The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy

the Doctrine claims that European civilization and western Christianity are superior to all other cultures, races, and religions.

How can we meaningfully respond to being beneficiaries of a crime so plain it cannot be denied and so large it can never be fully righted?

Established in a series of fifteenth-century papal bulls (official edicts that carry the full weight of church and papal authority),

The question of reparations for these massive, multigenerational losses remains unanswered.

to give America a new genesis: not 1776, when British colonies and slavery were well established, but 1619, the year a group of Africans were brought against their will to the British territories.

While we are endlessly creative in fashioning novel ways to kill, dispossess, and defraud others, we are hopelessly unimaginative in our efforts to balance the scales of justice. Greed spawns a million schemes, while repentance throws up its hands.

Dum Diversas, the initial edict that laid the theological and political foundations for the Doctrine, was issued by Pope Nicholas V on June 18, 1452. It explicitly granted Portuguese king Alfonso V the following rights:

Authentic healing flows from, and true repentance is built on, the twin pillars of truth-telling and repair.

In essence, the Doctrine provided that newly arrived Europeans immediately and automatically acquired legally recognized property rights over the inhabitants without knowledge or consent of the Indigenous peoples. When English explorers and other Europeans planted their national flags and religious symbols in “newly discovered” lands, as many paint