It’s probably because you’re a foreigner armed with a history degree. What I mean by that is if you did not grow up in the sanitized American school system, than you can see better how black American history is not separate from white American history. By sanitized I’m talking about basic phrases like segregation and racism. Those phrases are everywhere but ambiguous because they are sanitized. Is it really just racism, or is white racism (against black Americans)? Is segregation or is it white segregation against black Americans?

You are also unaware, as are most all Americans, that there were two Americas from 1879 or so to 1968. I’m talking about the laws, so close your ears if you don’t like critical race theory. One above the Mason-Dixon Line where it was illegal to segregate schools by state law, and one below the Mason-Dixon Line where it illegal to integrate schools by laws. Americans desperately try to promote the “United” part of United States, and not the States part. That is because the states acted very, very, and maybe one more very, differently from the start.

In the unsanitized view you would learn that Lincoln in his 1854 speech clearly understood what inalienable rights meant and sharply criticized the pro-slavery states for have what he called “slave” state constitutions. He hated slavery and found it antithetical to democracy at the core. In the newly sanitized version, you will read cherry-picked quotes of that speech saying he wanted to send freed blacks back to Liberia. That’s to make him look like a white Republican, when in fact he was a radical Republican, meaning an complete abolitionist who discovered he had to thread the needle when he was taking power and took power because in reality only about 5 percent of politicians were openly anti-slavery. He would never have won had he said “I’m running for president to end slavery.” In fact, he lost that 1854 election.
The state constitutions in the south he was referring to never changed to include democratic principles like natural inalienable rights. They stayed autocratic and set up autocracies, like South Carolina’s. In fact, South Carolina is a good example, as they rewrote their 1776 one in 1778 to make it more autocratic, not less so. Meanwhile up North, state constitutions and laws came in line with the declaration ideals of natural inalienable rights and abolished slavery, many right away, like Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania or pledged to like New York. The South fought to expand slavery from 1800 to 1863 (when Utah was actually added a slave state to the Union) while the North fought to end it or at least limit it. John Q Adams introduced the first amendment to end slavery decades before Congress that tried several times from 1860-1864, or that Lincoln did not end slavery or abolish it nationally because he is what we call in America the President, and the president has no power to make laws to do anything. He only has the power to execute laws made by Congress, or to veto them once passed, but he has no power to veto an amendment and didn’t. Instead he “simply” issued an E.O. or Executive Order in 1863 that allowed escaped slaves from the Confederate States of American to join his “Union” army and granted them citizenship and guns if they did. As Commander-in-Chief he only has power over the Executive Branch and can’t make laws. But since he gave that EO the fancy title of “Emancipation Proclamation” Americans think he ended slavery or had the power to end it, when he absolutely didn’t.
You see, it’s really sanitized. I don’t recall learning anything real, only twisted half truths sanitized in dirty and deceitful way.