30 Quotes by Timothy B. Tyson

It baffles me that people think that obliterating the past will save them from its consequences, as if throwing away the empty cake plate would help you lose weight.

The self-congratulatory popular account insists that Dr. King called on the nation to fully accept its own creed, and the walls came a-tumbling down. This conventional narrative is soothing, moving, and politically acceptable, and has only the disadvantage of bearing no resemblance to what actually happened.

Anyone intent on moral clarity might want to find another book and, in fact, might not want to go anywhere near the enduring chasm of race in the United States.

It was like watching a community you thought you knew reveal itself as something else.

It appeared clear to me – partly because of the lies that filled my history textbooks – that the intent of formal education was to inculcate obedience to a social order that did not deserve my loyalty. Defiance seemed the only dignified response to the adult world.

We are runaway slaves from our own past, and only by turning to face the hounds can we find our freedom beyond them.

Not everything that is faced can be changed,” Baldwin instructs, “but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”24.

We must look at the facts squarely, not to flounder in a bitter nostalgia of pain but to redeem a democratic promise rooted in the living ingredients of our own history.

Somewhere between the fact we know and the anxiety we feel is the reality we live.”5.