On November 26, the New York Times published an article by Felicia R. Lee called "The Anger and Shock of a City's Slave Past." It is about the exhibition, now running at the New York Historical Society, called "Slavery in New York."

The article was filled with all kinds of quotes from seemingly horrified and now enlightened White Americans, surprisingly mostly middle-aged, saying things like, "It's striking for any of us who are New Yorkers to realize that the ground we touch, every institution, is affected by slavery," or that it makes "A difference when you look at a black person on a subway train, or you're working next to a black person, that you have a little more empathy and understanding and also praising for how far so many people came," or that "It's terrible to know that the city that I love was part of the slave trade." Best of all is the "elderly white woman who said she had two college degrees" who said, "I never knew until I walked in here about slavery in New York...It just breaks my heart."

With all due respect to Ms. Lee and the excellent exhibit, I really don't understand the choice of focusing on comments such as these. It seems to me like it is New York Times liberalism -- and I certainly do not use that word in the contemptuous Bill O'Reilly sense -- run amok. I do not ever recall in any history class in my life being told that the North did not engage in the slave trade, and that there were not slaves in Northern cities. I don't think most intelligent people would be truly shocked -- shocked! -- to find that there were, once upon a time, slaves in New York.

There is even a quote from a professor at GW University who says: "Back in the 90's, when Bill Clinton asked for a national conversation about race, most people didn't have the context in which to have the conversation." You mean...most people didn't know that once upon a time there were slaves in America, and that that, in fact, is the reason why most African-Americans are here? Or that now a disproportionate number of those Americans live in poverty or are in prison? That racism is a fact of daily life for many people? No one had that context, and now this exhibition has set us free!

Well blessed be, I am so glad the New York Times and the New York Historical Society have seen to it that the truth has finally come to light. So when do I get my reparations check?