Opinion | This Is the Birthright Reckoning That America Needs

To be an American is to be infused with the plantation South, with its Black vernacular, its insurgency, and also its brutal masculinity, its worship of Whiteness, its expulsion and its massacres, its self-defeating stinginess and unapologetic pride.

In 2018, the Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest statues were removed from Memphis city parks. It was in the evening, in front of crowds who had been organizing against monuments to the Confederacy there. Yet do I marvel at the claims of patriotism under the banner of a traitorous flag. Of course Confederates saw themselves as holding on to

Citizens who thrive in the global society will identify themselves globally. They will make political, social, and economic choices based not on national identity, but on how those choices relate to themselves directly and to people like them around the world.… Nations and corporations who thrive will organize themselves accordingly. They will maxi

We have to make changes at the largest and the most personal levels—in economic structures and in habits of thinking and acting. We have to create the conditions of equality and acquire the art of self-government. The two are inseparable, and doing each one makes the other possible. There are things working in our favor. We’ve been shocked to atten

How might acknowledging the reality of US history work to transform society?