Historical traumas interpreted with the Tenets of (un)Redaction tell as full a story as possible. This type of history is honest and historically precise. Plus, our 2025 study found that people who read these interpretations feel good while reading them. Read the summary one-pager about the study.

A group of people (racial, ethnic, familial, etc.) practice a culture: a behavior pattern of shared beliefs, values, and traditions. A group of people inherits its ancestors’ belongings, such as a building, called an inheritance or heritage. Heritage is also the practice of it, such as the grammar and language its benefactors / descendants use to interpret it. Therefore, a redacted culture practices a redacted grammar and language.

And so, a “redacted culture,” a phrase developed by preservation architect and history interpretation researcher k. kennedy Whiters, is a type of culture that interprets its heritage with redacted grammar and language, creating a “redacted story” or “redacted history” about it, transforming it into a “redacted heritage.”

“Redacted culture” appears with “redacted history” and “redacted heritage” as “redacted culture, history, and heritage,” or “redacted history, heritage, and culture,” or “redacted heritage, history, and culture.”

A phrase developed by preservation architect and history interpretation researcher k. kennedy Whiters,  a “redacted history” is a story that omits facts about the past that hold people of the past accountable for harming others and, if (un)redacted, would illustrate how they and their descendants benefited from the historical harm. It’s a myth,  a lie by omission about a group of people and their ancestors.

A group of people practices a “redacted culture” that creates a “redacted history” about its heritage, transforming it into a “redacted heritage.”

“Redacted history” creates psychological distance between people who practice a “redacted culture” as perpetrators of harm, in the past, present, and future in their minds and in the minds of others. This psychological distance is a documented trait of the key element of redacted grammar and language: the passive voice (example: “they were enslaved”) (Chan and Maglio, 2020). Racial groups, etc., who embrace a “redacted history” accept only the parts of their history that make them feel good, cast themselves in a glorious, valorous, and victorious light, and bolster their sense of belonging. Their history is a redacted one, a “redacted history,” because it omits facts that would shed light on the harmful parts of their culture and the fullness of their humanity, i.e., both their light and their shadow sides. The resulting denial of one’s full humanity from practicing “redacted history” makes practicing it harm the people who practice it, too.

“Redacted history” appears with “redacted heritage” and “redacted culture” as “redacted culture, history, and heritage,” or “redacted history, heritage, and culture,” or “redacted heritage, history, and culture.”

A phrase developed by preservation architect and history interpretation researcher k. kennedy Whiters, “redacted heritage” is a type of heritage or inheritance, such as a historic building, transformed by its descendants with “redacted history” that omits their ancestors’ harmful behavior associated with the heritage, to preserve the comfort and dominance of their group (racial, ethnic, etc.) within a social hierarchy, like a race-based caste system. 

Cultures, the shared behavior of racial groups/ethnicities/groups of people, that embrace this “redacted heritage,” use what Whiters describes as “redacted grammar and language,” such as the passive voice (example: “they were enslaved”), to interpret the harmful actions and those of their ancestors that took place at historic sites, creating a redacted history about the sites. This redacted history omits their race/ethnicity in narratives and interpretations of the site-specific historical traumas they caused others to experience, transforming the historic sites into “redacted heritage.”

Heritage includes tangible and intangible things people inherit from their ancestors. The tangible, such as a building, and the intangible, like the grammar and language a culture uses to interpret the building’s past, are all part of a culture’s heritage. Heritage creates culture. What a group of people inherits from its ancestors defines who they are in the present: their culture. 

“Redacted heritage” appears with “redacted history” and “redacted culture” as “redacted culture, history, and heritage,” or “redacted history, heritage, and culture,” or “redacted heritage, history, and culture.”

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