Washington is kinda like Hitler, right?

‎Person A: "I was thinking about how we celebrate George Washington...But we got to start telling the truth. He owned other people. If they were good slaves, somebody made them good by beating them half to death...It's kind of like the Jews being made to celebrate Hitler. That's the way black people have to celebrate slaveowners of our past." Joseph Lattimore, quoted in Studs Terkel's Race.

Person B: If we so discriminated our historical figures, then we should never celebrate history. That Martin Luther King cheated on his wife many a times. We should not have a day for people who do not keep their vows. Gandhi beat his wife, we should not celebrate domestic violence. Yet since history is a constant series of oversimplifications, we simply try to remember what is admirable and move on from there.

Me: Yeah, shit. The more I think about this, it's actually kind of ignorant and offensive. We don't worship Thomas Jefferson qua slaveholder--we readily admit his faults and those of our other "founding fathers"; and we (should) recognize the term as sexist, too. Seeing Jefferson as nothing other than a slaveholder is just as bad as seeing him as nothing other than a "founding father". So, this statement is ignorant AND hypocritical: it is overly reductive.

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I have read parts of Race, love Studs Terkel, and think ethnographic research carries a lot of value; however, we need to recognize the lack of credibility the "on-the-street" style interview also has. Peoples' feelings are valid, but sometimes their opinions aren't. Obviously we should try to tell the whole truth about figures as significant as Washington and Hitler. This, everyone can agree on.