In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, Steve Teske continues his examination of memory, accountability, and the moral inversion at the heart of the modern backlash against diversity, equity, inclusion, and historical truth.
Part One asked whether enslavers and Confederate leaders deserve grace because they were “products of their time.” Part Two asks a different question:
What happens when a society continues to honor them?
Drawing on history, law, civic responsibility, and personal family history, Teske explores the difference between remembering the past and celebrating it. He argues that museums teach history, textbooks provide context, but public honors—school names, monuments, and commemorations—communicate values.
This episode examines:
• Why naming a school is an act of honor, not historical documentation
• The difference between remembrance and celebration
• How Confederate symbols continue to communicate exclusion and hierarchy
• Why “wokeness” has become a slur for awareness and historical accountability
• What Germany’s confrontation with its past can teach us about public memory
• Why discomfort is not oppression—and why accountability is not humiliation
Teske also shares a deeply personal reflection about his own family’s connection to slavery and explains why acknowledging history honestly is not an act of self-condemnation, but an act of civic integrity.
At its core, this episode asks a simple but profound question:
What belongs in memory—and what belongs in places of honor?
Because some things belong in museums.
Some things belong in textbooks.
Some things belong in memory.
But not everything that belongs to history deserves celebration.
And when we confuse remembrance with honor, we do not preserve history.
We rehearse humiliation.
