Protesters dumped a Columbus statue in 2020. Trump installed a replica near the White House

The statue isn’t about preserving history – it’s about asserting the power to rewrite itThe Trump administration recently took a position on a man with a documented record of genocide and enslavement. “In this White House,” a last week, following on the grounds of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, “Christopher Columbus is a hero.”It is worth pausing on that word. A hero, in the civic sense, is not merely someone whom people admire. It is someone whose story the country agrees to tell in a particular way. Heroism is a narrative decision.Jamil Smith is a Guardian US columnist