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All the Ways We Told You America Needed to Be Fixed
Black people have been telling America about itself for a long time. Someday it might listen.
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Very little about America surprises Black people. We are only startled by things that happen, never by the potential for things to happen. When Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on January 6, Black people collectively checked our watches, muttering, “Oh, is today when that’s going down? Guess we’re not going south of Massachusetts Ave. today.” Shocked, but not surprised.
By contrast, White America’s reaction to the attack on Capitol Hill was marked with unadulterated surprise, as if it truly did not know itself, as if Sam Cooke did not mention it in the very first line of “Wonderful World” (which I know for a fact is a song White people like very much). Mainstream media seemed overcome with shock and revulsion. Politicians everywhere crossed their chests, shocked at what America had “become.” As if violent and entitled were not things America has always been.
Black people have to know America because America is an amnesiac with a gun. It does not put a premium on learning from its past. An educated public is…
