"It remains divided today. One hundred sixty years after Lincoln warned of the dangers of disunion brought on by slavery, Americans must bear witness to racism’s destructive power. This government cannot endure, permanently half racist and half antiracist.
Slavery divided the nation in two, politically and geographically. The threat racism poses to the contemporary United States is more insidious for being more diffuse and more veiled. But trace the issues rending American politics to their root, and more often than not you’ll find soil poisoned by racism. None of these issues is likely to tear down the republic as slavery nearly did, but the danger is no less existential.
Some of the assaults that racism has mounted on American society are well known and recall Lincoln’s era in their brazenness. “I do not regret what I did,” Dylann Roof journaled six weeks after killing nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina. America may not be on the precipice of civil war, but the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year revealed that there are white nationalists who are prepared for violent conflict, convinced that demographic shifts will deprive white Americans of their power and privilege. They came out into the public square chanting, “You will not replace us!” and “Blood and soil!”"
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/a-house-still-divided/568348/
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