The Angry Black Past

"The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past."

A lot of commentators were impressed when Barack Obama used this William Faulkner quote in his history-making speech on racial unity earlier this week.

Obama was careful not to make it too raw, as raw as this memory of Mary Ellen Noone broadcast today on NPR's Morning Edition.
You can read it at the link, but listen to the podcast in her own soft voice. It only takes three minutes. We need to own up to these things, not turn away if there is going to be healing.

"Every time I look at enamel red finger polish, I have a flashback, and I see red," Noone says. "I still have that anger inside of me that someone would have that control over one person just because they wanted to feel like a woman."