By denying that slavery and racism ever existed in their communities, New Englanders deny that it exists today. Who controls the present controls the past. The relatively academic question of whether Rhode Island's name ought to be changed to Rhode Island is one for historians that will be answered instead by politicians. But the response of the Providence Journal and others to the very idea of changing it is a much more vexing problem. Because there is ignorance of history, and then there is ignorance of ignorance of history.
Candidates take heed.
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