Can America Ever Be ‘Free At Last’?

The country’s addiction to self-deception on race and racism is divisive and unsettling.

African American young boy using segregated water fountain — Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

“Self deception: the action or practice of allowing oneself to believe that a false or unvalidated feeling, idea, or situation is true…”

Truth & Freedom

Every day is a chance for America, our country, to set a new path for itself. A chance to be honest, truthful, and once and for all, to be free. It reminds me of something I read by the late African American critic Stephen E. Henderson.

Self Deception

In Henderson’s 1969 book, The Militant Black Writer, which he co-authored with Mercer Cook, Henderson wrote that America “has a seemingly endless capacity for self-deception.” Henderson, writing right after the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, adds that America “tires easily from moral confrontation.” His accusations were clear. America reacts to terrible things that happen, but then eventually, it goes back to business as usual. It never takes those final difficult steps toward moral rebirth.