This essay examines the ways in which the rhetoric of the reparations debate elucidates the varying accounts of history favored by Americans of different backgrounds, the political and ideological foundations underlying different perspectives on the nature and uses of history, and the norms guiding public deliberation in the contemporary U.S. about how to remember the past. Because the controversy explicitly connects questions about race and cultural memory, it has generated positions that seem irresolvable; yet, ironically, the debate suggests ways in which rhetoric about race in the U.S. might begin to move beyond current impasses. (Contains 89 notes.)