> Why would a college or university go to the trouble 
> and expense to "investigate its history with regard 
> to slavery and race"?Jeff Southmayd

Mr. Southmayd's question needs an answer despite its likely nature as a button-push: 

Why? Because Annette Gordon-Reed is right that national self-understanding plus simple respect for the truth require healthy, constructive revisionism concerning not a feckless mass of nameless victims, but individual Americans who endured and contributed despite America's centuries-long national crime against them -- and because even though America itself is not exceptional, its founding ideals are, and to investigate this history is to nourish them.
Steven T. Cornliussen

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