I was going to say Bel Air didn’t have white character 
If this is a genuine attempt to find a constructive thought process, I will be pleasantly surprised. But this process needs to be consistent and not haphazard and political. So if we take down a statue of Rhodes I want to see them campaign for every single racist and imperialist. If Gladstone is no good because his dad profited from slave-owning, then all relatives who benefited from slavery. If they go after a Eugenicist then all of them have to go. If it’s Charles 2nd then it needs to be everyone with links to East India Company. And how far back in time do we go? And is it just statues? What about buildings, artworks? What about companies like Hugo Boss (Nazi) or Tiffany and Co. (slavery) or even Coca Cola or Nike (modern day slavery). What about religions are they exempt from this? Cos yeah, as long as it’s just Edward Coulson and his ilk I think the process is wrong, but outcome right, but once it starts going into more grey areas its going to be a problem. I also think that when dealing with heritage and art, which this is, it needs wider consultation than just say a Sadiq Khan think tank or a local council just going oh shit we better do this now.
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We’ll need to take down the statue of George Washington by Westminster as well, since Washington owned several hundred slaves on his plantation. As did Thomas Jefferson.
In fact, the founding fathers all specifically left out the word “slavery” in the constitution as a loophole.
Lincoln also didn’t believe that blacks were equal to whites and wanted to ship them off to start their own colonies in South America and Central America. His VP, and later President, Andrew Jackson also owned slaves.
Better cancel all those dudes too.
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Yeah okay take the point. Where at a stage of discussion though through action.
The alternative is to go with the status quo and genuine ignorance that most of us do day to day.
Obviously there bigger issues to be dealt with but we maybe have here is something being started by action. Far to many times in this country we resort to enquires and reports and kill momentum. There’s no guarantee on this leading to something than a moment of symbolism but it’s a chance to be grasped.
If anything we should have more statues of American presidents in London, one is not enough.
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I sincerely hope it is. Just my alarm bells go off when people start chanting tear it down, tear it down, tear it down. There is considerable responsibility on the shoulders of those cheering this on to do it cautiously and sensibly and not trigger a race war. Sadly many of the leading voices are people like Owen Jones, Ash Shakur and Afua Hirsh. Odds on they blow it.
Do you not think this is a bit melodramatic? Just a little bit?
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Jackson was no big ally of Lincoln’s though. Like a lot of VPs he was in the position for his ambition and not a deep commitment to Lincoln’s cause.
As for Lincoln himself, as was the case in the Civil War, he was very careful not to tip his hand in any direction about what he wanted to happen. Any misstep and the Union, which even during the Civil War contained some key slave states could have fallen apart.
I think we can read more into his insistence that Congress pass the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery before the end of the Civil War to scupper any chance of the returning Southern States blocking its ratification than in any political statement he might have made to balance a very precarious political situation in the North to keep the war against Slavery going.
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Is this sentence better: There is considerable responsibility on the shoulders of those cheering this on to do it cautiously and sensibly.
But I do worry about rival groups fighting in London over race based stuff. And I don’t think I’ve ever known a time where race feels such a divisive issue. Like how and when did that happen.
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Its your sentence, don’t change it on my account, unless you want to of course.
But yeah, I’d personally say that’s a better sentence. Well, when I say better, I mean one I’d agree with, rather than one I’d disagree with.
I do think that it’s probably for the best to not go round ripping down statues, because really, there’s no mandate to do so. I’m not shedding tears over statues of slave traders like this, but you can’t entirely ignore the precedent set, that any mob can tear down a statue of there’s enough of them and they’re angry enough.
So I don’t disagree with anyone who think it’s possibly not a great thing to be making a habit out of. But I think there’s a fair bit of slippery slope fallacy going on when a lot of people express their dislike of this. Just because this statue has been toppled, I don’t think it naturally follows that Churchill is up next like some seem to. And even if it does happen, I don’t think it’s a disaster. It gets torn down, people get arrested, the statue is erected again, the public generally unites on the issue because he’s a national hero, and the people involved get made an example of with fairly lengthy custodial sentences. Then the world keeps turning again. Everything will be fine again.
Also, I think that this has been hugely amplified by the pandemic and lockdown situation. I think we all expected there to be an iconic, cathartic moment when lockdown started to wind down, but we all expected it to be that first hazy, lager soaked sunny night when it felt like the whole nation celebrated together and the country became one giant pub garden. Instead, global circumstances have conspired to coincide with the general winding down of lockdown here, and the big moment of release turned out to be a load of people protesting and also a smaller number rioting, in Bristol culminating with a fevered crowd excitedly tearing down a statue and chucking it in the water.
I’m not sure if I’ve articulated myself in a satisfactory way at all there, I just feel like all the racial/political stuff happening right now can’t be divorced entirely from what’s been going on with the pandemic. I dunno, I feel like it’s heightened everyone’s emotions and made people on both sides behave and think about this whole situation in a more exaggerated fashion than we might have done otherwise.
I guess I’m saying emotions are just generally running high anyway, and then there was a spark that ignited the powder keg.
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How much more does England have to pay for slavery?
They help put an end to it, and in 2014 England just finished paying the reparations cost in doing so.
Tearing down statues and whatever else does change a damn thing than making the virtue signalling Marxist/socialist ideologues feel good about they revolution.
Righting a wrong isn’t necessarily a bad thing in life generally.
Not really a matter of re writing history but re addressing with an act of symbolism falls a long way short of a revolution.
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I was just about to post something about , if we’re going to take down statues of every person involved with slave trading, someone is going to take down a statue of Queen Victoria.
Then I read this:
Statue of Queen Victoria defaced with ‘Black Lives Matter’ and 'slave owner’ graffiti
Freelance Writer
Yahoo News UK10 June 2020
Why the spray paint on her baubles and foof?
I like my protests to be intersectional, let’s not get sexist about things fellow leftists.
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That’s just vandalism
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I agree.
This is doing the movement no favours.
What are these idiots trying to achieve?
If anything it’s going to turn people away from it rather than get them on side for what is right.
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Immature bullshit from an immuture generation of self entitled little cunts.
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Don’t hold back, say what you really think
If there’s a statue of Prince Phillip anywhere, I would suggest the authorities keep an eye on it.