"Race and Freedom Are of One Piece, Are Born at That Same Moment"

"The American Revolution is an extraordinarily important event in world history. And combined with the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the revolutions in Latin America, this Age of Revolution transforms not simply our own nation but transforms the world as well.
"After the American Revolution, after the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Declaration of Independence, the presumption is that all men are created equal. Equality is the point. And what then has to be explained for the very first time in world history is inequality. And why inequality exists. In other words, if all men are created equal, why are some men and women still slaves?
"And the explanation for the persistence of slavery can be: 'Well, perhaps there is something wrong with that notion of equality.' In which case the whole notion of the post Revolutionary world, the whole notion of American nationality, is also wrong.
"Or the explanation can be: 'Perhaps these people who are enslaved are not quite men.' And of course that leads us to a whole sea change in terms of racial thought."

PBS, at its website for 2003's Race: The Power of an Illusion, offers an interview with historian Ira Berlin.