When Truth Is Lost in Translation

Narratives concerning the marginalized have come to dominate American institutions and popular culture. The plight of a plethora of minorities is regularly alluded to, from Justice Jackson’s allusions to America’s “legacy of discrimination” in her dissent of SFFA v. Harvard to the numerous months dedicated to racial and sexual minorities. Narratives about America’s systemic racism, sexism, and other “isms” have become prefaces to the missions of leading cultural, civic, and political institutions. Vaclav Havel dared to ask in his day what Americans cannot do today: Why are the rich and powerful telling the country that the rich and powerful are responsible for the daily oppression of the ruled? His answer for the denizens of the former Soviet Union offers important lessons for those in America today who question why so many blindly regurgitate lies and ahistorical Manichean narratives about our country.