the senate. in a moment we ll talk to our north america editor sarah smith in washington but first our correspondent john sudworth is in philadelphia in the state of pennsylvania. pennsylvania is such an important battleground? it pennsylvania is such an important battleground? battleground? it is. i m in an old ale house battleground? it is. i m in an old ale house in battleground? it is. i m in an old ale house in downtown - battleground? it is. i m in an old i ale house in downtown philadelphia and people will be turning up here and people will be turning up here and they can watch the results unfolding on the big screens and they will be watching from a pub that dates back to 1860, the eve of the american civil war and an event that some people see dark echoes of intraday s to divided political landscape. it has been in evidence in this state throughout this campaign is specially in a key senate race that pits dr oz, a republican, against his democratic opponentjohn fetterma
and so, does that offend you? i mean, can you explain to me why. yes, because it s not true. you re telling stories that are untrue about my ancestors, about my family, about my country. and tell me what s the untrue thing is? slavery. they are not telling the whole story. slavery was one of the reasons, but for that professor to say that economics had nothing to do with that war is totally false. i wouldn t fault this out, you know why? it had nothing to do with political reason. because my home was being invaded. the confederacy lost this war big-time. no americans have ever lost a war quite like the confederacy lost this war.
them unifying after the war. is that true? i fully believe that when we are talking about, even across the spectrum from the carbon of the civil war to the prosecution of it. i think it is a much more progressive approach to describe, and understand, white supremacy then it is to even talk about slavery, slavery does not survive. but white supremacy does. reconciliation has been a sea. what happens, unexpectedly, is that in that reconciliation, the nation itself embraces the confederacy and the memory of the confederacy. this is why, by the time you get to the 1930s, people from all over the country are coming to place like mitch mississippi to to our homes. and to see women in hoops
why are we still in a war in this country over race? slavery, it lasted 200 years. you have to develop a psychology on the part of the white people who were doing this, that involves enormous acts of denial. we haven t even claimed it as the horrific system that it was. she says, slavery is the cause. and so, many white people that we hear say, don t talk to me about slavery. i didn t own slaves. my parents didn t own slaves. the cultural conditioning that began in slavery has continued. the privileges that you see some white people have goes back to i m more than you, i m better than you. why? why? why teresa? why are they better? oh, i don t believe that. i know, but why do they think they re better? privilege. privilege has told them they re better. they don t even know that
they are unruly unbelievable, as far as i know. we prayed a lot for those who are attacking our heritage me for their since. we pray our lord the truth of history would triumph. i feel like the country never really were unified after the war, in a way that included all of its citizens, right? like maybe taking down these statues now could help us reunify. but don t try to take away history, because you don t agree with it. and if you really studied history, you see it was more than just slavery.