What a community forgets reveals the limits of its justice

Evidence

How we collectively remember is bound up with questions of justice. Or, to put the point differently, what we choose to forget often reveals the limits of justice in our collective imaginations. Think about this in a personal way. Imagine that a family, one that prides itself on the strength of familial bonds, carries the burden of a terrible secret. Everyone knows, even as they act like they don’t, that an adored relative has sexually abused a young niece repeatedly. Family gatherings go on as if nothing has happened or is happening. As time passes, stories are told about his sense of humor, his generosity in times of need, and his loving personality. With each recollection, the memory of his heinous actions falls into the shadows and the injustice of his treatment of his niece is ignored or forgotten—except by the victim herself. For her, stories of his kindness tell her, in effect, to shut her mouth. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 122

Categorization

• XREF: The family-secret analogy parallels Morrison’s Beloved framing which Glaude develops in the very next paragraph, and echoes how denial operates in other injustice contexts the reader has studied (white noise of American exceptionalism).