Trump says we put too much emphasis on slavery. The real problem is that we never emphasized it enough.

President Donald Trump says the nation’s historical institutions place too much emphasis on slavery. But the real problem is we have never placed enough emphasis on that particular depravity. That doesn’t mean white people need to go on a guilt trip to make amends for their ancestors’ sins. But neither should anyone pretend that all vestiges of slavery’s legacy have been erased.

Trump may not want to talk about it, but the truth is America still feels repercussions from having allowed slavery to exist from this land’s colonization in 1619 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. That’s 246 years. Born in 1776, the United States is 249 years old. Is it time for us to forget the American Revolution, time to declare that war irrelevant to what this nation has become since Crispus Attucks, a Black man, died in the Boston Massacre?

Should we also ignore that an Arkansas community right now is attempting to resurrect one of the most enduring legacies of slavery: segregated housing? Eric Orwoll, president of the Return to the Land community, says no laws are being violated because his organization neither sells nor leases land for housing, and is therefore within its rights to restrict membership in its community organization to white people and non-Jews. Similar attempts to create racist enclaves have occurred over the years in Kentucky, North Dakota, Maine, Washington, and Oregon.

And speaking of segregation, that vile practice is as prevalent in some school districts today as it was when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it illegal with its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. I started elementary school five years later in Birmingham, Ala., but didn’t attend a school with white kids until I was a high school senior in 1970. Today, due to suburban flight linked to household income, most Black students whose families live in an urban area attend a school that is 90% Black.

Segregation is a vestige of slavery that in too many schools has not been erased. Americans need not feel so ashamed by that fact that we should pretend, as Trump suggests, that slavery was never that big of a deal. His trying to make the impact of slavery on this nation debatable is yet another ploy to divert attention from what he doesn’t want Americans to notice, including his weak efforts to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

That I felt compelled to write about Trump and slavery suggests his latest diversion tactic has succeeded. But his comments on slavery also open the door for a comparison of his efforts to distort or ignore American history to another nation’s acceptance of its own ignoble past as an impetus to do better. Consider Germany, whose Nazi past is something most Germans may want to forget, but that most people in that country seem to instead accept as a reality they never want to repeat.

Some years ago, my wife and I were visiting our daughter and son-in-law, who was then an Army officer stationed in Stuttgart, Germany. One day, they took us to the Birkenkopf World War II memorial, which astounded us with being both awesome yet simple. The memorial is 5.3 million cubic feet of rubble that resulted from the Allies dropping 27,000 tons of bombs on Germany’s premier manufacturing city during the war. The rubble placed on the hill raised its elevation from 1,500 to 1,676 feet. Other German cities have similar rubble hills, or trümmerbergs, that serve as reminders of that country’s unconscionable past.

Segregation is a vestige of slavery that in too many schools has not been erased.

Slavery has had as much of an impact on America, if not more, than Nazism has had on Germany. And yes, even as neo-Nazi groups continue to exist in Germany, there are similar opportunists in our country, including Trump, who see divisiveness as the means to achieve power. The very nature of our American political system, dominated by two political parties that must stress their differences to remain viable, makes consensus in Washington, D.C., difficult. But having a president who prefers division to consensus as the instrument to cultivate his imperialist nature has made matters worse.

Trump isn’t the first president who sometimes acted like a monarch. During his 12 years as president, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared war on the Great Depression before taking on the Axis triumvirate of Germany, Japan, and Italy during World War II. As commander in chief during both fights, FDR often treated Congress as an afterthought. And at one point, he even considered increasing the Supreme Court’s numbers so he could appoint more appeasing justices.

Trump, who appointed three justices during his first term, hasn’t felt the need to juice the court by adding more fawning puppets. But he has persuaded Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who wants to be Trump’s successor, that the MAGA faithful will return the favor in 2028 for his recent gerrymandering of the Lone Star State’s congressional districts to give Trump a better chance of keeping a Republican majority in next year’s midterm congressional elections.

At least FDR seemed to have the welfare of the general public in mind when he acted like a king. Not only did he lead the country to victory in World War II, but Roosevelt’s administrations also produced the Social Security Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the Works Progress Administration, which provided jobs to millions of unemployed workers during the Depression.

Those positive steps helped the nation as a whole. Trump’s policies have mostly helped himself. In less than a year as president, his estimated fortune has more than doubled from $2.3 billion to $5.1 billion. Maybe all that money piling up around him prevents Trump from seeing that what America really needs is a leader more focused on uniting people, not dividing them. America needs a leader who understands that ignoring history doesn’t allow a nation to move past it. A leader who speaks to more than just the people he believes he can exploit to get even richer.

Harold Jackson spent two decades at The Inquirer and served as editorial page editor from 2007 to 2017. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1991 and retired from the Houston Chronicle in 2020. His memoir, “Under the Sun: A Black Journalist’s Journey,” was published in April by the University of Alabama Press.