We lie and cover up our sins and mute the traumas they cause. We dissociate the trauma from our national self-understanding and locate it, if at all, in the ungrateful cries of grievance and victimization among those who experienced the pain and loss. “The biggest bigots are the people that call other people bigots,” George Wallace declared in 1968. By this logic, we identify scapegoats to bear the burden of our sins. Undocumented workers and Muslims become the “niggers” to fortify our sense of whiteness. We find security and safety in fantasies of how we are always, no matter what we do and
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