‘United we stand, divided we fall’
This is a response to “My history is part of your history” [Leonard Pitts column, Opinion, May 16].
Although blacks may have suffered the most, not counting holocaust victims exterminated in Europe, many of us have ancestors who suffered some level of oppression at some time in history before coming to the United States.
The hard truth should be uttered, but it should include the whole truth. Part of history is always ignored. I refer to the fact that slavery was not “invented” here in America. It was “ended” here. Slavery was the way of the world for several centuries before our country was ever dreamed of, starting in 1400s by Spain and Portugal.
Yet in less than a century after this country was born, we “ended” slavery and for one fundamental reason: There were simply more white people against it than for it. It could not have been any other way because majority ruled and still does.
Despite what Pitts wrote, I believe the United States is itself and not composed of other nations and cultures. It is composed of people who left behind those other nations and cultures for a better life here. We all came from elsewhere in our lineage, but now we should get back to unity.
— Clark Chase, Monroe