The Moral Crusaders of Lincoln

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LZ Granderson: Lincoln was not a moral crusader who was primarily out to save the enslaved black people. He says it's part of offloading racism onto the Southern bigot, right? LZ: But then you're also ignoring the North's deep investment in the Southern economy and the connection to all these other forms of white supremacy that ultimately bind the North and South very closely together with this web of racial capitalism. The cotton trade continued all the way through the Civil War because the North couldn't do without Cotton.

When it comes to America’s racial sins, past and present, a lot of us see people in one region of the country as guiltier than the rest. Host John Biewen spoke with some white Southern friends about that tendency. Part Six of our ongoing series, Seeing White. With recurring guest, Chenjerai Kumanyika.

Image: A lynching on Clarkson Street, New York City, during the Draft Riots of 1863. Credit: Greenwich Village Society of Historical Preservation.

Shannon Sullivan’s books, Revealing Whiteness and Good White People.

Thanks to Chris Julin, whose 1991 NPR report on the Wisconsin fishing rights dispute we featured.