Every society has good and bad in its history. Sometimes we want to forget the bad, such as slavery and the Confederacy, but there is a risk. It’s amazing to me that even with eye witness testimony, including perpetrators and victims plus meticulous records from the Nazis, there are those who deny the holocaust ever happened.
Probably the most audacious example, though, is when Europeans forced Native Americans off their land—but we use their words to name cities, rivers, and other features. It’s kind of like, “Get out or we’ll kill you, but to make it up to you, we’ll name this area Ahoskie as a tribute.”
sfnowak 
Thank you, Steve. Excellent, relevant and timely post on what happened and what’s happening. I’ve always believed “His-story” is “Our Story.” We, mankind, evolve. And to me evolution refers to man, and is about continuation, change, adaptation and survival over time–and includes the civilization, domestication or taming of our raw passions—and informing and forming them as both art (judgment) and science (assessment). The history of America and Americans has not always been good, right or pretty. At the same time, to see clearly we must see the whole. We must see how our history began and how we evolved and developed. However, if we allow people to rewrite our history we begin to indulge in imagination and imagine anything–what MIGHT have happened. Instead, we must contemplate what DID happen. It just may be what’s happening in America now: Polarity between man and social contracts, community, places, honor, gain and motives—and the exchange between man for these things. And at the center of it all the “problems of man,” or “man as the problem” today–much like our history.