"Most Americans are racial idiots", someone once said.
I wouldn't say "idiots". I'd say ignoramuses.
What's the difference?
Idiocy implies the inability to learn. But ignorance can be cured...with knowledge.
I know because I used to be as ignorant of our nation's racial history as anybody. (Maybe even more ignorant). Like most of US, I was "taught to be ignorant" by my teachers, schools and textbooks that did more to ignore or diminish the subject than to educate me about it.
But after spending almost 35 years creating advertising, I've spent the last 20 years getting myself....er...umm..."unignorant" about America's dark racial past.
This blog is about helping others make up for their racial mis-education as I have.
Maybe I could've saved Starbucks' Howard Schultz some pain. Ya think?
I'll start you off easy:
1. How many slaves did Thomas Jefferson own at the time he wrote what are probably the five most important words in US history? And what were those words? (No googling, please)
A. According to Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Edmund S. Morgan, Jefferson owned about 200 slaves at the time he was writing his most famous words, "...all men are created equal". But, over his life, he is thought to have had about 600.
