At the Jan. 6 hearings, race isn't discussed much. Still, it's a central issue

In the opening moments of the Jan. 6 Committee hearings, Chairman Bennie Thompson drew a line across history, connecting the Lost Cause to the Big Lie.

"I'm from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching," Thompson began.

"I'm reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021."

The Lost Cause is the racist myth that justifies chattel slavery. It tells a false story of generous slave owners and happy slaves, as well as lies that the Civil War wasn't really fought over slavery — it was about states' rights. Everything that follows, the nadir of American race relations, the violent dismantling of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the erections of Confederate monuments and the conflation of a treasonous Confederate flag with patriotism, are all in the name of this Lost Cause.

The Big Lie has come to mean the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election but that it was stolen from him. It was a lie so large that it drove the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and extended out to include another lie, one that painted the violent attempt to overturn the election as a peaceful protest.

Just as the Lost Cause denied the brutal racism of slavery in order to perpetuate violent inequity.