about that censorship thing (no not Kimmel)

My daughter read Beloved in high school, and it remains one of the most powerful pieces of literature she has ever encountered. After finishing the book, she had a deep discussion with her mom about the heart-wrenching decision the main character makes: killing her eldest daughter and attempting (but failing) to kill her other children. The murdered child’s ghost becomes Beloved, a haunting presence that embodies the trauma of slavery.

Why would a mother commit such an unthinkable act? It was a desperate, horrifying choice made to save her children from a life of slavery when a slave catcher arrived to reclaim them.

My daughter struggled to comprehend this—how could a mother be driven to such an extreme? To help her understand, my wife showed her the infamous photograph of the "scourged back," the image of a man whose back was grotesquely scarred from repeated whippings. That single photograph brought the horrors of slavery into sharp, visceral focus. Sometimes, words alone cannot convey the full weight of history, but an image can make the pain and truth undeniable. Toni Morrison’s Beloved captures that same truth in fiction, forcing readers to confront the unimaginable cruelty of slavery.

And yet, there are those who would rather erase this history. The Trump administration and its MAGA allies have worked to expunge these truths from our collective memory. Beloved has been banned from numerous school libraries and is increasingly absent from required reading lists. The photograph of the scourged back has been removed from some national park museums (though it still hangs in the Smithsonian—for now). Even U.S. military bases are reverting to names that honor Confederate leaders, such as Fort Hood, Fort Pickett, and Fort Polk. Naming military bases after insurrectionist leaders was wrong to begin with, but denying the truth of our history is even worse. Slavery happened. Slavery was horrific. And we must never allow that part of our history to be erased.

Of course, when the President is Donald Trump—a man who seems incapable of admitting to any wrongdoing or mistake (despite his criminal and civil convictions, and numerous bankruptcies)—it’s no surprise that his followers would find the truth of slavery intolerable. To them, it’s easier to censor history than to confront it. Perhaps they’d also like to pretend Japanese internment camps never existed, or that women had the right to vote when the country was founded—or maybe that women shouldn’t vote at all. After all, the GOP’s support for the SAVE Act, which makes it harder for married women who change their last name to vote, suggests exactly that.

America has made mistakes—grave ones. That is part of our history. But we cannot learn from a history we refuse to acknowledge. Denying the truth only ensures we repeat the same injustices. Slavery happened. It was horrific. And we must never forget nor try to explain it away.