The second stage of grief flashes in the assertion “it didn’t happen.” Instead of “forget it,” there is “deny it.” Civil rights icon Joseph Lowery often says that we live in the fifty-first state, the state of denial. Denial is even more sinister than amnesia because there is some concession to facts that are then roundly negated. Here is where the gaslight effect goes wild. Black folk are made to feel crazy for believing something they know to be true.
