presidents had slaves, and 8 of them had slaves inside of the White House. "Most of us have grown up with a particular framework about American history and particularly the history of the presidencies. For the most part it has been a cleansed history, meaning that the foibles, errors and mistakes that were made by presidents were essentially not part of that history, particularly when it comes to race. Correcting that was part of the motivation for doing the book. We can see even today that this continues to be a battle. The decision in Arizona, for example, to ban ethnic studies, meaning that the histories of people of African descent, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asians are more or less written out of the curriculum now in Arizona. Even more recently, this has been happening in Tennessee where a group of Tea Party activists also wants to rewrite history in a way in which only, as they see it, the positive parts of the lives of the Founding Fathers are taught, and any history related to what happened to African Americans as slaves, or what happened to Native Americans, who were frequently massacred, all of that should be written out. So we are always in a battle over how we understand and how we present history."
"Part of going back to look at this history was not only to complete the overall historic record, so that we have the inclusion of everyone, but it was also to get a better understanding why, even in 2011, issues of race are so toxic and so passionate. That is because we have this long, long history, much of which is either ignored or unknown, that prevents the country as a whole from resolving these questions of inequality."
As I see it, not only was the election of President Obama a BFD, it was IMHO a game changer. We had never had a Black President, and as Dr. Lusane says in his book, even when President Obama ran for office, nobody including AA's believed this nation would ever elect a black man to office. He, President Obama broke through that barrier. His election to office and his presidency has given us more of an opportunity to discuss race and inequality than I believe we have ever had...and that is not only in this country but around the world. This again is my opinion, but I believe his election to the White House has opened up an opportunity for the world to discuss and hopefully correct the injustices that have been visited upon minorities throughout the world for so many generations. BFD? You bet it was.
Quotes taken from the following site: http://politicalaffairs.net/race-and-the-white-house-an-interview-with-clarence-lusane/
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