We're making the third choice, which is to edit the words of the people we worship in order to maintain that worship, to keep them heroic. Keeping people from i

We're making the third choice, which is to edit the words of the people we worship in order to maintain that worship, to keep them heroic. Keeping people from idolizing racists by going back and making them not racist (so we can continue to worship the same things without guilt.) Instead we should just be adult, and recognize that being racist isn't an entire person, it's a component of a person that may have other components that are deeply admirable. The refusal to admit that causes difficulties for people whose almost entire academic life consisted of the study of the works of racists. Deleting their racism from history is a comfortable solution for people still living off the wealth that their racist ancestors accumulated.