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The History Behind America’s History Wars

When history becomes worth fighting over, it begins to exist. And, crucially, the fight is now occurring in the mainstream of American media, politics, and culture, rather than on the fringes of academia, as in the past.

MEXICO CITY – Henry James once reportedly said, “If you scrape Europe, you will find history. If you scrape the United States, you will find geography.” This lack of a shared sense of history in America is on stark display today in the protests over deep-rooted racial injustice and debates over the removal of Confederate monuments and names honoring racist political leaders.

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