Have you heard of Julius Caesar? What about Alexander Hamilton?
There’s a good chance you have. And not because you had a salad for lunch or watched a Broadway musical at some point.
We know these names because we are students of history.
In America, we learn about the history of our own nation in school. We also learn of those societies that came before — such as the Roman Empire.
Reminders exist far beyond the classroom walls as well. Idioms, memes, and other colloquial wisdom weave the markers of history into the fabric of our culture.
These lessons allow us to capitalize on what those before us did well. They also allow us to avoid repeating what our predecessors did poorly.
It’s been this way for generations. But now, this arrangement is endangered.
The sea change effectively started in 2017.
America was emerging from the shadow of some contentious events. A brash outsider had won the United States presidency months earlier. And there was a growing clamor that foreign nations might have interfered in the presidential election.
Tensions were high. Then, two events sent the kindling ablaze.
In August, white supremacists marched on a Virginia college town. Then, in October, the New York Times published a sexual harassment investigation of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
At first, these events don’t seem directly correlated. The white supremacists were spewing racist hate on one side of the country. On the other, an entertainment mogul was coming undone after years of mistreating women.
But if you look at the response to each of these events, the connection is clear. In both cases, the repudiation of these actions went to a new level. Symbols tied to racism started disappearing from the south, while Weinstein-produced movies vanished from entertainment services.
This was a turning point in what came to be known as Cancel Culture.
The message was clear. No longer would those on the wrong side of history simply face scorn. They might find be erased from the record altogether.
In these initial cases, the cancellations turned out to be prudent.
After all, the Confederacy lost the Civil War, and racial discrimination is against the law. So, maintaining symbols of a vanquished cause did little good.
And as for Harvey Weinstein, he was ultimately convicted of rape and sentenced to prison.
But Cancel Culture would grow in the ensuing years. And as the revisionist history exploded, we started to lose our way.
I am a proud alumna of the University of Miami.
Like any institution, the university is not perfect. But it’s had a profound impact on my life. And it’s proven to be a valuable member of the surrounding community.
The university has made several transformational decisions in recent decades, including upgrading facilities and expanding its healthcare network across South Florida.
But a recent decision caused me to furrow my brow.
The university removed the names of several prominent figures from campus buildings, including that of founder George Merrick. The university claimed that an anti-racism stance fueled their decision.
On the surface, this decision seemed prudent. While Merrick donated 600 acres of land to build the university in 1925, he also spoke of keeping Black neighborhoods outside of greater Miami.
Viewed from a modern lens — or indeed, a humane lens — such ideals are repugnant. But in the 1920s, they were par for the course.
It was the heart of the Jim Crow era back then. And Miami was the newest outpost of the South — a coastal town built along a rail line extension.
Fidel Castro’s ascension in Cuba was still more than 30 years away. And it would be a decade before Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered the infamous El Corte massacre against Haitians.
Such events helped spur a wave of migration to Miami, turning it into the multicultural mecca we know it as today. But back in 1925, Miami was a mostly white city in a segregationist state.
Merrick’s views on city planning are not to be celebrated, for sure. But canceling him from the university is not necessarily the answer either.
Such actions are effectively castigating one man for the sins of his time. It’s a move that even civic leaders think is unfair.
This is not the case of Alabama governor George Wallace openly defying the Civil Rights Act and bellowing Segregation forever. If George Merrick had lived in a more equitable era, there’s a chance he might have had a more progressive stance on racial relations.
But he didn’t. He lived in the South in the 1920s. And now, he’s being punished for that fate of circumstance.
There are few names more infamous than that of Adolf Hitler.
The Nazi leader led the genocide of 6 million people, spurred the rise of fascism in Europe and sparked the Second World War. In most circles, he’s considered the embodiment of evil incarnate.
More than 75 years have passed since the fall of the Nazis. Most Germans these days have no firsthand knowledge of that despicable era. But they do know who Hitler was.
This is intentional. In the shadow of World War II, Allied powers removed Nazi symbols from German buildings. But they didn’t scrub their atrocities from the history books.
The more German schoolchildren learned about the sins of prior generations, the less they’d be inclined to repeat them. At least that was the prevailing idea.
For the most part, this strategy has worked. Some pockets of right-wing extremism have bubbled up in Germany recently. But such scourges took many decades to re-emerge.
As I look at our society, I wonder why we are so set on deviating from this path. The actions of Confederate leaders — let alone the Nazi regime — are far worse than the thoughts of a George Merrick.
Cancelling Merrick for racist views — or any number of figures for the warts of their era — is a flawed approach.
Taking an eraser to the history books doesn’t wipe the slate clean. It simply leaves us with eraser marks.
Such actions deprive us of the database of missteps. They rob us of tangible signs of society’s progression. And they leave us every opportunity to make mistakes that could otherwise have been avoided.
History is made of people. And people are flawed.
Julius Caesar got power-hungry and ended up assassinated. Alexander Hamilton’s hotheaded style led him to a fatal duel with Aaron Burr.
Those flaws ended their lives, but not their relevance. In fact, those flaws have become a crucial portion of their relevance.
This is the power of history when it’s left annotated but unvarnished. It offers us the chance to make tomorrow better than yesterday was.
So, let’s not give Cancel Culture a free pass. Let’s stop pretending that eraser marks can rectify the sins of the past. Let’s investigate those sins at face value. And then let’s resolve to do better