Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

As I suggested a few chapters ago, disremembering involves active forgetting. Societies disremember all the time; in fact, it seems to be an intimate part of collective memory itself. Societies bury the historic wrongs that lie beneath their feet and tend to remember their heroes and heroines minus the darker sides of their characters. But disremembering historic wrongs leaves vulnerable those among us who are the inheritors of historic wounds, who still bear the scars of past collective deeds (for example, those who once possessed these lands, the descendants of ex-slaves, of forced migrant laborers, and a host of others).