Why is it important to examine history from different perspectives/ points of view, knowing that we can't change history?

Every
account of history is from a human perspective. Even history textbooks, which are trying to be
objective, show us what the writers value by what they include, what they leave out, and how
they frame their historical accounts.

The particular benefit of first-person
accounts of historyand the importance of fictional thought experiments like the novel
is in the subjective human perspective. In primary sources like letters,
diaries, and oral histories, there is no pretending that one is capturing the whole story. It is
a very specific story. But it is through the combining of many specific stories
that we are able to see a clearer whole.

The importance of
Kindred as historicalis in the way Dana is able to immerse herself in
American history (and her history), and the reader's vicarious journey to the past through Dana.
Not only does Dana consider the slavery of the antebellum South in the context of her present in
the 1970s, we as readers consider both levels of the past in the context of our present.
This is important because it shows us the ways society has changed and not
changed, and gives us a context for the society we live in now. The racism of our
present moment, and the 1970s racism that made Dana's and Kevin's families disapprove of their
interracial marriage, are direct descendants of American slavery. Just as Dana can
trace her personal roots back to Rufus and Alice's nonconsensual union, we can trace the roots
of our 2018 America back to the massive impact of the institution of
slavery.

To travel back in time as Dana did, and to form close
relationships with both slave-owners and slaves, has the effect of humanizing the people of the
past. Unlike the "objective" history books, which paint the people of the past as
monoliths and therefore distance us further from them, first-person accounts remind us that
people created, supported, allowed, resisted, and fought the institution of slavery.
Kindred, as a fictional version of first-person accounts, not only gives us
a clearer picture of the pain and humiliation that slaves faced, it also does the difficult work
of showing slave-owners as complex and contradictory humans. Often history can
dehumanize the "villains" in an attempt to show how far we've come, but it is
incredibly important that we make the connection between ourselves and the people who caused or
enabled suffering. Humans (flawed, complicated, and afraid as we are) are
entirely capable of monstrosities like slavery, especially when it is the
status quo, and the majority goes along with it. Studying history, and
understanding what we are capable of, is an integral part of changing society for the better,
now and in the future.