For MAGA revisionists as well as some progressives, commemorating slavery implies that the U.S. is permanently stained by it. Yet downplaying or exaggerating American slavery threatens something even graver than perpetual guilt: the loss of the country’s shared moral language.
The story of slavery and its abolition is ultimately one of irrepressible human dignity. Properly told, it makes reconciliation possible and future injustice avoidable.
– Thomas Chatterton Williams Why MAGA Wants You to Think Slavery Wasn’t That Bad