From a Black American perspective, this country has a duplicitous nature, like Thalia and Melpomene, the Greek comedy and tragedy mask. How else can you explain that Thomas Jefferson, our country's third president and "founding father," who claimed "all men are created equal" in The Declaration of Independence enslaved hundreds of Black people? At Monticello, his Virginia plantation, Jefferson deprived hundreds of Black people of any semblance of equality, let alone the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," he alluded to in America's founding doctrine. And the story of Sally Hemings puts a fine point on the injustices Black women regularly experienced during the chattel slavery era.
Book Summary: The Social Construction of Reality by Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann
The focus of this book, its thesis, is not that society determines reality in some metaphysical sense. The authors clearly acknowledge that what they…