Official records written from a white perspective override Black oral accounts as authoritative

Evidence

Historical records such as birth certificates, death records, and census information are documents written from a white perspective, which often fail to capture the essence of the Black experience. We talked about how this kind of approach discounts the stories that have been passed down in families like ours. We considered my mother, whose oral account of her age and date of birth was not sufficient. Although she celebrated June 8 as her birthday for her entire life, she was wrong according to the Montgomery officials and forced to accept the erroneous December 23 date they assigned to her. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 286