Current Affairs The Landmarks of Slavery;
- Thread starter Eggs
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Those very people could point to those statues as evidence of a time when slavery was socially applauded and condoned, highlight the progress made that we would obviously no longer venerate such people but also then make comparisons in modern society as to how racism has not been eradicated because slavery was the bedrock that multi-racial relations have been built upon.
Instead, they want to pull them down and pretend it never happened. Like racism can only be combated if history begins afresh in 2020.
My moral compass is perfectly fine mate.
Papa Shango
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I mean technically Hitler didn't kill anyone...
Again, that's despotic iconography around a cult of personality toppled by people in the context of their own eras.
The fact you make such a comparison displays you have no ability to apply context.
The binman chronicles
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Totally different when a dictator oppressed, murdered millions and were pulled down as soon as possible when the people wouldn't be killed for doing so (just after WW2 for Germany and 1991 after the collapse of the USSR), compared to removing a statue of a bloke who did what was allowed by law at the time, 125 years after the statue was erected and over 300 years since the his death.
If people cannot differentiate between these events I am at a loss.
Disgruntledgoat
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Genocide is a deliberate effort to wipe out an ethnic group. Hitler being a good example.
Throwing sick slaves over the side of a boat is murder. I doubt there would be many slave traders interested in genocide against black Africans. Bad for business.
Not Pacifically
Foot Long Hot Dog
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Technically you’re wrong, as per the UN convention on genocide - article 2.
I can fully understand the pulling down of the statue in Bristol. Yes you can say it's vandalism, but I get that it was a symbolic act in the middle of a protest and can be seen to be making a point. I can't get on board with just removing statues left right and centre though. I just don't know where'd you draw the line, at what point does somebody's behaviour, whether in a professional or personal capacity. become unacceptable?
TN Toffee
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It’s not just the monuments either. Basically every US military base in the South is named for a Confederate general. Gen. David Patreus wrote a good article for The Atlantic yesterday pointing out what a strange paradox it is to train some of the best soldiers in the world to defend freedom at a base named after a man who aided in losing a war to defend slavery, and that it was time to rename all those places.
Papa Shango
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That was not the comparison being made though. (not by me anyway)
The point being made was that just because you can not see something it doesn't mean that it is expunged from history.
This seems to be the argument being made and it's utter nonsense.
Slaves were the very profitable 'commodity' of the Royal African Company that made it's members rich. Without that slave 'commodity' the cotton wasn't picked from the fields that made Liverpool and Manchester rich and the tobacco wasn't picked that allowed the likes of slave traders like Colston to make money.
Disgruntledgoat
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I can see an interesting argument over whether slaving counts as a genocide, but we would be splitting hairs in the extreme. I think we can both agree that, regardless of the charge that would be levelled at Colston's company in a modern court, he was a bad egg.
Indeed. Personally, I'm not in favour of pulling down statutes. As a parent, I think it's important for example that I can walk past things and explain why they're there, the context behind them or research the reason for something being where it is.
It's incredibly hard to separate a place from its past and even more difficult for some to understand that despite the appalling ways that some made their money; that money has meant others have benefitted from the institutions they financed.
I don't think, as @peteblue points out, it's useful for people to feel guilty about that or others should seek to make others feel guilty about it just because they happen to have been born in a society that allowed it at one point in its history.
Where I have some difficulty, is the celebration of some figures, without the slightest acknowledgement of their failings - much in the same way as I have difficulty in highlighting the failures of others while not acknowledging their contributions.
However, I can completely understand why, in the modern context, people would feel differently than I do about walking past a statute that commemorates the life of someone who viewed me not as an equal, not even as human, but as cargo and property.
No! It's that the underlying reasoning behind pulling down a statue only has that aim!
We're not saying it'll actually do it. We're saying that it's pure stupidity and ideologically driven. If someone went and smashed a random bust of Churchill somewhere with a hammer it's not like Churchill would fade from every history book magically. That's not the point being made.
What does pulling down a statue achieve? It makes peoples feelings a little less hurt because they've applied 17th centure logic on their own lives now? Woohoo! Great job everyone!
No, the point is that it achieves nothing except strain race relations, because instead of using such objects to educate and reform, you're attempting to take a sledgehammer to history instead. All the everyday man and woman will see is anarchy prevailing, riots, looting and unreasonable extreme ideology and they'll roll their eyes at it.
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