Sen. Tim Kaine claimed in a floor speech on Tuesday that the U.S. didn’t “inherit slavery” but “created it.”
“There were no laws about slavery in colonies at that time. The United States didn’t inherit slavery from anybody. We created it. It got created by the Virginia General Assembly and the legislature of other states. It got created by the court systems in colonial America.”
Kaine added, “We created it, and we created it and maintained it over centuries,” and “we’ve never gone back to undo it. Stopping racist practices at year 350 of 400 years, but taking no effort to dismantle it, is not the same as truly combating racism.”
It’s hard to know where to begin deconstruct the willful stupidity of this anti-American lie. First, the United States didn’t exist 350-400 years ago; those were European colonies. Second, slavery was universal, including among the Native Americans — not a colonial creation. Third, the very history of America has been the history of dismantling racist practices. Kaine owes all Americans an apology for this shameful smear.