In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks, for reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to look back; but I think the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further the past will remain horrible for exactly so long as we refuse to assess it honestly. . . . Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America bears some responsibility for it.
-James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, 1955
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