On the day of his death, the New Yorker revealed its front cover tribute to Nelson Mandela. Someone on my Twitter timeline mentioned how the cover showed Mandela as a young man, a stern look on his face, a firm clenched fist raised in the air. The photo contrasts with the image of the old, smiling and rested man we see everywhere else in the media. Old people usually appear unthreatening, fragile and incapable of causing trouble: the opposite of who Mandela was, especially in his young activist years.

It is interesting how Mandela, who was on the U.S. government’s international terrorist list until 2008, is now being heralded as a “peaceful icon.” I have only known Mandela as an old man, but I was also told the story of a young radical and revolutionary individual.

Another revolutionary is getting the same treatment: Martin Luther King, Jr. Both he and Mandela were perceived at some point as troublemakers in society. The way we remember them today, as “peace and love” icons, completely erases this aspect of history. The same way that King, Jr is reduced to the “I Have A Dream” speech, Mandela’s legacy is reduced to the several declarations of peace he made after his experience in prison on Robben Island.

I don’t mean to imply that these declarations – and his activism to promote peace relations in the world – are not radical or subversive; they are. The question is: why is this revisionist representation happening?

Mandela was a fighter. He fought against the Apartheid, the legal system enforcing racial segregation between whites and people of color in South Africa. Such a system couldn’t be dismantled and destroyed with non-violence or peaceful tactics. Counter-violence in such context was unfortunately necessary. Mandela has always been an intimidating figure to me. Someone who was unfairly jailed for 27 years, and got out with only forgiveness for the people who put him in there can only be intimidating.

The problem is that we seem to need to create this sanitized and consensual image of the man so that everyone can identify with him.

It is important to remember Mandela as who he was throughout his whole life. Let’s remember him as a boxer, a young freedom fighter, a husband, a Socialist revolutionary, a flawed human being and yes, a peace icon. Mandela was all of these things and certainly more. Let’s not narrow him down to a neutral icon. Think about the way we’re asked to remember figures like Mandela and King, Jr. Think about what is being said about them, what is left unsaid and why.

That said, we lost a great man. It’s a great loss for all of us. I hold a deep belief that there are a lot of Mandelas in this world, even among us. We shall mourn the loss of a great man and celebrate a legacy that must be continued by all of us.