I think of all the ways this comment is offensive and I’m having a hard time choosing between “staggering ignorance of U.S. history and current culture” and the insightful Catholic theological category for human sin, “willful ignorance.” I lean toward the sin concept, because I believe this is a sinful statement on a number of key levels. But I’m not going to ignore historical and cultural ignorance either, as I believe it is the way forward for the country beyond the Ferraros and their monovision.

The New York Times has reported the Justice Department statistic that “an estimated 12 percent of African-American men ages 20-34 are in jail or prison…The proportion of young black men who are incarcerated has been rising in recent years, and this is the highest rate every measured.” Just for comparison, note that 1.6 percent of white men in the same age group are incarcerated.

So, let’s see, to follow Ms.Ferraro’s logic, the other 88% of African American men are being promoted to high public office? Facts dictate otherwise. There are more African American men now in prison than in college and the employment rate for African American men has dropped to just over 50%. It’s nigh on to impossible to get a job in this economy anyway, let alone when you have a prison record. Incarceration rates, unemployment and poverty are linked.

The reason I believe this statement by Ms. Ferraro is an example of the sin of “willful ignorance” is that a person would have to will themselves to actively exclude evidence fully available in every paper, blog, and 24-hour newscycle to come to the conclusion that it’s a “lucky” break for Senator Obama that he was not born a white man.

But how does white America take responsibility for the “willful ignorance” of a Geraldine Ferraro? Indeed, how do I take responsibility?

We need a Museum of Slavery. We stubbornly refuse to look at the real history of this country, the conditions of slavery itself and its aftermath that is still being played out in the statistics I quote above on incarceration, joblessness as well as many others. This is not, of course, the only history we are steadfastly ignoring in a national case of “willful ignorance,” but there it is. Lots of work to do.

I was in Berlin recently and I went to see the acre-wide memorial to the Holocaust and also the new Holocaust museum. There is -- I guess you would call it a sculpture -- that leads you through this huge group of columns that are just “off”. They lean slightly, tilt gradually and finally totally disorient you and skew your perspective. Another example is metal disks made to look like screaming faces that were placed on the floor in the new “museum”. You enter, there are no signs telling you what to do, but the people behind you are pushing so you start to walk across the room and the plates shift under your feet and they make screeching noises like they are in pain. It’s terrible. So then you think, ‘Do I go back? Do I go forward? How far is it to get out of here?’ It teaches complicity in great evil in a way I’ve never seen.

These were creations designed to have the German people themselves confront what got skewed in their thinking and have them come to terms with their own complicity in genocide. They did this. The Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust. They took responsibility. Is it enough? No, of course not. But it’s better than “willful ignorance”.

We will continue to have attitudes like that of Geraldine Ferraro and others unless and until white America builds a Museum of Slavery and Its Consequences and educates itself and its children about what I believe is the original sin of this country that lies festering at the heart of our espoused core value of freedom.

And here’s one more thing, Ms. Ferraro. You didn’t win when you ran for vice-president. You. Just because you didn’t win doesn’t mean other women can’t and don’t achieve. I’m not saying there is no such thing as sexism, because of course there is, but you need to take some responsibility for why you lost and why a lot of why you lost was your own responsibility. And then you need to think far more deeply about all the forms of oppression still operating in this country. Here’s a big hint: there’s more than one.