Home > Author > Susan Neiman
61 " The philosopher Janna Thompson has argued that obligations to right historical wrongs persist indefinitely, if not eternally. She believes that keeping transgenerational commitments, implicit or not, is the central moral and political good that gives nations the basis for trust. "
― Susan Neiman , Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil
62 " The rise of the Tea Party following Obama’s first election was the first hint of backlash revealing the extent of white supremacy. Its roots in America’s psyche are too deep to be pulled up by the victory of one extraordinary black man. Those who hailed that victory as the dawn of a post-racial era were those who’d never fully faced American darkness. "
63 " How many knots can the psyche tie itself into to defend itself against moral truth? "
64 " The capacity to return hate with love wipes reason off the map, at least for a while. I cannot understand it any more than I can understand how, knowing that story, black churches across America continue to open their doors and their hearts to white strangers again and again. What love and courage. What courage and love. "
65 " During a 2015 meeting with representatives of those countries, a European Union official dismissed their claims with the words, “We cannot correct history. What happened, happened.” One wishes he’d read Améry: “What happened, happened. This sentence is just as true as it is hostile to morals. "
66 " It’s still not clear that the South lost the war,” said Diane. “It’s driving the national agenda, after all. You can see it with Trump; that’s the same population who elected George Wallace. "
67 " If Obama was the American dream—“Nowhere else on earth would my story be possible”—Trump is the American nightmare. "
68 " rise of the Tea Party following Obama’s first election was the first hint of backlash revealing the extent of white supremacy. Its roots in America’s psyche are too deep to be pulled up by the victory of one extraordinary black man. Those who hailed that victory as the dawn of a post-racial era were those who’d never fully faced American darkness. "
69 " I think Southern whites are very literal-minded about the Bible, and the Constitution as well, because they are always searching for ways to read texts that would support their racial views. It goes beyond race to support a hierarchical worldview in which everyone has a place: slaves, children, women. A typical Sunday morning starts with a biblical text that gives legitimacy to whatever the preacher wants to say. "
70 " Mississippi is a place where the resistance to the Enlightenment is out in the open, making it anything but obsolete. "
71 " No white person I met in the South would say their distaste for Obama was a function of racism. I don’t agree with his liberal policies, they’d tell me. But disagreement is not hatred, and a growing body of literature argues that racism was the deciding factor in the 2016 election. "
72 " The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected of him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world. (Human Condition, p. 178) For de Beauvoir, this newness "
― Susan Neiman , Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age
73 " Unless you’ve lived a long time in Germany, you’ll be surprised to learn that descendants of the Wehrmacht made the same claims as the descendants of the Confederate Army. Not only in the dark, shell-shocked days that followed the unconditional surrender outside Berlin in 1945; such remarks continued to be made in public through the end of the twentieth century, when the Wehrmacht Exhibit broke West Germany’s final taboo. "
74 " Social justice activists in the South, for example, who are struggling to force their neighbors to face the ways their racist history informs the racist present, are above all aware of how hard it all is. The acknowledgments are too defensive, the racism too tenacious, the impulse to insist on one’s own victimization too "
75 " The 2017 demonstrations against the planned removal of the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, established one thing beyond doubt: Nazis are not just a German problem. You may prefer to call the demonstrators white supremacists, but that’s a distinction without a difference. The deliberate use of Nazi symbols—swastikas, torches—and slogans—Blood and Soil! Jews will not replace us!—leaves no room for doubt. Not everyone who wants to preserve those symbols is a Nazi. But American Nazis’ embrace of the Confederate cause made clear that anyone who fights for those symbols is fighting for values that unite Nazis with racists of all varieties. "
76 " Social justice activists in the South, for example, who are struggling to force their neighbors to face the ways their racist history informs the racist present, are above all aware of how hard it all is. The acknowledgments are too defensive, the racism too tenacious, the impulse to insist on one’s own victimization too strong. "
77 " What drives me nuts about Southern Republicans,” said Wilson, “is the way they rail against the federal government while taking more federal tax money than any other part of the country. "
78 " There are empty villages from Poland to Portugal. Why not give refugees a chance to rebuild them? The viciousness of readers’ reactions was chilling. Didn’t I know the majority of migrants are African, who have no experience overcoming difficulties through hard work? How could I expect them to develop abandoned villages? And speaking of abandoned: the young people have abandoned those villages, but older people remain. How can I propose to let their world be overrun by dominating African hordes? "
79 " The achievements of Obama’s presidency, especially impressive in the face of massive opposition to every move he made, undermined the last rationalizations for white supremacy—which is just what provoked the massive backlash that led to the election of the least qualified man ever to approach the White House. "
80 " I will argue that the 2016 election resulted, in large part, from America’s failure to confront its own history. "