The Primary Reason Why America has Never Been a Great Nation
Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart As an original, white baby boomer, I grew up in an atmosphere of white privilege. I grew up in Los Angeles, and I knew nothing about racism and other forms of prejudice until I was about 12 or 13. I was 16 when I became aware that my Black friends lived in an alternative America. In my junior year of high school, I was allowed to leave a Parochial high school, and attend Venice High, a public institution. The new friends I made, combined with what I learned in my history classes, exposed hidden facts about America’s dark side where prejudice in all forms made the country I love a less respected nation than I had previously believed, and a nation incapable of becoming the greatest in the world. America’s history of extreme racism began more than 400 years ago. The first enslaved Africans arrived in English North America in August 1619, at Point Comfort (now Hampton, Virginia) in the colony of Virginia, brought by an English privateer ship, the White Lion, from a ...