People carry history within themselves and must battle it to become more humane.

Evidence

White man, hear me! History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us….And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this….In great pain and terror because…one enters into battle with that historical creation, Oneself, and attempts to recreate oneself according to a principle more humane and more liberating. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 277

Categorization

• XREF: This is the exact Baldwin formulation of ‘the after times’ inner-history idea the reader is assembling — the load-bearing notion of history carried within, which recurs across the chapter. — connects to: The dominated reenact past injustice upon themselves to make it bearable; Collective historical contact makes the self literally contain the other. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 194; Meaningful reckoning requires whites to confront their own violent history. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 451
• DEFINE: Defines the chapter’s core sense of history as internal battlefield rather than record of the past.