Burying America’s racial ghosts is a prerequisite for true freedom

Evidence

Something has died. But the ghosts will not leave us alone. True freedom, for all Americans, requires that we confront them directly. Maybe tell a different, better story about how we arrived here. Tell the ghosts to go on and rest; we’ve got this now. All of which requires that we work even harder for a better world; that we put aside the old fears and the histories that justify them in order to finally bury that old Negro and the white people who so desperately needed him, and finally begin again. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 283

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The ‘bury that old Negro and the white people who needed him’ line could seed a speculative/historical fiction about what it would take to literally bury a racial archetype.
• SEED: Angle: ‘the after times’ as an unfinished funeral — a frame for an essay on how America narrates (or refuses to narrate) its failed reckoning.