There seems to be two sides when discussing the United States Southern history. Those who want to preserve confederate monuments feel that their heritage is under attack. On the other hand, others see the erected monuments and places named after confederate ‘heros’ argue this immortalizes oppressors. How do we satisfy both sides? It is important to preserve history while respecting people’s narratives on the topic.
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I think what we often overlook is that when we write books, paint murals, shoot documentaries, put up monuments, *we* are inherently creating history by choosing which narratives to foreground, and from what perspective. Recorded history is never inherently unbiased—and for those who say that the tearing down of Confederate statues is an erasure of their history, I ask: whose history was erased by the erecting of such monuments? By the propagation of a proud “war hero” narrative that glosses over the brutal, hideous reality of American slavery, which these military figures defended? A reality that robbed so many people of *their* rightful histories—through recurring, violent displacement; not just in the days of the slave trade or the Southern Antebellum, but for decades upon decades after. Some histories need to be rewritten so that recorded histories can more accurately reflect the truth. And Black Americans deserve for *their* narratives to be accurately represented.