How would you characterize what you learned about America's racial and history? For example, what is the conventional wisdom you have heard surround ing Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and Middle Easterners?

The correct answer to this open question is the following.

Although the question does not include options and other references, we can say that the history of the United States, unfortunately, includes racial segregation since Colonial America times.

With the slave trade, thousands of Africans landed in North America to work as slaves in the English colonies. Later, slavery became a common thing in America. Most slaves worked in the large filed plantations of the south. The Civil War was in part, due to the issue of slavery. After the war, and despite the Emancipation Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, during the Reconstruction period, southern states created legislation such as the Jim Crow laws or the Black Codes to limit the rights of African Americans. Then, the surge of supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

Today, with the recent incidents we have witnessed in the news, we can see how racism is an ingrained part of American society, not only to African Americans but to other minorities such as Latinos, Muslims, or Asian people.  

on this day in 1939, in response to hitler’s invasion of poland, britain and france, both allies of the overrun nation declare war on germany.

the first casualty of that declaration was not german—but the british ocean liner athenia, which was sunk by a german u-30 submarine that had assumed the liner was armed and belligerent. there were more than 1,100 passengers on board, 112 of whom lost their lives. of those, 28 were americans, but president roosevelt was unfazed by the tragedy, declaring that no one was to “thoughtlessly or falsely talk of america sending its armies to european fields.” the united states would remain neutral.

as for britain’s response, it was initially no more than the dropping of anti-nazi propaganda leaflets—13 tons of them—over germany. they would begin bombing german ships on september 4, suffering significant losses. they were also working under orders not to harm german civilians. the german military, of course, had no such restrictions. france would begin an offensive against germany’s western border two weeks later. their effort was weakened by a narrow 90-mile window leading to the german front, enclosed by the borders of luxembourg and belgium—both neutral countries. the germans mined the passage, stalling the french offensive.