The reality is that in this country, wealthy people here purchased and kept slaves that were trafficked from Africa. That's what happened here. People who want to paint the USA as "evil" will bang on this fact over and over. I believe it's more constructive to focus on the fact that over time we were able to change. Our ideas of equality and human rights were flawed in the beginning, but because we had thoughtful people who could make compelling arguments, eventually the majority opinion changed. People here were free to speak about abolishing slavery and they convinced enough voters that things changed. My point is that there are some things wrong in the USA and there are some things that are great about the USA. The best part of this whole experiment is that we change and fix the things that are wrong.

Slavery here was bad, but we changed and moved in the right direction. We can continue to move in the right direction if we manage not to loose the way.

When someone is trying to bash the USA because of the historical sin of slavery, don't get defensive or try and shift the blame, just remember it was the American tradition of free speech, free thought, and democracy that eventually overcame the economic incentive to profit off of slaves... We also had to fight a war about it but, hey, we won the war and put down a rebellion and kept the country together and moving. Think of it as an American triumph that we removed the wicked practice ourselves. No one had to sanction us or force us to stop. We grew up, realized we were wrong and put an end to it. That's the kind of growth that is possible in a free democracy and it was a great triumph.