Forward Without Amnesia
An African philosopher in Germany wants to write about Nietzsche. He is told by the university, that perhaps he should write about African spiritualism instead. Witchcraft, maybe. Something closer to home. Something culturally rooted.
In the United States, commentators argue that certain voter registration requirements are too complex for Black citizens. Identification rules are burdensome. Online systems are confusing. The implication lingers beneath the language of care: modern bureaucracy may be too much to expect.
Both cases arrive wrapped in moral concern. They speak the language of inclusion. They reference history.
The philosopher hears that he may participate, but only as a representative. The voter hears that he or she must be shielded from expectations that apply to everyone else.
It would be tempting to call this racism. The accusation offers clarity. It simplifies the moral field. It allows us to say that the old hierarchy has simply learned new manners.
But that explanation is too neat.
What we are witnessing in many such cases is not open contempt. It is moral overcorrection.
The twentieth century left wounds that cannot be denied. Colonialism, segregation, institutional exclusion. The consequences are not abstract. Wealth disparities, educational gaps, inherited mistrust of institutions. No serious society can pretend these do not exist.
So institutions attempt repair. They expand access. They amplify voices historically ignored. They create programs designed to compensate for uneven starting points.
Repair is not the problem.
In fact, backward-looking and forward-looking approaches are not always opposed. Sometimes redress is precisely the path to agency. A student from an under-resourced school who receives additional preparation for a standardized exam is not being treated as fragile. He is being equipped to meet a shared standard. The expectation remains intact. The assistance equalizes inputs, not outcomes. Dignity is preserved because competence is presumed.
The line runs through expectation.
Repair strengthens agency when it preserves common standards while broadening access to them. It weakens agency when it adjusts standards in anticipation of incapacity.
When an African scholar is nudged away from European philosophy and toward “African topics,” the gesture may be framed as celebration. In practice, it restricts intellectual freedom. It implies that universality belongs to some, while others are assigned to cultural commentary. The center remains guarded, even as it congratulates itself for openness.
When bureaucratic competence is treated as too demanding for certain citizens, the language is protective. The structure is paternalistic. Adults are repositioned as dependents of a system designed to manage their vulnerability rather than as participants presumed capable of navigating it.
This is not the brutality of historical racism. It is the paternalism of diminished expectation.
The moral logic driving it is backward-looking. It asks what was done and how we compensate for it now. That question is legitimate. But if it becomes the governing principle of every present interaction, individuals are frozen into historical categories. The past becomes a permanent interpretive lens. Competence itself becomes suspect.
The ledger never closes.
A forward-looking approach does not erase history. It studies it. It teaches it. It acknowledges structural reality without romanticizing neutrality. But it refuses to let ancestry dictate intellectual scope or civic expectation. It insists on shared standards not because the past was fair, but because the future must be built on equal agency.
Here the uncomfortable question appears.
Who defines the standard?
Standards are never born in a vacuum. They emerge from particular histories, cultures, and power structures. To pretend otherwise is naive. But the answer cannot be to dissolve standards altogether or to fragment them along identity lines. A functioning society requires common expectations. Law, science, democratic procedure, academic rigor, civic responsibility. These are not tribal possessions. They are cooperative frameworks.
The task is not to abandon standards but to justify them openly and revise them when necessary, without assigning them to bloodlines.
Redress that equips people to meet shared standards strengthens dignity.
Redress that lowers standards in anticipation of failure erodes it.
The African philosopher should be free to write on Nietzsche not because Africa lacks intellectual traditions, but because philosophy is not ethnically owned. The American voter should be treated as a competent adult not because history was just, but because democracy presumes agency.
We are in a loop. The past generates guilt. Guilt generates correction. Correction, when it slides into lowered expectation, produces resentment and quiet humiliation. Resentment then hardens identities further. The loop tightens.
Calling this racism may satisfy the desire for moral clarity. In some instances, crude prejudice still exists. But much of what we are seeing is something more confused: moral engineering without a clear endpoint.
If the organizing question remains indefinitely, “How do we rebalance yesterday?” we risk becoming administrators of inherited grievance. A forward-looking society asks instead, “What kind of agency do we want to normalize tomorrow?”
History should inform us. It should not assign us.
Otherwise we remain curators of the past, mistaking its management for progress.