4th of July: Confronting the Contradictions of USA’s Past

Interview with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, head of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and author of The Condemnation of Blackness. 
The importance of confronting the contradictions of USA’s past to better understand present issues of racism and inequality.  
The contradictions of history and their racial touch points.

... Thomas Jefferson, who was as flawed and conflicted as he was inspired, who espoused great humanistic ideals while behaving with reprehensible racial discrimination. That conflict – between what we know and how we live – is still a struggle in contemporary politics and society.

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2012/06/30