The racism blowup isn’t going away.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Tuesday, while testifying under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee, that the president used “tough language” during a conversation on immigration policy in an Oval Office meeting last week. But Nielsen said she did not hear Trump describe some African countries and Haiti as “shithole countries,” as has been reported.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) found that impossible to believe. He preceded to express his frustration with why Nielsen — and Republican lawmakers Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) — seemed unable to recall what the president said in an Oval Office meeting.

Maybe they Repressed the Memory.

Booker also shared some of his recent conversations with black Americans regarding the comments that the president and his allies deny. He said that the offensive characterization of the countries sending black immigrants to the U.S. was foremost on their minds:

Why is this so important? Why is this so disturbing for me? Why am I frankly, seething with anger? We have this incredible nation where we have been taught that it does not matter where you’re from, it doesn’t matter your color, your race, your religion, it’s about the content of your character. It’s about your values and your ideals, and yet we have language that from Richard J. Durbin to Lindsey O. Graham, they seem to have a much better recollection of what went on. You’re under oath. You and others in that room that suddenly cannot remember.

It was Martin Luther King that said there’s ‘nothing in this world more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.’ And so here we are in the United States of America, and we have a history that is beautiful and grand and also ugly — where from this nation to others we know what happens when people sit by and are bystanders and say nothing. When Oval Office rhetoric sounds like social engineering, we know from human history the dangers of that.

The commander in chief in an Oval Office meeting referring to people from African countries and Haitians with the most vile and vulgar language. That language festers when ignorance and bigotry is aligned with power — it’s a dangerous force in our country. Your silence and amnesia is complicity.

It keeps coming up, which is not surprising given both Trump’s history and his nature. He’s been a racist all his adult life, and he actively enjoys being the kind of person who is a shameless racist. He’s a narcissist and a showoff, and he thinks racism is something to show off.

It is a regular sight on cable news to see black commentators passionately making a case for their humanity when discussing the latest comment from the president’s statements on white supremacists defending Confederate memorials in Charlottesville, or NFL players protesting racism, or black immigrants from African and Caribbean countries.

They often appear heated and exasperated, frustrated and annoyed or simply disgusted and hurt because more than 50 years after the peak of the civil rights movement, black Americans find themselves having to make the case that some comments, ideas and even policy proposals targeting black people are a direct attack on their humanity.

Remember two years ago? We didn’t know this was going to happen. I miss that.