The Present Challenging the Past: Race and Historic Memory in Contemporary US Ideology and Politics

Anthropos. 2025. Vol. 120. No. 2. P. 533–547.

Aleksandrov G., Bondarenko D. M.

Issues of race and memory in America are closely connected. Racial categories and racialized
thinking are primarily integrated into the American culture through collective memory, and any
conversation concerning race issues inevitably becomes a conversation at least partly about
history. The major crises of the past few years have a pronounced connection to collective
perceptions of American history. The article explores the connection between historic memory
and categories of race both on individual level and in the public sphere, highlighting the
essentially historic nature of the debates on race in contemporary America. Collective memory is
the origin point of the social and in many cases political crises America faces today, the solution
to which, consequently, must involve a more balanced and more intentional memory policies.
The examination is supplemented by the evidence collected by the authors during extensive
fieldwork in the US since 2013.

Keywords: collective identity, memory politics, historic memory

Publication based on the results of: Interactions between homoarchical and heterarchical cultures in varying historical contexts (2024)