This is gut-wrenching, but I am sure you are correct: it’s necessary. And it’s necessary for all American children, most certainly white ones included. The truth must not be sugarcoated for them, and it must be introduced before they’ve developed that defensive crust, that distancing effect of rationalizing that it happened a long time ago and to other people — and was done by other people utterly unlike themselves. We can’t hope to integrate the trauma of slavery if we don’t own it.