America’s racial wounds are real. But when we surrender the authority to interpret those wounds to people who profit from keeping them open, we risk exchanging one form of bondage for another.
There is a particular kind of danger that comes from revealing your deepest wounds to someone who has not earned your trust. You may believe you are inviting them to understand your pain, but you may inadvertently be providing them with a roadmap to your vulnerabilities. You are telling them what frightens you, what angers you, what makes you feel powerless, and what they can say or do to manipulate your decisions. In the hands of a compassionate person, that knowledge can become an instrument of healing. In the hands of a manipulator, it can become a weapon.
I have come to believe that this principle offers a profound lesson for understanding race relations in America, particularly the relationship between Black Americans, our nation’s painful racial history, and the political and cultural institutions that claim to speak on their behalf.
America’s history of racial injustice is undeniable. Slavery was a moral abomination. Jim Crow was an institutional betrayal of the nation’s founding promise of equality. Segregation, discriminatory housing practices, restrictions on voting, and other forms of racial exclusion inflicted tremendous harm on generations of Black Americans. These are not inventions of political activists or exaggerated grievances. They are historical realities, extensively documented, whose consequences deserve serious consideration.
But acknowledging those realities raises another question, one that I believe receives far too little attention. What happens when the people entrusted with helping us overcome our historical wounds discover that keeping those wounds open gives them extraordinary influence over our choices?
This is where compassion can become control, where advocacy can become exploitation, and where a legitimate grievance can become the foundation of a new kind of captivity.
The danger is not that Black Americans remember what happened to them and their ancestors. We absolutely should. The danger is that we may surrender to others the authority to determine what those experiences mean, who our enemies must be, whom we are permitted to trust, and what political decisions we are allowed to make.
Consider the way racial identity is sometimes invoked in American political discourse. A Black American who votes differently from the political majority within the Black community can find himself accused of betraying his race. His arguments may be dismissed before they are examined. His character may be questioned, his motives impugned, and his independence interpreted as evidence that he has somehow been deceived or purchased.
What makes this especially disturbing is the frequent use of the very historical injustices that Americans have spent generations struggling to overcome. The suggestion is that because Black people have suffered racism, they possess a permanent obligation to embrace a particular political worldview.
Think about the extraordinary contradiction embedded in that expectation. For generations, Black Americans fought for the right to be treated as autonomous individuals, capable of reasoning, choosing, succeeding, and participating fully in American society. Yet today, some of the people who profess the greatest concern for Black autonomy seem remarkably uncomfortable when that autonomy produces conclusions they dislike.
What kind of liberation requires the liberated to obtain permission before exercising their freedom?
This is not an argument that everyone criticizing a Black conservative is motivated by manipulation. Political arguments deserve scrutiny regardless of the race of the person making them. Nor is it an assertion that only one political party exploits racial grievances. Politicians across the ideological spectrum have incentives to use fear, resentment, and group identity to mobilize supporters.
My concern is with a particular method of persuasion, one that turns historical suffering into a political leash.
When Pain Becomes Political Currency
There is an important distinction between helping someone recognize an injustice and convincing them that injustice must forever define the boundaries of their existence.
The first can be empowering. The second can be profoundly limiting.
In a 2024 Pew Research Center study, 75 percent of Black American adults reported experiencing racial discrimination either regularly or from time to time. Among those who reported discrimination, 73 percent said those experiences made them feel as though the system was designed to keep them down. These findings deserve acknowledgment, not dismissal. They illustrate why appeals to racial injustice can carry such extraordinary emotional weight.
But the existence of genuine pain does not automatically establish the honesty of everyone who claims to interpret it.
Imagine someone repeatedly reminding you of the people who have wronged you, telling you that the world remains fundamentally hostile to your success, and insisting that your survival depends on remaining loyal to them. Whenever you express independence, they warn you that you are abandoning the only people who truly care about you. Whenever you question their conclusions, they invoke your past suffering as evidence that you should know better.
Would we consider that a healthy relationship?
In our personal lives, we would likely recognize the warning signs of emotional manipulation. We would question why someone claiming to care about our healing seemed so determined to keep us afraid. Yet in politics, similar tactics can be mistaken for solidarity.
I believe this is one of the great challenges facing American race relations today. The political value of racial grievance can create incentives for some advocates, commentators, and organizations to emphasize threats while minimizing evidence of progress. That does not mean every warning about racism is dishonest. Some warnings are entirely justified. It means we should never confuse the intensity of an appeal with the integrity of the person making it.
And we should be especially suspicious of anyone who treats our growing confidence, independence, or willingness to build relationships across racial and political boundaries as a threat to their influence.
A person genuinely committed to your liberation should welcome your independence, even when that independence leads you to disagree with them.
American history itself offers powerful reasons for both vigilance and optimism. The nation that once protected slavery eventually abolished it. The country that enforced segregation enacted landmark civil rights protections. The political system that denied Black Americans equal participation eventually confronted many of those legal barriers. These achievements required tremendous sacrifice, and they did not eliminate every form of discrimination or its enduring consequences. Nevertheless, they represent meaningful moral and institutional progress.
To deny that progress is to deny the accomplishments of those who fought so courageously to make it possible. And to acknowledge that progress is not to excuse the injustices that remain. We must be capable of holding both truths simultaneously.
I am particularly troubled by the tendency to treat racial progress as though it somehow undermines the legitimacy of continued advocacy. Surely the objective of fighting injustice should be to create a society in which fewer people experience it. If conditions improve, that improvement should be celebrated. If problems persist, they should be confronted with evidence and appropriate solutions. A movement that cannot acknowledge its victories risks losing sight of its purpose.
The question should never be whether acknowledging progress benefits one political party or damages another. The question should be whether it is true.
Reclaiming the Authority Over Our Own Stories
As a Black American who immigrated to this country, I recognize that my experiences and historical inheritance are not identical to those of families whose ancestors endured American slavery and segregation. I would never presume that my personal experience invalidates theirs. But I also reject the suggestion that my race obligates me to interpret America exclusively through the lens of historical oppression.
I see America’s failures, but I also see its extraordinary possibilities. I see a nation whose founding principles provided a moral standard by which its own injustices could be condemned. I see generations of Americans, Black and White, who worked to close the distance between those principles and the nation’s practices. And I see opportunities that countless people around the world still sacrifice enormously to pursue.
My appreciation for America is not evidence that I am unaware of its history. It is evidence that I refuse to allow its worst chapters to obscure everything worthy of admiration.
This is why I believe we must carefully examine the people and institutions to whom we entrust our deepest collective wounds.
Do they encourage us to think independently, or do they prescribe our conclusions? Do they evaluate individuals by their actions, or do they demand that we prejudge them according to race or political affiliation? Do they celebrate our achievements, even when those achievements challenge their narratives? Do they encourage meaningful relationships across racial boundaries, or do they treat such relationships with suspicion?
And perhaps most importantly, do they offer a credible vision of a future in which their particular brand of advocacy becomes less necessary?
These questions are not tests that only liberals, progressives, or Democrats should have to pass. Conservatives and Republicans should be equally willing to answer them. A politician who dismisses legitimate racial discrimination merely because acknowledging it is politically inconvenient has also demonstrated an inability to handle another person’s pain responsibly.
Trust should be earned through integrity, not granted through ideological agreement.
There is also a personal dimension to this lesson that transcends politics entirely. We should not allow fear of manipulation to make us emotionally isolated. Sharing painful experiences with trustworthy friends, family members, spiritual advisers, or qualified professionals can be an important part of healing. Silence is not necessarily strength, and vulnerability is not inherently weakness.
The objective is discernment.
There is a tremendous difference between sharing your wounds with someone who wants to help you heal and surrendering your wounds to someone who needs you to remain wounded.
Scripture teaches us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. I believe that wisdom applies beautifully here. We can remain compassionate without becoming gullible. We can acknowledge suffering without surrendering our agency. We can remember injustice without allowing resentment to become our permanent residence.
For Black Americans, that means refusing to let anyone claim ownership over our political conscience simply because they claim to understand our historical pain. We are entitled to weigh policies according to their merits, judge leaders according to their conduct, and pursue the futures we believe will best serve our families and communities.
It means teaching our children the truth about slavery, segregation, discrimination, and the sacrifices of the Civil Rights Movement. But it also means teaching them about achievement, perseverance, entrepreneurship, faith, family, and the remarkable contributions Black Americans have made to this nation.
Our history contains suffering, but suffering is not the sum of our history. Our identity contains struggle, but struggle must not become the limit of our aspirations. Our ancestors fought not merely for the right to describe their oppression, but for the opportunity to shape their own destinies.
I want to live in an America where every citizen can recognize the injustices of the past without being compelled to inherit the animosities of the past. An America where people are free to form their own political conclusions without being accused of racial betrayal. An America where our shared commitment to liberty, equality before the law, personal responsibility, and human dignity becomes more important than the divisions that once separated us.
That future will not arrive by pretending racism never existed or that it has disappeared. Neither will it arrive by teaching generations of Americans that their opportunities are permanently hostage to the sins of those who came before them.
It requires something more difficult and more courageous. It requires us to confront injustice wherever it exists while refusing to grant anyone a monopoly over the meaning of our experiences.
Never allow another person to convince you that your pain gives them ownership over your choices.
Never confuse someone who validates your grievances with someone who genuinely desires your freedom.
And never forget that the ultimate purpose of overcoming oppression is not to find a more sympathetic master, but to become free.
Because the most dangerous person to whom you can entrust your trauma is not necessarily the person who denies that you were wounded. Sometimes, it is the person who insists that your wounds must never heal.
“Never surrender the keys to your future to someone whose power depends on keeping you imprisoned in your past.” — Alma Ohene-Opare