It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
AT THE entrance of the Apartheid Museum located just outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, visitors face a dilemma: they must choose between two passageways marked in Afrikaans and English as “Blankes/Whites Only” or “Nie-Blankes/Non-Whites.” Generally, this causes a commotion, especially on days when large groups of schoolchildren and tourists descend, as visitors uncomfortably consider their options. On many occasions, people sort themselves and file into the separate entrances even if it means splintering groups that arrived together. This powerful moment speaks to the complacency still ingrained in us when it comes to the use of racial classification as a sorting mechanism as much as it does to our willingness to obey rules, whether those of the museum or society at large. Visitors are quickly reunited as the passageways join, but the initial entrance is unsettling and immediately places the visitor in a simulated space that feels more real and personal than most museum experiences....
The Shade of a Criminal Record
