It is only human to give our enemies a distinct territory in our memory, which is why we hear the buzz of summer’s first mosquito with mild alarm. We think only fools don’t remember their enemies, because remembering is preparedness. And, conversely, what we call preparedness is often really a readiness to remember the enemy, an openness to his memory-triggering buzz. […]

[O]ne of the heaviest weights that oppression leaves on the shoulders of its former victims is simply the memory of itself. This memory is a weight because it pulls the oppression forward, out of history and into the present, so that the former victim may see his world as much through the memory of his oppression as through his experience in the present. What makes this a weight is that the rememberer will gird himself against a larger and more formidable enemy than the one he is actually encountering.

Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (1990)