simply making an attempt to control reminiscence. They’re laying the groundwork for future atrocities.
As a result of if bondage had advantages… perhaps incarceration does too.
Possibly the border camps are simply summer time college.
Possibly pressured labor behind razor wire is simply rehabilitation.
Possibly colonization was only a lesson plan.
Possibly what’s occurring in D.C. right this moment—the army occupation, the purging of unhoused folks from view—is simply tidying up for the following tour group.
See how the logic works?
That is the playbook of autocrats: management the narrative, and you’ll management the nation.
However there’s a deeper wound right here.
As a result of this isn’t nearly Trump. That is about America’s refusal to inform the reality about itself.
About how usually this nation would quite consolation the snug than confront the uncomfortable.
And the reality is uncomfortable.
It’s barbed.
It doesn’t match neatly in a marketing campaign speech.
It isn’t taught evenly throughout states.
So right here is the ugly fact, that slavery was one in every of America’s unique sins, but additionally its unique blueprint.
It wasn’t an aberration. It was the enterprise mannequin.
The financial engine. The political basis.
The justification for the Electoral Faculty.
The architect of our racial wealth hole.
And sure, the echoes nonetheless reside in our lungs.
Within the redlined neighborhoods.
Within the underfunded faculties.
Within the polluted air that Black and Brown kids breathe.
Within the jail labor used to fabricate the furnishings in authorities buildings.
In the truth that we nonetheless should say Black Lives Matter and be met with skepticism.
This isn’t about revisiting the previous for the sake of ache.
To whitewash slavery is to whitewash every thing that adopted.
To cleanse the crime scene so the assassin can write the memoir.
However the bones received’t keep buried.
They rise each time we march. Each time we train the unapproved historical past. Each time a poem dares to recollect what the textbooks forgot. Each time we are saying the names they attempt to erase.
As a result of this isn’t about revisiting the previous for the sake of ache.
It’s about rescuing the reality from the fireplace.
It’s about refusing to let those that oppressed us rewrite themselves as saviors.
It’s about justice.
And justice begins with reminiscence.
With sincere reminiscence.
So when a president tries to whitewash slavery, he is not only insulting Black folks—he’s attacking the very thought of democracy.
As a result of democracy calls for fact.
And fact calls for braveness.
The sort of braveness that doesn’t flinch within the face of backlash.
The sort of braveness that doesn’t confuse silence for civility.
The sort of braveness that is aware of that freedom can’t be constructed on lies.
So allow us to communicate plainly:
Slavery was a horror.
Whitewashing it’s hate.
And if we’re to maneuver ahead — actually, righteously — we should name it what it was.
And we should bear in mind, not for disgrace, however for liberation.
As a result of solely a individuals who bear in mind the fireplace can hold it from burning once more.
And America is getting awfully heat.
Dr. Mustafa Ali is a poet, thought chief, strategist, policymaker, and activist dedicated to justice and fairness. He’s the founder of The Revitalization Methods, a enterprise centered on transferring our most susceptible communities from “surviving to thriving.” Ali was beforehand the senior vp for the Hip Hop Caucus, a nationwide nonprofit and non-partisan group that connects the hip-hop group to the civic course of to construct energy and create constructive change.
