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With his customary cheekiness, Muhammad Ali responded to the reporter inquiring about his thoughts on Africa after his Rumble in the Jungle boxing match. It was 1974. Ali had just returned to the U.S. from Zaire, where he had beaten the previously undefeated world heavyweight-champ George Foreman.
It was not for nothing that Ali thanked God that his “granddaddy got on that boat,” Pedro Gonzalez tells readers of American Greatness. Citing Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson, Gonzalez writes:
[America] is now the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protections of minorities than any other society, white or black; offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, including all of those of Africa.
Mr. Gonzalez continues:
The principles enshrined in our Constitution also provided the framework for early women’s rights advocates, and they have always been compatible with women’s rights on the basis that sex is not a prerequisite for individual or political rights in our Constitution. In fact, women voted in America, as early as 1790, long before they voted anywhere else. By 1913, women were voting in nine states. The 19th Amendment was not ratified in spite of American foundational principles; it was realized because of this nation’s principles. For a taste of real women’s inequality, take a trip to one of many Islamic nations—and be sure to pack a veil.
“Trump’s America is a shithole country,” Danielle Campoamor writes for Newsweek. To the contrary, Trump’s America is America; it’s struggling to be itself once more, or at least it offers us a chance to reaffirm the real America, against the pernicious narrative that has marched through our institutions since the 1960s under the guise of progress.
Read more here.
