American society as a whole has a very short memory. There are a lot of things we don’t know or have allowed ourselves to forget. I was visiting a high school, Seward High School, in 1987, and one of the students in the classroom thought that slavery had ended in 1960. He was very serious about it.

Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.

When blacks made purchases in any store, they weren’t given paper bags; instead, they had to carry out their purchases without a bag. If my mother had informed us of these things, it might have lessened her authoritarian presence in the world. Or, she might have come home one day to find me with hundreds of paper bags that I might have stolen somewhere.

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.