For Americans, the hardest part of paying reparations would not be the outlay of money. It would be acknowledging that their most cherished myth was not real.

For that more ennobling narrative, as for much of American history, the fact of black people is a problem.

Serious history was the West, and the West was white.

You and I, my son, are that "below." That was true in 1776. It is true today. There is no them without you, and without the right to break you they must necessarily fall from the mountain, lose their divinity, and tumble out of the Dream.

Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?