sanitizing history for your protection

“The ‘Life of Wash­ing­ton’ was paint­ed by Vic­tor Ar­naut­off, one of the fore­most mu­ral­ists in the San Fran­cis­co area dur­ing the De­pres­sion. The San Fran­cis­co School Board’s de­ci­sion to paint over the 83-year-old mur­al is prompt­ing some to wor­ry that oth­er art­work from the so-called New Deal era could face a sim­i­lar fate be­cause of chang­ing sensitivities.”
—San Fran­cis­co to paint over his­toric George Wash­ing­ton mural

“[Ar­naut­off] put those ghast­ly gray pi­o­neers lit­er­al­ly walk­ing over the dead body of an In­di­an to demon­strate that the set­tle­ment of the west was an act of con­quest that in­volved the slaugh­ter of Na­tive Amer­i­cans. That was a very bold ef­fort on his part to counter the kinds of text­books that stu­dents were see­ing [at the time] and I hope he won’t be pe­nal­ized for that in the future.”
—Robert Cherny, 6 March 2018, Ar­naut­off bi­og­ra­ph­er
 

His­to­ry is not about Great­ness. His­to­ry is full of won­der­ful and hor­ri­ble hu­man deeds. 

And when ig­no­rance in this na­tion is at an all time high – when sci­ence is wrong – in­stead of de­stroy­ing the past that made us who we are to­day, we should use these things as learn­ing and teach­ing moments. 

The Life of Wash­ing­ton is a time­line of George Wash­ing­ton, his slave own­er­ship, his good ac­com­plish­ments, with a POV that doesn’t gloss over the bad.

Sim­i­lar to a con­fed­er­ate stat­ue – which can teach a lot if a bronze plaque is added stat­ing who these peo­ple were and what they did – slav­ery was not just a ‘South­ern Thing.’ It was the Amer­i­can way of life, our past as it was. 

Amer­i­cans to­day have an­ces­tors who, by today’s stan­dards, are evil. My own fam­i­ly on both sides were slave own­ers in the 1700s, yet my great grand­moth­er was a Suf­frag­ist who ran for the US Sen­ate, and fought for world peace and Na­tive Amer­i­can rights. Per­haps she be­came who she was be­cause of her his­to­ry, not in spite of it. 

Re­vis­ing or hid­ing his­to­ry does noth­ing more than take away an ed­u­ca­tion­al tool, it lumps our his­to­ry into only two categories;

Ac­cept­able and Unacceptable.

His­to­ry is his­to­ry, noth­ing more. Ei­ther we use it to learn and teach, or we be ig­no­rant­ly stuck in the 4th di­men­sion of 

Should Have, Shouldn’t Have.
 

And
why not take the $600,000 and put it into a mi­nor­i­ty schol­ar­ship fund instead?
 
 

—Louis Warfield

Flom­mist Louis Warfield is a fab­ri­ca­tion spe­cial­ist who runs the award-win­ning Rhi­no De­sign Stu­dio, “You dream it, we’ll build it.” Copy­right © 2019 Louis Warfield.

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