Contradicting American National Myths

In a chapter titled "Historiography and the Black Radical Tradition" in Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism,  Robinson discusses W. E. B. Du Bois' work as a historian, and his rejection of the "Myths of National History."  These are the founding myths, used to support and perpetuate bourgeois property the pursuit of happiness."  However, the glaring contradiction to these myths is the enslavement of half a million african people as the U.S. declares "independence."
systems of oppression.  One quote that stuck out to me reads, "Black history thus begun in the shadow of the national myths and as their dialectical negation," (186).  The national myths we are taught regarding the U.S. is that our revolution was founded on principles of "liberty and justice for all," and the guaranteed rights to "life, liberty, and

The institution of slavery cannot be dismissed as a thing of the past and its present day effects need to be closely examined.  Robinson says, "The nation would develop coded by its slave past."  Indeed American development has, at one time depended on, and now remains influenced by slavery.  During the leftist-communist movements of the early twentieth century, racist ideology set at odds white and black laborers, all the while white capitalists benefitted from the low wages earned by unorganized labor.  While black Americans.

Slavery must be understood in its totality, and Cedric Robison shows that the dialectical approach, exposing contradictions and getting to the source, is the most appropriate method of understanding this institution.  Understanding slavery in economic terms as racial capitalism provides a lens through which the evolved manifestations of racial capitalism have persisted throughout U.S. American history.