ANSWERING THE STUPID QUESTIONS: Would racism exist if there had been no US slavery?

The answer, of course, is yes. When Gunnar Myrdal wrote about racism in his An American Dilemma, it wasn’t the racism that made Jim Crow an American dilemma — it was the racism set against a founding document that declared that all men are created equal.

Racism is everywhere, and anyone who has traveled abroad and paid attention knows that it’s worse most other places than it is here in the United States. (And that includes Africa itself, of course, where ethnic differences that untutored Americans can’t even see — it’s like some ancient Star Trek episode — are of burning importance).

But the reason why so many commentators have to pretend that America is uniquely bad — and even teach college students that slavery was a uniquely American institution, invented by the Founders — is that otherwise they’d lose out on a lucrative hustle.