People bury the parts of history they don't like, pave it over like African cemeteries beneath Manhattan skyscrapers.
-- Sydney (Prologue)

Importance: This quote distills Sydney’s opening rumination on racism and gentrification into a solitary point: Black culture is destroyed for white progress. This thematic observation encapsulates the nature of events throughout the novel, beginning with the discarded photo album Theo finds in the trash and ending with the literal destruction of Black people through opioid experimentation in order to save white lives. Applied more specifically, the reference to pavement in the quote alludes to the prominent road white people constructed through a Black graveyard in historical Weeksville. Combined with the exclusion of Black figures from Zephyr’s brownstone tour, this quote evokes the dark history of racist events in the United States that are often buried or entirely omitted from the mythology of American success.

Kim has a framed portrait of Michelle...
-- Theo (chapter 2)