The state of North Carolina has been in the news quite a bit recently. From discriminating against trans* people using the restroom of their choice[1][0], to voter ID laws, to its importance as a swing state in the 2016 presidential election, North Carolina is having a moment.

On Friday, July 29, 2016, the US Federal Appeals Court threw out a North Carolina state law known as the Voter Information Verification Act. [2][1] With its pointedly inoffensive title reminiscent of Orwellian doublespeak, the law’s main provisions included imposing arduous photo ID requirements, eliminating same day voter registration, and severely curtailing early voting, all in an effort to combat nonexistent voter fraud. The Appeals Court lambasted the Act’s “racially discriminatory intent” that “target{ed} African Americans with almost surgical precision.”[3][2] Thankfully, the Fourth Circuit acknowledged North Carolina’s fraught history of disenfranchising Black voters in their decision to strike the law down. Given the looming specter of Donald Trump, maintaining the franchise for Black voters is especially crucial come November.

All this occurred on the heels of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. At this historic gathering to nominate the first female presidential candidate of a major party, the first African American First Lady of the United States took the stage. Although Michelle Obama’s speech soared, she was skewered by commentators on the right for her reference to waking up in a White House built by slaves. Immediately the historical accuracy of her statement was revised by conservative pundits like Bill O’Reilly who noted that the “slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802.” It seems any retelling of our collective past that emphasizes that our paragon to democracy was built through chattel slavery is not going to go over well. Apparently even 200 plus years later, the truth is a bitter pill to swallow.

But, one might ask, how does this matter in 2016? We all know that Americans take pride in being a future oriented, optimistic bunch but that often comes at the expense of understanding how the past affects the present. A recent visit to North Carolina seemed to crystallize this point. Desperate to cool off, I happened upon an air-conditioned bookstore and found a bunch of postcards. The first postcard provided an explanation of why the UNC school mascot is called the Tarheels. The second extolled the beauty of the cardinal, the North Carolina state bird. And finally, an homage to North Carolina’s role in the Civil War, or as some Southerner’s refer to it: The War Between the States.

As if the Civil War weren’t neutral enough, the War Between the States struck me as a perniciously benign term, reminiscent of one I had heard while living in another crepe myrtle’d, magnolia tree’d member of the former Confederacy: Georgia. In Georgia, they refer to the conflict as the War of Northern Aggression. As I took the postcard off the shelf I noticed the subtly of the revision….the ever so slight shift that purposely neutralizes the abomination that is bondage. I wondered if anyone else would share my indignation at this revisionist history. Or, rather, would they chalk it up to a matter of perspective?

The postcard, especially with its redrawn contours of our country’s most significant internecine conflict, highlights a fundamental American contradiction. We want to remember and misremember at the same time. On one hand, the past is the past and we need to move on regardless of the collateral damage heaped upon generations of Native Americans and Blacks who are still trying to dig out of this settler-colonial catastrophe. On the other hand, when we choose to remember we are careful to excise certain truths, e.g., slaves were not ordering their steak well done after long days building the White House nor resting in “decent lodging provided by the government.” We replace these truths with the quaint idea that the Confederacy was simply fighting hard to uphold their Southern way of life, which is euphemism for their rabid entitlement to own human beings, to exterminate Native Americans, and extract Black labor for white enrichment. In the War Between the States version of the postcard these neutral facts do not seem to warrant further interrogation.

Perhaps no other person has so succinctly commented on matters of perspective than Nobel Prize Winner Elie Wiesel. Years after surviving the Nazi death machine, he reflected, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Wiesel turns our attention to just how violent neutrality can be and in so doing reminds us that revisionism is not without consequence. The Jewish diaspora has rightly cautioned us to “never forget,” because the perils of sugarcoating a racist genocide are too great even 70 odd years after the camps were liberated. The Jewish people have successfully created a narrative in which remembering is laudatory while the same collective inclination in Blacks is met with derision. The Claims Conference[4] continues to provide financial remuneration for the unimaginable loss of Jewish life and culture while Blacks have no such reparation. Blacks are remanded to some Zen dystopia where we are reminded to live in the present, act with grace in the face of racial violence, and stop rehashing all that old slavery stuff. The double standard is troubling but not surprising: some people are allowed to point out that past injustices continue to affect the present but Blacks do not enjoy the same honest accounting of the historical record. To acknowledge these facts seems too painful for some parts of a fragile American populace.

All this brings me back to the First Lady’s perspective on living in a house built by slaves. That her comments caused such a kerfuffle is not surprising but the fact that she was brave and bold enough to make those statements to the nation is truly remarkable. It suggests that much like South Africa’s efforts to heal after apartheid, reconciliation can only come with a good dose of truth. We are at a juncture in this country that is both perilous (i.e., Trump) and full of potential (i.e., the election of a woman president). To my mind, walking into our truths is the only way to undo the willful ignorance of the ongoing effects of slavery, segregation, incarceration, inadequate healthcare and racial and economic exploitation. The possibility of the election of Hillary Clinton to succeed President Obama indicates that we know how to take sides. I pray that we continue to be on the right side of history in November.

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-north-carolina-bathrooms-20160601-snap-story.html][3]

[2] [http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2013/Bills/House/HTML/H589v5.html][0]

[3] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/us/federal-appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolina-voter-id-provision.html?_r=0][1]

[4] [http://www.claimscon.org/][2]

[0]: http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2013/Bills/House/HTML/H589v5.html

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/us/federal-appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolina-voter-id-provision.html?_r=0

[2]: http://www.claimscon.org/

[3]: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-north-carolina-bathrooms-20160601-snap-story.html