Abstract

We were stolen, sold, and brought together from the African continent. We got on the slave ships together. We lay back to belly in the holds of the slave ships in each other’s excrement and urine together, sometimes died together, and our lifeless bodies thrown overboard together. Today, we are standing up together, with faith and even some joy. Within the last seven years or so, the development of postracial politics has been based on and grounded in a central contradiction found in public memory. On the one hand, therefore, we can address our racist past as a collective. On the other hand, political policy and discourse seem to indelibly invoke tropes of color blindness and reverse racism to further the ..