The after times choice shapes generations beyond our own.

Evidence

This place, as I imagine it, would be a country where black children are not born in exile, where they don’t have to endure a thousand cuts and slashes that wound their spirits and require their parents to engage in daily triage to protect their souls. A new America, no longer tethered to the value gap, would make it possible for millions of black people like myself to finally feel at home without the concern that the nation’s contradictions might very well drive us mad. That unsettling feeling of being “in but not of” this country would be no more. Everyone could rest for a while, because we would no longer need the lie to hide our sins. This is the America I imagine coming into being. This is the idea of America that Trumpism has by the throat. What we decide to do in our after times will shape another generation. The choice is that momentous. I pray we don’t choose safety, again. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 603

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the affective content of the after times — the healed America where black people are no longer ‘in but not of’ the country.
• XREF: connects to: Projects of present preferences onto future generations fail because future contexts will differ radically. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 446