She's not stupid. They're trying to rehabilitate those horrors and downplay them so that they can do it again.
Black people being freed was to white Americans the equivalent of a horse now having the right to own a home of its own and run for political office. They had generations of conditioning telling them that we were livestock.
The white southerners that fought to keep slavery legal and to EXPAND IT saw slavery the way that a middle class person may see bitcoin today. If they worked hard enough and could buy some land and slaves, then they'd be set for life. That mindset is still there. Millions of white people still think of black people as a product for THEIR use and nothing else.
They like us when we are their entertainment, but then watch how they react to a black man starting a business with white people having to call him 'boss'. See how they react when a black person wants to be addressed by their proper title(e.g. Doctor _____ ) the idea of black people being socially equal or superior to them fills them with a bitter rage and disgust and the idea of black advancement fills them with anxiety because deep down they still haven't grasped that they are literally no different from us. They need that psychological wage that whiteness gives them and will do anything to keep that up.
There are white people who've moved past that and have black families and look up to black people who inspire them. There are others whose racism is deep in their soul and they're willing to die to defend the right to feel superior to another person based off something they had no control over.
