The historic moment that the statue of Edward Colston, slave trader of the Royal African Company, was been toppled by crowds in the centre of Bristol (UK) and, appropriately, rolled into the Harbour.
Colston was a major slave trader involved in the transportation of 84,000 enslaved African men, women & young children from West Africa to the Caribbean & the Americas. 19,000 people died on these voyages - most of whom, like Colston, were callously thrown into the sea.
The glorification of the British Empire and colonialism on the whole is particularly troublesome in the UK. As a white person, I cannot ever truly fathom the pain of racism, but as an Irish woman living in London I find the reverence of the Empire horrifying.
Consequently, these actions are inspiring. Like most people, even in the UK, I had never heard of Colston until today but thanks to the actions of these BLM protestors, his name and atrocities will never be forgotten.
I have no doubt that many will attempt to attack those who tore this statue down - in fact, I have already seen many do so. I'm sure they will cite cultural relativism, the importance of remembering history and label the protesters vandals.
However, I find cultural relativism especially damaging. Slavery and racism are wrong. The when or where is irrelevant regarding moral validity. By applying cultural relativism as some sort of trump card (pardon the pun), you suggest that criticism of history is futile and ultimately condone past horrors.
Secondly, removing statues is not erasing history. Statues are not the mechanisms by which we understand history. We learn history through museums, books, TV and the internet. Statues are created to revere a great person. Edward Colston was not a great man; he was a murderer and slave trader.
And finally, I don't view these people as vandals. The people of Bristol have been petitioning and demanding that the statue be removed for some time but the Conservative local council have continually refused despite the pain felt by many. Additionally, don't ask why people tore down a statue of a slave trader - ask why it was put up in the first place.
How can you have peace when there is no justice?
Finally, although I doubt that many will read this, if anybody is interested in learning more about this or British colonialism in general then I reccomend looking up David Olusoga. He is a British-Nigerian historian and one of the finest in his profession.
Also, here's a bit of light amongst the dark - GoogleMaps were quick to update us on Edward Colston's location.
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Yes! Statues are not how we remember history, they are how we GLORIFY history. And people will say ' oh but there are so many statues that help us understand what was happening in this time' and I'll say yeah before we WROTE it down. We documented these people in other ways, everyone can read about them. And obviously the whole "statues help us remember" is bullcrap because nobody knew who this guy was.
And there are also plenty of artifacts and statues that were found specifically broken. People after the statue was made disagreed that that person was important and made efforts to STOP glorifing them.
No living culture is ever static. We move on from the sentiments of the past, especially if they hurt people now.
