(CNN) A modest proposal: It's time to stop calling slavery America's "original sin." It is one of the few things about which longtime political opponents Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former President Barack Obama agree: Slavery was America's original sin. The habit might seem harmless, shorthand for saying that slavery was distant, deeply embedded and bad. The idea that slavery was America's original sin is one such metaphor, used at least as far back as the debate, in 1819, about the admission of Missouri to the union as a slave state. For starters, the phrase is a theological characterization of a secular institution.

Source: The Nation February 16, 2021 12:56 UTC