Trying to understand

Some aspects of our history are so heartbreaking that it is natural to turn away, to avoid confronting the hardships and humiliations suffered by earlier generations.

We pretend not to notice that our grandparents, most certainly our great-grandparents, were denied what we regard as the most basic opportunities and freedoms.

That inclination is made all the stronger because the wrongs of earlier times were often invoked to sustain division and hatred, to justify violence and sometimes murder.