Instant Opinion: ‘The US is founded on both an ideal and a lie’

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Nikole Hannah-Jones in the New York Times

on the 400th anniversary of the start of American slavery

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America wasn’t a democracy until black Americans made it one

“The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776, proclaims that ‘all men are created equal’ and ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights’. But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country. Yet despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves — black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights. Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all.”

2. Serena Davis in The Daily Telegraph

on the public’s willingness to forgive male promiscuity

Great artists do not have a God-given right to womanise

“The Spanish artist [Pablo Picasso] has gone down in lore as a genius whose faithlessness was justified as part of a constant quest for inspiration; not as a serial and fickle womaniser who damaged the lives of his lovers. As has Percy Bysshe Shelley; as has Leonard Cohen – yet both have a serious claim to the latter definition. We might even have forgiven the handsome Ted Hughes his way with women if Sylvia Plath, one of two women whom he inspired to put their heads in a gas oven, had not made such a clarion call to artistic genius herself. Her voice meets his in the record of their woeful history.”

3. Andri Snær Magnason in The Guardian

on the changing landscape of the far north

The glaciers of Iceland seemed eternal. Now a country mourns their loss

“The students do the maths and come up with a year like 2160. That is not an abstract calculation. That is the intimate time of someone in high school or at university today. This is time whose meaning they can touch with their bare hands. If we can connect deeply to a date like this, what do we think of scientists warning of catastrophe in 2070? Or 2090? How can that be beyond our imagination, as if part of some sci-fi future? So on the copper plate to commemorate Ok glacier, we have written to these loved ones of the future: ‘We know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.’”

4. Michael Bociurkiw for CNN

on the US’s waning influence over China

Hong Kong protests have reached a point of no return

“Ordinarily the United States, which could easily punish China by lifting Hong Kong's special economic status for the city, could be counted on to encourage a peaceful resolution. But any goodwill Washington had has been expended by the Trump administration in its ongoing trade war with China. America's absence, coupled with President Donald Trump's lack of interest, creates a dangerous void.The incompetent handling of this crisis has caused permanent damage to Hong Kong's reputation as a stable international business center. Already influential investors, citing as well the impact of the trade war on Hong Kong, are signaling a turn towards safer havens. Uncertainty over the economy will certainly grow with each additional day of airport disruptions.”

5. Roger Boyes in The Times

on the deradicalisation of British-born terrorists

We can’t wash our hands of Isis fighters

“Disowning the misguided and the fanatical is no answer. Washington plainly doesn’t want this to become the norm for the Johnson government; not out of sentimentality but out of a conviction born of experience that concentrating fighters in a faraway desert camp inevitably leads to a renaissance of terror. The issue, however, is complex and illustrates some of the snags that will occur when the US expects us to work harder for the status of special transatlantic friend. Put crudely, there is no good solution to the foreign fighters and their families. If we brought them back within British jurisdiction there would be a question of gathering strong enough evidence to convict. Some of the returnees will claim, as the old Nazis did after the Second World War, to have been ambulance drivers and cooks.”