America is plagued by a chronic misunderstanding of slavery and white supremacy

SAM FULWOOD III | THINKPROGRESS

Several years ago, a group of students at Texas Tech University fanned out across their Lubbock campus and asked classmates three simple questions: “Who won the Civil War?,” “Who is our Vice President?,” and “Who did we gain our independence from?”

Like a skit on a late-night show, the college students’ answers were stunningly uninformed, spanning from “the South” in response to the first question to “I have no idea” as an answer to all of the questions.

To be perfectly blunt about it, far too many Americans are shockingly ignorant of history, a fact that is exacerbated by an unwillingness to learn the true story of how white supremacy shaped the founding and development of the nation.

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