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The real history of blacks in America, of course, is abundant and rich and suffuses the entire culture: the texture of the U.S. is infinitely more black African than it is French or German or Scottish. And the real history of whites in America is far grimmer than the standard textbook version: it is more than a moral inconvenience that Washington and Jefferson were slave masters, and the national myth has never been rewritten to take full measure of the fact. Indeed, a dirty secret of all humankind is that everyone's roots are primitive and disreputable. The appalling 20th century slaughters accomplished by the European ice people suggest that they have not entirely improved on their cave-dwelling, fur-bearing, head-bashing ancestors.
Perhaps two spiritual imperatives are at war in the conflict over Afrocentrism and American blacks. On one side is everyone's need to make myths. On the other is the absolute necessity to stop lying.