If you’re an Americanist historian, you better also consider yourself a historian of race.

There’s nothing in this country’s history that doesn’t lead back to racism. To paraphrase a now-famous metaphor, racism is the sugar in the American cake. Sure, the cake has other ingredients, but once the thing is mixed and baked, you’re never going to be able to take a bite that is sugar-free.

Nods to racism (or any sort of oppression) don’t count. We need a profession-wide, systemic understanding of what racism is, where it comes from, and how it morphs and changes to stay alive. That’s the only way we’re going to learn to win the fight against it.