“Two original sins have plagued this nation from its inception: the destruction of its native inhabitants and the institution of slavery. Both sprang from a failure to see an equal in the racial other. As Bishop Claude Alexander has said, racism was in the amniotic fluid out of which our nation was born. There was a virus present in the very environment that nurtured the development of our country, our culture, and our people. The virus of racism infected our church, our Constitution and laws, our attitudes, and ideologies. We have never fully defeated it.”
“Only about 42 percent of white Christians believe the history of slavery continues to impact African Americans today. Yet slavery was a symptom of the virus, not the virus itself. Even after the abolition of slavery, the ideology that had supported and formed around slavery endured. The symptom passed. The virus persisted by mutating.”
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