The challenge will be keeping this knowledge in perspective, in remembering that this racial history is one truth about America, but not the sole defining truth. That the seeking of this knowledge is itself part of the process of atonement. That acknowledging these truths is a necessary step to true reconciliation. Consider, for example, the charges about black disenfranchisement in Florida last November. At the turn of the next century, despite civil rights gained by blacks after the Civil War, Southern states enshrined disenfranchisement in law, with such things as poll taxes and literacy tests.
History demands vigilance in protecting fundamental rights.
Second, though, it also suggests how much has changed for the better. However you judge the unproven charges in Florida, they hardly resemble the wholesale, deliberate disenfranchisement that occurred in Jim Crow or slavery-era America. That's the scary thing about knowledge. It leads to new places. Instead of giving either side the trump card in the ongoing racial debate, it might challenge old assumptions and raise new questions.