UK Politics: Black Lives Matter Here Too

[Week]

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

Well if your goal is to fight racism and make the lives of minorities better, the effect of pulling down a statue is close to zero. The only real effect is to make the protestors feel good and think they achieved something meaningful. They didn’t. 
 

And once the principal extends out into a predictable over reach to statues of people who once knew a slave over or who read a bad book once, then they will start to lose the backing of the country.

Your opinion of meaningful is not shared by all. Nor does every action need to have a tangible outcome. 

The "slippery slope" trolling is facile and pointless - moreso than the impact of dumping statues of violent racists. At this point ONLY VIOLENT RACISTS are under attack - yet you are concerned about what next? We'll see - maybe folks will go too far and maybe they won't. The world is better off with fewer statues of slavers, Confederates, and genocidal maniacs (with much crossover in those groups).

[Week]

2 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Removal of the statue doesn’t touch any of the issues affecting minorities right now. It is an obviously empty gesture.

Would building more statues of slavers and racists be a good move or a bad move? Naming more buildings for those who stood for oppression and white supremacy? 

Or would the opposite, fewer statues of and buildings named for violent white supremacists* be preferred?

*Redundant

[Raja]

2 hours ago, A wilding said:

You won;t think that more or less open racists blocking the removal of a public object that has become a symbol of racism doesn't stop the lives of minorities from getting better?

There is no point engaging. He has been like this for years, but now uses more words to peddle his xenophobic & racist waffle. It's the same in plenty of other threads, where when called out he resorts to feeling like the victim and then ultimately backing off when his comments are proven to have zero foundation ( Take the stuff about the Sikh soldier in the literature thread, for example, but it's not limited to that. There are *many* examples) - Though thankfully the constant 'let's take this to DMs' stuff is over, which is nice

I'd rather listen to Black people that live in Bristol to determine what it means to them

Quote

Why did the tearing down of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol mean something to me? Why was my heart racing all Sunday afternoon and evening? Why did the scenes that played out around Colston’s plinth and at the harbour into which the statue was thrown bring me – during a phone call to another black Bristolian – to the verge of tears? I can begin to explain why by describing my experience of first moving to Bristol.

So, two weeks before my start date, I began phoning around, trying to find somewhere that rented rooms by the month or, even better, by the week. The first place I called was on St Paul’s Road in the wealthy Bristol suburb of Clifton. The guy I spoke to told me that he did have rooms, they were cheap and could be made available on a short-term let. When he named the price (which was more than I could afford), I hesitated. Sensing my uncertainty, but not knowing its cause, he filled the silence by reassuring me that although the room was in a property on St Paul’s Road, it was nowhere near the St Paul’s district of Bristol. “You know,” he said. “Where all the blacks live.”

My standard English accent had led him to presume that I was white, and that led him to another presumption: that one of my criteria when looking for accommodation was that it was far away from the homes of black people. That was the very first phone call I made to the city I was moving to alone, a place in which I had no friends or contacts. Two years later, I was still in Bristol, surviving from one short contract to the next, as young people in the media are all forced to do, then and now. I was so loaded down with student debt that even though I was working full time I was poorer than I had been when a student, and again I was looking for a cheap room. 

I answered an advert I found on a noticeboard that had been posted by a group of guys in their 20s who were in search of a new flatmate for a shared house. The first question they asked me when I arrived, after they had rearranged their faces and before I was allowed to ask any questions about the room or the house, was if I would not perhaps find it uncomfortable living in a house in which everyone was a university graduate. I had two degrees in history and one in journalism. They never asked if I had gone to university.

It may well be the case that those experiences were no worse or better than those I might have encountered in any British city in the late 90s. But what made them feel more pointed and painful was that Bristol was then a city that, it felt to me, gave off the strong impression that black people were not really wanted. The statue of Edward Colston, and the fact that it was so resolutely and uncompromisingly defended and justified (by sections of the city council and the Bristol Merchant Venturers), played its part in creating that impression. As did the fact that in certain districts of the city I hardly ever saw anyone who wasn’t white. Twenty years later, Bristol remains a disturbingly segregated city. 

I was told, in hushed tones, by one of the first black people I got to know in Bristol, about the statue of the slave trader down in the city centre. As a historian, I inevitably began to read about Colston’s role in the Royal African Company (RAC), the most prolific slave-trading company in British history. He was an investor and a board member of the RAC, eventually becoming deputy governor, and during his period it is estimated that about 84,000 Africans were shipped to lives of misery and torment in the Americas. Of that 84,000, only about 65,000 reached the plantations. About a quarter, 19,000, perished chained to the slave decks of the RAC’s ships. Slave traders such as Colston called these deaths “wastage”.

Knowing all this and seeing Colston every day, there on his pedestal – combined with the city’s wealth and Georgian pomp, which was intimidating for someone from my background – made me feel that this was a city I would struggle to ever call home.

 

[Heartofice]

What’s facile is a focus on eradicating history and dumping statues instead of addressing issues that genuinely affect minorities. It allows protestors to think they have achieved their goals without having done anything at all.

Also it just signals the insular nature of those protesting, Oxford Uni students so awkwardly out of touch with issues real people face think removing a statue from their university is a big step change. Meanwhile people in poverty are like ‘what statue?’

 

 

[Rippounet]

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

What’s facile is a focus on eradicating history and dumping statues instead of addressing issues that genuinely affect minorities.

You've clearly never heard a PoC saying how they feel about passing by a slaver's statue every day.

I'll be the first to say there are better ways to help minorities, but removing statues of slavers is more than symbolic.

[Week]

This issue of statues is pretty clearly tertiary to the BLM writ large. YOU are focusing on the issue for whatever confused reasons you are. NOBODY has said "racism solved!" as you wail about. There are many fronts for anti-racism to push back on and this is but one.

Echo what @Raja posted above. 100%.

[A wilding]

@Raja and after that last HoI post denying the statue genuinely affects minorities right under your quote of a minority person who says it does, I think I agree with you on this one.

[Spockydog]

The ignore function is your friend. 

[Heartofice]

Guys, it’s actually not cool to keep peddling this nonsense about me being racist, every time you do it you just look more foolish. Just like lying about what I have said in the past doesn’t do your cause any good. 

I get that you don’t like people disagreeing with you, and it’s been exposed time and again that anyone who doesn’t think exactly like you must therefore be a racist. 
 

I also get that you don’t like having people tell you that you are wrong, or that your ideas aren’t always very helpful. 
 

But name calling and lying about people isn’t cool.

[Week]

Introspection may be your friend. If you don't believe yourself to be racist then perhaps ponder why your arguments are typically racist on their face or in support of racists. Otherwise, it's going to keep happening.

[SeanF]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

When I think about this issue of statues and memorials, I think mostly of weighing what harm someone did vs. what good they did, and how we reinterpret these things. The honoring of those who profited from slavery or defended slavery is, very clearly, a point where no good they did can blot out the bad. 

Yet I can't for the life of me imagine what the harm was in Robert Baden-Powell writing in his diary that he thought Mein Kampf was a good book (and then noting that Hitler did not at all live up to the ideals he professed in the book), or thinking well of Mussolini in his early years, actually did. These were bad ideas, but they were mostly privately held beliefs that had no influence. He was not a politician, he was not some figure having any influence on British attitudes or policies towards these things.  Whereas the good he did, forming the Scouts, is I think reasonably evident even if the organization is a conservative one and has been slow to change with the times.

More generally, I think when there is some public honor accorded someone, it is the right of the public in later days to rescind that honor; we do not let the laws and practices of our ancestors prevent us from taking on new laws and practices, after all. But I admit the illiberal approach to doing this does not sit well. Ochlocracy should not supplant democracy.

 

I'd take the view that someone is arguing in bad faith if they were to claim that the sight of a statue of Baden-Powell truly has an adverse impact upon them.

[Ran]

10 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I'd take the view that someone is arguing in bad faith if they were to claim that the sight of a statue of Baden-Powell truly has an adverse impact upon them.

To the degree that "adverse impact" is purely personal, I won't doubt it's in good faith, but I would certainly question the adverse impact on the commonweal. Especially in the case of Baden-Powell where the argument for removal is very strained and ahistorical.

[Conflicting Thought]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

What’s facile is a focus on eradicating history and dumping statues instead of addressing issues that genuinely affect minorities. It allows protestors to think they have achieved their goals without having done anything at all.

How is taking a statue of a slaver( that didnt even have a plaque adressing this) "erasing history". 

And obviously you dont know nothing about how it affect peoples lives to have a statue conmemorating a slave trader, especially people of color.  

And if this is the effect is having in closeted racists like you, then its clear what the benefit is. 

[Knight Of Winter]

While Colston statue should not have place in a public place, I think it fits absolutely magnificently in a museum. Firstly - because it (presumably) has artistic value, and museums should be places to nurture art. And secondly - because it's one of the most educational and instructive objects of all. It testifies of time when Colston was alive, yes. But it also testifies of times when the statue was erected and our time when it was removed. It testifies how values of society change over time, and how some values -  though held sacrosanct at the time - are only products of era they were implemented in. On a psychological level - it testifies how much good and bad can be held simultaneously in the same person; how it's possible to affect thousands of lives in both positive and negative value. Truly, it's the perfect thought-provoking and educational piece. 

Oh, and collectively shitting on one "wrongdoing" poster doesn't make anyone a righteous hero. While HOI may be misinformed and wrong (and I do think he's wrong: while removing the statue is indeed just symbolic - symbolism is hell of a lot important. Oftentimes more important than anything tangible) he's not a troll, he's not arguing in a bad faith, and I haven't seen anything in this thread which would paint of as deliberately malicious or racist. If you, on the other hand, truly consider him as incorrigible racist who constantly enjoys oppressing the downtrodden - just put him on ignore list and make both your and his lives easier.

[Poobah]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Removal of the statue doesn’t touch any of the issues affecting minorities right now. It is an obviously empty gesture.

So you don't think that having to live in a place that elevates and celebrates someone who enslaved and murdered your ancestors, to be reminded of this day in day out, is something that is affecting people living in Bristol? Do you deny clear evidence to the contrary, their experiences, their stated grievances with this? Are you the final arbiter of what is an issue affecting them?

[Spockydog]

Farage got the sack from LBC. 

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Oh, and collectively shitting on one "wrongdoing" poster doesn't make anyone a righteous hero. While HOI may be misinformed and wrong (and I do think he's wrong: while removing the statue is indeed just symbolic - symbolism is hell of a lot important. Oftentimes more important than anything tangible) he's not a troll, he's not arguing in a bad faith, and I haven't seen anything in this thread which would paint of as deliberately malicious or racist. If you, on the other hand, truly consider him as incorrigible racist who constantly enjoys oppressing the downtrodden - just put him on ignore list and make both your and his lives easier.

Just underscoring this as a moderator, because I'm seeing a trend of doing this kind of thing more and more in response to people, rather than arguing about their arguments. 

You do not know someone else's mind, just as they do not know yours; we only perceive a sliver based on what and how they post, and vice versa, and that is subject to interpretation. If you believe you do know someone's mind from their posts here, and you know you don't enjoy what you believe of them, then you absolutely should ignore (either in practice or by using the ignore function). Casting aspersions at others lowers the civility of discussion.

It's a tense time, but we should do everything we can to be civil while sharing our views.

[Derfel Cadarn]

11 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Farage got the sack from LBC. 

Not at all. Just his contract coming to an end. Less than 24 hrs after telling his listeners he’d be back tomorrow.

[mormont]

5 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Also it just signals the insular nature of those protesting, Oxford Uni students so awkwardly out of touch with issues real people face think removing a statue from their university is a big step change.

This is an issue you've raised a few times. It's worth emphasising that the campaign to remove that statue is headed by Oxford students - rightly, as it's located on Oxford University property - but is by no means 'insular'. It has supporters all over the UK and further afield and is inspired by, and part of, an international movement that began in South Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_Must_Fall

ETA - this idea, by the way, that people who have different priorities than you aren't 'real people' is not an appealing attitude.

[Raja]

I'd imagine someone will pick Farage up sooner rather than later.