As statues of slave traders and Confederate heroes have fallen in Bristol, Baltimore and Birmingham, Alabama this summer, I’ve been reflecting on the article I wrote for Significance last year about how the statistics community commemorates statisticians who were also eugenicists.

On the question of whether buildings named after the likes of Galton, Pearson and Fisher should be renamed, I was on the fence. I had a lot of sympathy with those who believed the names should go, but I was also concerned about keeping the past alive in the present – and conscious that cleansing public spaces of historical figures whose views on race we abhor, might not leave much behind.

Since then I’ve grown to better appreciate the effect of the lens through which I view these issues, as someone who doesn’t experience day-to-day racism. For me, a statue of a slave trader can blend into the background. Not for everyone. Maybe I also overestimated the extent to which people need – or want – to be “reminded” of past wrongs. For many, it’s not the past at all, it’s the present. No reminder required.

Of course, if we’re going to commemorate names from the past at all, we need to accept that there was bad along with the good. I suppose what I’ve realised is that we’re better than I thought we were at remembering what happened in the past… and worse than I thought we were at remembering that #blacklivesmatter today.

So I’m pleased that UCL has decided to rename buildings and spaces that were previously named after Galton and Pearson, and that nearly 8,000 people have signed a petition calling for the R.A. Fisher Lecture to be renamed in honour of the African American statistician David Blackwell.

Keeping the past alive is important. But it doesn’t have to mean leaving it alone.