In my research for the book I'm writing right now about the Berlin Wall going up, no book has served me so well as Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys by Jeffrey Herf. It is amazing to see the parallels between East and West Germany's two radically different approaches to the messaging surrounding the nation's past sins, and our own current discourse concerning the history of racism in our country.

I've come to understand through this research that there are essentially two methods for dealing with this phenomenon:
Rehabilitation or Retribution.

• A Rehabilitative approach acknowledges the truth of actual crimes committed and prosecutes actual crimes through open procedures of due process, and accepts the unfortunate existence of those who continue to hold terrible views, but seeks to entice those people (rehabilitate, or re-welcome into the conversation) through dignity-based values that gives buy-in to all, based in an ethic of common humanity and, as Herf says, the universalism inherent in Western democratic ideals.
• A Retributive approach seeks to reconstruct and judge the past according to current morés, beginning with artificially redefining linguistic terms and judging the populace according to those new definitions, rather than creating new lines of discourse. It isolates opponents of the new orthodoxy, represses dissent against its excesses and denies its own complicity in retributive abuses. It censors nuanced perspectives that pull it out of binary conclusions. It directs art and artists along propagandistic narratives, continually expands its window of prosecution, and gaslights anyone who blows the whistle. It is, at its heart, anti-humanistic.

These same two approaches were active during the postwar years as the nascent country of East Germany separated itself from its brothers in West Germany. The horrors that come from the retributive, repressive form of reckoning are obvious in the museums dedicated to them today—places of political imprisonment, torture and death. We don't need to dedicate museums to free societies; we just get to live in them.

Our nation obviously has wounds from the past. Some of those still have openings that need addressing, and we can do that while still allowing freedom of speech and conscience. But wounds need air to heal. A Rehabilitative approach is generative, expansive and healing-oriented. A Retributive approach is constrictive, prosecutorial and promotes festering.

I hope this little meditation helps give some further language to how we're thinking about this right now. I've joined Bari Weiss' new organization, FAIR, as a start. https://www.fairforall.org/about/

As my friend Will Ford III often asks, "Which story line do you want to be part of—the healing or the hurt?" The choice is ours, but it may not be an open choice for as long as we would like.