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Hi Mark and all, I'm very interested in joining the discussion group. Is it too late? I have been interested in the history of race and racism since my early adult years. It's been an ongoing learning process over the years, esp peeling way the layers of biased learning in my younger years. I'm a public health professional and I am m faced with the reality of health disparities among Black, Latino, and White people/families.

If you approve my inclusion in the group, I will be joining on my cell phone on this coming Saturday as I will be driving. Is that ok?

Thank you,

Jacqueline (Jacque) Rubino

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Anecdote about how we hide the history that embarrasses us:

My mom doubted that students have even been educated that enslavers treated their enslaved people kindly, keeping families together, and that they enjoyed their work. My dad said he hadn't either; it was only once he began his Civil War research hobby that he learned about the race riots in Detroit which had taken place while he was a child in nearby Flint. Hundreds of Black people dead, and he'd never heard of it.

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I see mine is already in the comments so I reflect on another, "Our myths have not served us well." (xxxii)

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Feb 6, 2022Liked by Mark Isero

"Our myths have not served us well. We are the most unequal of the Western democracies. We incarcerate our citizens at the highest rates. We suffer the greatest income inequality. Americans' life spans are shorter than those of the people in the nations we compare ourselves to." (xxxii) This, juxtaposed against her description of the United States as "a country whose exceptionalism we treat as the unquestioned truth." (xxxi)

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Feb 6, 2022·edited Feb 6, 2022Liked by Mark Isero

"But while history IS what happened, it is also, just as important, how we THINK about what happened & what we unearth & choose to remember about what happened." (xxvi)

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Feb 5, 2022Liked by Mark Isero

I could so easily write MANY more than just one comment, but will save some for our discussion! :-)

Since Mark took literery liberty and added two, me too: xxiii "...slavery predates every other institution in the United States." xxxi "...white Americans desire to be free of a past they do not want to remember, while Black Americans remain bound to a past they can never forget."

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Tip for anyone still needing to get the book - Amazon offered me a free two-month subscription to Audible if I chose the audiobook. No commitment, cancel anytime, so I have a free copy of 1619 to listen to.

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I have two! (Sorry, I know the prompt – that I wrote! – said to share just one.)

“[T]he American public has an outdated and vague sense of the past” (xxi).

“If we are a truly great nation, the truth cannot destroy us” (xxxii).

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