On a CNN program not long ago, one white man, who proudly claimed his belief in white supremacy, had the audacity to say, “I wish we had picked our own cotton.”

So do we. African Americans, I mean. We wish you had picked your own cotton, nursed your own babies, tilled your own fields, built your own roads, and done the scut work in factories that made the Industrial Revolution the “success” that it was.

You didn’t, though. African Americans made this country with their hard labor, as slaves and later as individuals caught up and used in the Convict Leasing programs in this country. …