America’s denial of its crimes is more sinister than the crimes themselves

Evidence

But more horrific than these crimes was the country’s steadfast refusal to confront the truth that made them inevitable. “I am not talking about the crime: I am talking about denying what one does. This is a much more sinister matter,” he wrote in “The White Problem.” America was more than its “ample geography” that dazzled the imagination. It was a place that denied the contradiction between its commitments to freedom and democracy and its practice of slavery and white supremacy. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 158

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core to ‘the lie’: denial of the contradiction between freedom’s promises and white supremacy’s practice.
• DEEPTHINKING: Foreshadows the book’s central claim that the ‘after times’ are defined less by the crimes than by the refusal to confront them.