Do statues tell us anything about history?

@HootyTheNightOwl Like Nelson Mandela? In London?

@Kwek00 Okay, that's one... one black statue for how many black people on the planet???

One black statue that how many black children will never get to see because they live hundreds of miles away from London...

@HootyTheNightOwl Do you think that england, which has largely been a spot where the overall majority is predominantly white, should erect statues from Africans that never visited the english country?

And the conversation that we are having now, is actually an extend of a world vieuw that comes from the enlightenment periode where "equality" became an important element in the narrative. This world vieuw started to develop in the 17th century, became part of the mainstream in the 19th century, and started influencing people that adopted this narrative up untill now. Before the 19th century, most world vieuws incorperated "inequality" as a norm. So there wasn't much nescessity to erect statues and monuments of people that were perceived inferior to the dominant group.

... and because of these reasons, you'll won't find a lot of non-white statues in countries that predominantly white. This has to do with history and path depdency.

This idea, that you embrace "equality" as an ideal to strive for, and that suddenly people are going to erect monuments for those that they considered "unequal" 2 days ago... seems pretty delusional to me. 😅 If you read "Jefferson" who talks about equality amongst men, and you know that guy had slaves... that also says a lot of Jefferson and who he considers to be part of the group which is called "men". This takes time, lots and lots of time.

@Kwek00 The thing is this has opened a can of worms as IF this staue comes down then so does Chruchills as he was far worse than Poulton ever was.

@Kwek00 Does the idea of removing monuments to the likes of Winston Churchill seem delusional to you, too???

How many men did he march off to fight Hitler??? Oh, that's different because we are talking about war now, right???

Queen Victoria has a statue - didn't she also have servants under the age of 16??? Remember that 16 is the youngest age that you can be employed full time now days... better remove her statue for having slave labour, too.

Perhaps we'd also better remove the plaques and statues honouring Titanic deaths, too... after all, it was an Irish ship, filled with a good many travellers that potentially never set foot on England's soil.

If we go removing every statue that someone objects to, and not replacing them because we can't agree on what to replace them with, how many do you think that we will have left by the time that we are done???

Seriously, where do we stop with this. Should we tear down historial, listed buildings because slaves worked there??? There's already a sign potentially in danger because it has a black boy on it - the sign is protected as a listed structure.

How are you going to deal with people protesting for more racial equality down the road from here, keeping in mind that racial equality is precisely why all this spitting and spatting started in the first place.

I know for a fact that people are complaining about the fact that we never include black people on our currency, yet nothing is done to challenge that fact.

Honestly, there's so much more that we could be doing to include black people today that it might be better to apologise for our past wrongs and work together to include them in our history going forward from here.

Here are a few:

https://www.pinterest.com/pamelaashtonart/black-culture-statues-and-sculptures/


@HootyTheNightOwl

@HootyTheNightOwl Tearing down statues is part of that or. I agree that there are grey areas. I think legitimate debates can be had about Churhill statues say, and im in two minds myself. Churhill is someone who did lots of bad things, many of them racist but he is also reverred as a war leader against NAZI Germany. I genuinely don't know about that one.

Colston is not a grey area though. He was known as a famous slaver and it was the main thing he was famous for.

We should duscusd them on a case by case basis but that doesn't mean all statues should stay.

@Burnley123 what is your thoughts on Nelson statue they want down , and now Baden Powell, I think they are going to far and with the names of streets and roads, probably 80 per cent of them protesting had not a clue what these statues represented if you asked them

Look carefully at how you phrased that and see if perhaps rephrasing might be helpful🤠 @Nyloncapes

@HootyTheNightOwl @milkymum1
[quote]Does the idea of removing monuments to the likes of Winston Churchill seem delusional to you, too???[/quote]

Churchill is kinda tricky, because he's so multifaceted. But his pro-imperialism stance and superiority feelings can't really be pushed at side.

@HootyTheNightOwl If your criteria is going to be that you remove all racist people from having a statue of monument dedicated to them. Then I can tell you not a lot of pre 20th century people will be left. But there are people that got famous just because of this. See my entire conversation with "Revenant" in this same story here.

I also think your last messages are seriously cray cray 🤣

@Kwek00 Churchill is multifaceted.

That's the point!

Everybody does awful stuff and good stuff. And generally if you do something worth celebrating, you did almost certainly did something equally revolting in other areas (at least in some people's opinion).

We could have no monuments of anyone or anything except cute dogs, I suppose, (but then I'd feel duty bound to be insulted, as a cat person).

@Lhayezee Though perfect should not be the enemy of the good. Im in two minds about Churhill myself. Case by case basis.

Colston deserved to go in the water, no question.

@Burnley123 well we may civilly disagree on that. I'd certainly not say he gets a new statue though (nor be put back up where he was).