I am am marijuana user and patient. I do not drink alcohol and I cannot.  It makes me deathly sick.  When marijuana was made legal in Arizona, it allowed me to shed 7 medications I've used for depression and insomnia.  I do not get high.  I do not like the high feeling, but marijuana helps me relax completely, sleep like a baby, and I wake up with more energy than ever before.  It has been a far-right and hypocritical evangelical lie throughout our history.  I hope to share my thoughts.  Please enjoy and light up!

Exploring the Racist History of the Marijuana Stigma in the U.S.

1. Introduction

Maryland's sun has set on the criminal stigma associated with having cannabis in your system, and the Maryland General Assembly has determined that using cannabis can provide meaningful therapeutic benefits. This was not the position of the U.S. Congress, and Congress was fully aware that "the demonization of the drug rooted in the cultural and racial stereotyping of cannabis users. Because the illicit traffic in cannabis is controlled predominantly by organized criminal syndicates, the revenues of which have been utilized to support other organized criminal activities as well as other illegal activities." The stigma associated with cannabis, and the concomitantly structured federal illegal status imposed on it, is a classic example of how the "European settler colonial project has instead imposed racialized restrictive narratives of cultural, social, economic, and regulatory belonging through acts of repression, erasure, and policy."

Historically, racism has undergirded the U.S. debate about the therapeutic value and risks of cannabis. More than 60% of Americans live in states which have legalized the use of both medical and recreational use marijuana. Although the proliferation of cannabis discussions at the state level has meaningfully altered the federal government's enforcement approach to regulating the illegal possession of cannabis, Congress has yet to amend the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to recognize that people who use cannabis are just as deserving of constitutional protections as people who use alcohol.

1.1. Background and Significance

Prejudice is based on an ingroup belief in superiority over the outgroup. Laws can act as a precedent for the punishment those groups receive. These legislative decisions can taint the views people have of those groups and can lead to dire consequences. There is no room in these legislative actions for prejudice.

However, to ensure that prejudice does not continue to thrive in our laws, we must also ensure that all feel the benefits of any changes in the law. We must ensure equal access, equal standing, and equal respect for all citizens. We must ensure all users, medicinal or recreational, enjoy the fruits of cannabis use without problems from society.

Examining the link between racism and cannabis prohibition can shine a light on more than prejudice and irrational fear. It calls for attention to the dynamics of fear that still exist. Toward that end, this article considers the historical relationship of marijuana and race, which is particularly evident in the treatment of the plant and its users.

The 1937 Marijuana Tax Act was born of hate and may have purged hemp of most of its thousands of known uses. This paper examines the racism behind many of the anti-cannabis laws, particularly the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. The Marijuana Tax Act banned marijuana use and production except for a few minor, limiting uses. Use and possession, for any reason, were banned and criminalized with severe penalties. The MTA was abolished by the Controlled Substances Act and banned even more strict uses.

The laws governing marijuana in the United States have created a racist stigma associated with the plant and the cultures that frequently use it. Both anti-cannabis laws and attempts to repeal them show the disdain for minority groups and the belief they are less than.

The history of marijuana is interesting and is often clouded with myths and misinformation. The stigma extends from the beginning. The journey of marijuana (cannabis) ties into a bigger, more complete picture and questions the society and its rules and regulations that, perhaps unwittingly, reflect racist foundations.

2. Early History of Cannabis Use

Marijuana is a popular name for cannabis now, but in the 1930s it was not well known in the United States. The marijuana stigma was created to give Mexicans and African American immigrants identities - immigrants that a small group of government officials, who were interested in other reasons for such discrimination, wanted to take out of work. During the 1930s, there was a flood of Mexican immigration to the United States, and with it came thousands of Mexican immigrants. To get to know these newcomers, Americans realized that the Mexicans enjoyed smoking cannabis flowers, and the term "marijuana" was born. The term slowly and furiously spread throughout the 20s and 30s. In the 1930s, "marijuana" was not a drug on everyone's watch list. In fact, other names for cannabis included "American cannabis."

Cannabis has a long history of medicinal use by the Chinese and Indian people, dating back to around 4000 B.C. Cannabis had a number of medical applications including pain relief, diuretic-induced edema relief, and childbirth pain. Ayurveda, which is a part of Indian traditional medicine, also used it in massage oil to be rubbed and in wound dressings. Cannabis spread to Ancient Greece in 500 B.C., and then to the Roman Empire, and eventually to Europe. By the 19th century, the plant was being used in the United States as the first cannabis-based medications began to appear around 1851. During this time, cannabis was called many different names, including "cannabis" as borrowed from the Greek word for the hemp plant, kannabis.

2.1. Indigenous and Early Colonial Use

The indigenous use of the fiber also served to stimulate interest in the potential intoxicative effects of smoking the psychoactive parts among colonizing groups. Upon discovery of the Americas, Europeans encountered a variety of cultures with ancient indigenous roots intertwined with the cannabis plant, primarily engaged in the fiber industry. Most notable of these were the Aztec in Central America and the Lenape and Susquehannock of colonial New York and Pennsylvania. Sikh separatists and British loyalists spurred the massive use of cannabis cultivation by Anisampec and a substantial rota of Pittsburgh merchants. Other cultivations of cannabis were encouraged by financial support provided to South Carolina antebellum plantation owners in 1783, 1828, and 1847 to stimulate the growth of the hemp industry. Commercial cannabis cultivation for fiber resulting from the 1783 bounties was largely conducted by African slaves on plantations from Virginia to Florida. Deficiencies in the production of Liberty ships led to increased production of fiber-based hemp starting in 1942, but the requirement had been lifted by 1945, and all further restrictive production Dagga efforts were removed by 1947.

Throughout the world, historical use of cannabis as an intoxicant has been primarily as an oral preparation, consumed in the form of a concentrated milk, honey, or grain that was laced sufficiently to produce a pharmacological effect. The primary exception to this is in India and Africa, where cannabis was prepared for oral consumption via a water infusion. In Europe, psychoactive consumption of cannabis was primarily limited to the toasting and smoking of the unfertilized flowers (buds), resulting in the European pejorative "hatter" strand, as in "mad as a hatter."

Cannabis sativa, or hemp, is one of the oldest plants in the world. Humans and animals have a variety of uses for the fiber content of hemp. Three uses of cannabis dating back thousands of years are well known: as a fiber, a source of psychoactive compounds (for humans, and possibly for animals to a smaller degree), and a source of dialectical dispute as to whether "hemp" and "cannabis" are the same plant. Historically, cannabinaceous hemp contained equal percentages of the two primary psychoactive components: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), primarily responsible for the narcotic effect, and cannabidiol (CBD), a non-narcotic analgesic that actually experiences a significant increase as THC levels are raised through selective breeding for illegal consumption.

3. Emergence of the Marijuana Stigma

Detractors claimed marijuana was causing an uptick in moral erosion, displaced ethical feelings, and ill-bred audiences predisposed to dissatisfaction, all tied to gaining a destructive Mexican "utopian" high. Anti-cannabis vitriol exemplified dangerous and insubordinate behaviors easily generated by cannabis in ethnic races, another means of differentiating them from the superior race. Claims of political intimidation by marginalized labor union efforts put pressure on lawmakers who found those contributing to anti-marijuana causes to be an influential enfranchising tool. Cannabis has played a part in the roots of who is and who is not an easily scapegoated American outsider, ultimately used to determine whose legal status did and did not face the rigors of prohibition.

After the effects of prohibition at the close of the 19th century, prejudice surrounding Mexican migrants initiated the next wave of anti-marijuana sentiment at the beginning of the 20th. Marijuana was essential to their culture, used in peaceful settings by both males and females in social and religious festivities. Its transport and use by northbound refugees, criminalized in the U.S., became frightening activities deemed both worthy of animosity and precursors to crime. Assimilating Americans were told they were acting like those immigrants. Fearful of being associated with the targeted marginalized, groups of non-Mexican Americans joined in this new and xenophobic reefer/bogeyman stigmatization.

3.1. Link to Mexican Immigration

In summary, the political momentum to ban marijuana is unexplained by models of electoral support related to interest groups, has its own unique empirical pattern, and is strongly associated with political support for a range of alcohol prohibition laws. Combined, these factors provide strong empirical support for both the basic logic of a moral entrepreneur model for anti-marijuana sentiment and for in-depth studies of the social construction of social problems and political morality surrounding drugs. Taken together, our study underscores the importance of policies outside the electoral model literature that illustrate that party leaders do matter.

In summary, our paper advances understanding of the political and social nexus of marijuana in three ways. First, unlike much of the literature that is focused on interest group politics, we emphasize that ideas about the perceived social costs associated with marijuana consumption undergirded the improbable coalition that supported making the drug illegal. Second, we suggest that such ideas are particularly influential when considered in the context of the political and social dimensions within which policy is debated, decided, and ultimately implemented, and we provide empirical evidence to support this claim.

We also find that support for marijuana bans is strongly associated with the proportion of new immigrants in the population more generally. This relationship suggests that some of the political momentum to ban marijuana was motivated by animus against people perceived to be associated with Mexican people, including job competition and crime.

4. Racialized Propaganda and Legislation

No sooner had Prohibition passed and the temperance organizations disbanded than the leaders of the loosely related uniformed police organizations, including the FBI, which were anxious to justify their continued existence and employment of tens of thousands of prohibition enforcement agents, suddenly needed a new enemy. Their respective organizations began a long-running campaign using racialized propaganda attempting to link immigrants to the societal problems caused by alcohol. They stated that, among other reputed evils, liquor led to immigrants such as Negroes, Slovenians, Italians, Greeks, Poles, Ruthenians, Turks, and Russians, bestiality, weekend crime against women and children, and other unfortunate societal problems. The police-enforced legislation restricting the access to legal alcohol created a huge black market, causing ethical and moral impurity of all types and massive corruption. By June of 1930, less than 18 months after the repeal of Prohibition, many of the same states that were responsible for the criminal prohibition on alcohol created a new racket by making cannabis illegal.

The passage of the 18th Amendment, which established Prohibition, was a long and contentious process and was put into law as an amendment to the United States Constitution on January 16, 1919. A number of groups had formed and lobbied for Prohibition for a variety of very valid reasons, including working conditions, health, and economic reasons. These groups were successful constituents of a bipartisan political movement. Existing political coalitions had been formed to prepare for Prohibition so support could be achieved in the US Congress. The United States was not in prohibition for very long; it was a period of "noble experiment." After 13 years of Prohibition and the Great Depression, it was eventually repealed with the passage of the 21st Amendment. However, one of the most interesting unintended consequences of Prohibition is the development of United States marijuana prohibition legislation and the lasting impact of its racist roots.

4.1. Reefer Madness and Yellow Journalism

Actual experimentation was done by scientists; and what was learned by reading notes and notices of a more orthodox character was something every investigator could profit from. Newspaper accounts became dense and overfilled with the ungenerously manufactured roar of invective, lying, and feigned enthusiasm. So we note several things. First of all, four or five popular newspaper conspirators in correspondence and conversation with a pecunious proprietor or member of the Federal Drug Addict Committee, Dr. Wonderful Messenger of Death Asaj So-and-So, were able to militate to a man in the same manner against the use of mescaline, a hike, a trip, mescaline, or a vision-hiking scene. During the heat of the 1980 reelection season, crazed by the revolt of material squalor and once again counting on compulsive trust, two bitter and exceptive journalists of very recent vintage had already succeeded in endowing the native American flavor of peyote with hallucinatory properties it never had. Described as the new enemy within, peyote-happy protesters opted to gratify their dreams and cull grotesque regalia.

Mescal was the final and worst drug of degeneracy as unfolded in a gold-plated future. Placed in opposition by the debaters as the true contrary of a lofty futurology, as if ritually emblazoned on dais and platen, a satanic huaco from ancient Mexico was the Venus of secret vices with a lantern appeal for the overlying realities. However, destructive effects of the squat little plant known in Mexico as peyote and in many wild and cultivated variations as mescal or mescaline were confined to a very few people, mostly the Indians who had been using it for centuries, and the Indians who had been using it in conjunction with various archaic religious dances with or without transforming hallucination were somehow or other few in number, whatever these dances actually were. The tasteless and colorless mescal extract is used in the business of a modern medicine man capable of untangling and untwisting the most fantastic equations of thought. Only the imaginative Mexican chooses to leave a black mark on the butte face of history: the vision disorder, be it boredom, an enchanted castle, the apparition of weapons or the compass pulling haywire at Navajo landing, was born from a stony resolution and flourished as a hopeless and melancholy psychic disorder.

Reefer Madness emerged from the pre-slam period when peculiar accounts of human ghouls and demons, with a fervor and passion hitherto unheard of, were more meticulously and spectacularly noticed by a financially interested machine press than ever before. Men of class assigned a false perspective to the American public, misrepresenting and distorting evidence entirely unimportant and ineradicable from the instant life and its circumstances. The Marxists branded them as capitalists gone haywire, lying, manufacturing, and inventing to the exact extent to which such activity would pay: not the true version of a situation, but the realistic account gained popularity; truthful accounts were things that did not happen; each of the two chief American espionage agents confided in the other, electric fascination victimizing dispractic conflicts; and democratic perception confined itself in secrecy. Completing this array of mental alleys and drug symbolism, there appeared a symbol of degeneracy known as marijuana, not an extremely powerful and addictive anodyne or hallucinogen like opium or cocaine nor an obsolete religious reveller like mescaline, but rather a distinctly inferior species of psychotropic weed. This somehow useful garden drug, known to very few people and neither reviled nor falsified, they tinctured with the grosser content of messianic poison-seed and match-head do-gooderism.

5. Impact on African American Communities

As a result, blacks are continually discriminated against even after they serve their jail sentences, if they are able to serve. Because of the nature of drug convictions, black individuals are sentenced with much larger penalties for the same charges committed by whites. Even though the rate of drug use is higher among whites, blacks make up a significant majority of the prison population. A major problem is that there is nothing in marijuana itself that makes it racist, but it is the society that uses it that makes it so. Another saddening fact is that the racist realities of drug prohibition come about because they are intentional political choices. The choices portray the ability to see certain consequences and continue inflicting racism in criminal justice policy.

As advisor wrote, the consequences of criminalization of marijuana use and possession fall more heavily on blacks than on whites. Despite the fact that both groups use marijuana at about the same rate, black individuals are four to eight times more likely than white individuals to be arrested for marijuana offenses. In some states, the arrest rate can be fifteen times higher for blacks than for whites. In fact, the war on drugs has created a system of racial profiling that has greatly increased arrests of minority members, disproportionately subjecting blacks to the negative consequences of a criminal conviction, including inhibiting their political liberties. Once a person is convicted, they are sent to prison and often do not receive the amount of help they need emotionally or through other means to find adequate employment when they are released.

5.1. Criminalization and Mass Incarceration

To be clear, the fact that coca and cannabis were criminalized in the United States, long seen as a response to an unenforced international treaty, actually represented a major change to U.S. domestic law related to coca and cannabis. The series of drug-related treaties mentioned above made it an offense for members of the "advanced industrialized nations" to possess opium, cocaine, coca, and heroin even when they were not in violation of their own domestic laws. What the U.S. government did with these three drugs as part of a broader approach to controlling psychoactive substances gave the nation enhanced access to Latin American markets at the same time that it isolated the illegal drugs' use and distribution to minority communities in the United States.

Criminalization and mass incarceration: Unlike opium, coca, and most of the other drugs that originated in the global south and were embraced by colonizing powers as sources of revenue for themselves, these modern drugs, and especially cocaine and marijuana, which were heavily associated with people of color in the United States, were characterized as social and moral evils. Here and throughout this website, I show how political considerations led to the prohibition of coca, cocaine, and then marijuana, which, as puts it, was "sanctioned and rabidly pursued in the 1930s and had a very clear ethnic and cultural basis."

6. Legalization and Social Equity Efforts

Sweeping reevaluation needs to be initiated in this element of the drug war. While the effort cannot be overemphasized, the enforcement of many of the remaining structural injustices in society cannot be fought by resources directed solely at the use and sale of drugs. Such discrimination arises from deeply rooted prejudices. The General Assembly exercises the more important legislative power to make marijuana subject to the revenue sharing laws. Permission has then been given to each county and city to impose taxation and other geographic restrictions, unless voters in the jurisdiction pass a referendum to prevent such activity.

The four groups that have been the strongest proponents for marijuana legalization have been: (1) businesses looking to maximize profits, many of which are owned by white investors, considering marijuana as a possible cost saver; (2) counties and cities attracted by the possibility of substantial new taxes on marijuana; (3) users for recreation or to address physical problems; and (4) drug reform advocates. Research on the topic of the profits from legalization has involved social scientists and is antiracist. There is reason to believe, and substantial evidence indicates, that the consumers of the drugs are generally lighter, younger, and have higher incomes than the drug user population of the criminalized society. In addition to the criminal justice system, a number of other government programs have had activities undertaken in the name of drug abuse.

6.1. Current State of Marijuana Legalization

However, other states have been increasing the number of penalties for marijuana use and possession in the past few years. These more draconian penalties for marijuana use and possession often reach into various areas of an individual's life—criminal justice, employment, government benefits, and even college entrance. Law enforcement has arrested millions of citizens for marijuana use or possession, although marijuana is less toxic, less addictive, and less likely to bring on criminal behavior compared to legal drugs such as alcohol and/or tobacco. A disanalogy appears to endure that makes punishment of marijuana users theoretically more rational, especially as more states move toward legalizing the drug (in different forms). Although scientific evidence about the harmful effects of legalizing marijuana is still inconclusive, legalizing the drug in a way that is compatible with the government's interest is a long-term, low-visibility policy task. This paper offers the government some policy implications that may help legalize marijuana without allocating funds toward criminal behavior, as the government has lazened its laws toward that end after alcohol prohibition.

Two states have fully legalized the use, possession, and sale of marijuana: Colorado and Washington. Colorado's Amendment 64 and Washington's Initiative 502 passed on November 6, 2012, and went into effect on January 1, 2014, and December 6, 2012, respectively. Numerous states have decriminalized the use and possession of small amounts of marijuana; they have replaced criminal sanctions with civil penalties, such as a fine, usually with less serious consequences than criminal sanctions. Decriminalization is a policy where criminal penalties are either eliminated or reduced for users or those who are penalized for distribution. Similarly, in the tax and regulate policy, users can buy a limited amount of marijuana from licensed shops at a certain price, with the funds coming from taxpayers or through licensing fees. The push from state and local governments to legalize marijuana comes from its potential to increase tax revenue and decrease spending associated with marijuana prohibition enforcement. In response, states can choose to regulate the market, allocate funds to education about and penalizing the effects of marijuana use, and increase spending on drug prevention, education, and treatment.

7. Intersectionality and the Marijuana Stigma

The pleasant feelings are not a new observation or discovery. In fact, attempts to ascribe both physical and social laxity to marijuana were such successful propaganda that it was adapted into the "smear" campaign resorted to by Richard Nixon when he became fearful that extending the prohibition laws might be rejected by the public as a denial of rights. His demonization of the drug-smoking, fun-loving hippie seems to have eclipsed the racial bigotry that supported it. The notion of innate black angerliness and aggressive potentialities is hardly dogmas without historical roots; it continues to have a tenacious grip because of its intersystem weight and intersectionality within these others. The stigmatization of blacks with the marijuana stigma seems related to our culture’s fear of vice, sin, physical pleasure, and the imagined interchangeability between black males and the devil, affections of which shared by all likely incite a desire to exorcise them, striking fear in the hearts of the multitudes who were otherwise indifferent to the fate of black Americans.

Brooke Kroeger describes an escape from scandal that marijuana prohibition provided for Harry Anslinger, commissioner of the new Bureau of Narcotics. His racist posturing, especially in regard to his demonization of Billie Holiday, gave him exemption from the scrutiny of his blatant corruption. In a period when Billie Holiday’s voice was singing anti-lynching songs, Anslinger’s stalking demon among the talented "subversives" and "mongrels" whom he pursued suggests the traditional linkage of hysteria about marijuana with the promotion of Jim Crow-era legislation. Lani Guinier points out that any such hierarchy of achievement and worth is an example of the "silo" mentality that has kept us from getting along and has retarded the progress and development of this country and of good citizens in it.

7.1. Gender and LGBTQ+ Perspectives

Throughout the time she had worked for these businesses, there were rare instances where she came into contact with women occupying more advanced roles, such as marketing/executive roles. She had conversations with owners of companies or business partners who stated that it was necessary that they be the one behind the scenes, as the nature of their work was somewhat related to illegal activities and could potentially get them into a lot of trouble if they were sued. As proposed, one could assume that men would be more likely to desire to work in these positions where their role is more associated with a masculine gender.

Sexuality and race are fundamentally intertwined. One's cultural equity is oftentimes an amalgamation of race and gender; our stories and experiences do not change. Our narratives are based on gender and how we are inherently looked at within the scope of societal binaries. One critique that initially comes to mind is within the general cannabis industry work field. She worked more as marijuana became legalized in Oregon. While employed in these spaces, she noticed that these businesses were almost always surrounded by individuals working in a very 'masculine' role, such as manufacturing, harvesting, and distribution.

8. Educational and Advocacy Initiatives

It is important not only that marijuana be decriminalized but that the racist history of its stigma in the U.S. be analyzed, exposed, and fully acknowledged in our democratic republic. We advocate biased broken windows, human services, and alternative safety and order strategies in community neighborhoods brutalized for generations by drug war enforcement.

We recommend in-depth analysis of the racist consolidated effects of drug war marijuana repression laws within multi-disciplinary liberal and radical arts and humanities curricula and through library and museum exhibits and other educational initiatives. We emphasize not only exposé but empowerment and the presentation of historically conscious theory and experience critique craft specialization in empowering the war-incipient human services, human rights, cultural heritage, and other professions of the liberal arts and humanities.

8.1. Promoting Awareness and Allyship

Just like anyone who is not from an oppressed group should not co-opt the cultural practices and traditions of oppressed groups, white people should not further center their experiences, rituals, and history beyond what is rooted in the actual history and present day. Marijuana journalism that puts white people on the cover, greater than the statistics or anecdotes of BIPOC experiences, supports racist systems and keeps these systems in place. Wonderful journalistic companies in the cannabis space are working to rectify these problems, for example by making a commitment to amplifying Black and Indigenous voices in cannabis, so it is equally important for white and non-Black and non-Indigenous consumers. There are lessons to be found in marijuana advocacy and culture that can also help non-marijuana advocates think about the stereotypes that they have internalized about the different people in their lives both real and hypothetical.

People of European descent can uplift the stories and history of marginalized people by reading and talking about the racist history of marijuana criminalization, so as not to further marginalize these groups under the guise of participating in the culture and industry. Support BIPOC-owned businesses by investing your money and attention towards these brands. White people who enjoy celebratory 420 actions should put in the emotional and mental labor to understand where the racist origins of celebrating marijuana comes from, and recognize that unlike other groups that south and central Asian people are often grouped with in the U.S., white people do not face violence and discrimination for celebrating our cultural practices. Being Black and publicly consuming marijuana have different legal and social outcomes than being white and making the same choice. Ensure that your 420 events and social media feeds are respectful of people who don’t have the same privileges and freedoms.

9. Conclusion

However, despite this, recreational marijuana has become a six-billion-dollar industry and is considered the next big thing. We can observe how the classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug and other drugs linked to this law is of racist and unethical origin. Widespread racial inequality and injustice have been created. Focusing on damages caused by the stigmatization of marijuana, and other "forbidden" substances such as morphine, levophanol, and thebaine, would be the equivalent of treating it topically. Furthermore, trust has been created by spreading scandalous legends. We must combat these legends in a humane, unspectacular, unemotional fashion and should be responsible for bringing to the still uninformed world the facts about marijuana and other widespread drugs with a broad base of understanding can and must be castigated.

In conclusion, we can see how the racist history of marijuana in the United States has led to its stigmatization as an evil and harmful plant. Such stigmatization has resulted in massive propaganda and law enforcement against its use, leading to the persecution of exemplary inter-racial and cross-class use. As part of these efforts, the United States Bureau of Narcotics led by Harry J. Anslinger, described marijuana users as "pagans, Satan worshippers, subversives, communists, dirty Mexicans" and noted that 50% of those who use heroin are Afro-Americans, Hispanics, and Filipinos living as parasitic mongrel races in the United States. Today, there are TV advertisements, internet films, documentaries, books, and articles aimed at educating and informing people about the progress of the California and Colorado marijuana industry, with almost no mention of the inhumane and racist propaganda to which marijuana has been subjected or the brutal persecution, violence, and massive incarceration and destruction of Black and Hispanic families.

9.1. Reflections on Historical Injustices

This article attempts to inspire reflection on the negative aspects of American history. Although society is born anew with every newborn, the past is the seedbed of the present, and everyone has inherited something from those before. There are many inheritances plain and hidden, and many silent sacred promises to those who have gone before, to remember the sacrifices and gifts they made and to forgive their faults. By doing so, we recall our links to the human race, and we are changed, humbled or encouraged, and changed nonetheless. Our nation is a great force for democracy, prosperity, and morality around the world, but it has inherited a mixed legacy of dangerous ideas.

If people in the United States today disavow the possibility of being beneficiaries of historical injustices, our society could not really reflect on either the nature and impact of these injustices or the identity and motivation of the current efforts to gain redress or relief. It is axiomatic that one cannot right a wrong if it is denied or ignored. Contemporary social and political controversies would be adjudicated by reference only to instrumental arguments and counterarguments. The issues of identity, morality, and recompense would be missing from civic discourse and even debate. Because the claim of historical injustice is key to legal relief, it is also important for the study of law.