At What Point Must This Stop?

[youngmafbog]

Find any statue and I'm pretty sure it will be offensive to someone. Does this mean we should pull all statues down, rewrite history and not learn from it?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4808254/Protesters-want-removal-statue-controversial-doctor.html

[jim360]

"Only those that benefitted the country should have memorials or statues. Ghandi was of NO benefit to Britain. Neither was Mandela!"

Well that's a debate for another time -- perhaps Gandhi benefitted Britain by showing it the failures of Empire, for example -- but in this case the Gandhi statue debate is something taking place mainly in Africa, so far as I know.

[pixie374]

What woof said. Maybe it will never stop. It isn't about rewriting history, but not celebrating people inappropriately.

[anotheoldgit]

Is this woman trying to make a statement of some kind, I refer to those earnings of course.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/08/21/03/436397A300000578-4808254-image-a-93_1503281273744.jpg

[Mamyalynne]

Her earrings are a statement piece, yes.

[ichkeria]

This is the way to do it:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/lenin-statues-removed-soviet-union-russia-crimea-ukraine-bolshevik-communist-petro-poroshenko-a7903611.html

I do like the renaming of Lenin Street to Lennon Street
In the US, this has long been a contentious issue. Personally, I don't see how removing statues is "re-writing history". I am against them being vandalised or "torn down", but if a decision is taken by responsible people to remove them then I don't think it's the worst thing in the world.

[sp1814]

From the article:

//While he is credited with treating vesicovaginal fistula, a condition in women that was common after child birth, he is also known to have conducted a series of experiments on black women.

In some cases, Sims did not use anesthesia on his subjects.//

So, he sometimes used human beings like animals for his experiments, is that right?

It's difficult, because whilst this man may be 'the father of gynaecology', we need to be able to celebrate his achievements without necessarily celebrating him as a human being.

[jno]

he might be better replaced with a statue of a fistula. I can only suppose they didn't know the details of his experiments when the statue was erected; now that they are, I can't see any reason to keep it there.

A statue of Jimmy Savile was removed a few years back, for similar reasons: the truth about the subject had since been discovered. I don't recall anyone objecting.

[jim360]

Was it a statue or was it his memorial in general that was rather hurriedly dismantled?

At any rate, statues are far too much about symbolism than about history, and all of this guff about "rewriting" history seems to be an excuse. I think it's better to just say that you don't see what is offensive about these statues, which is certainly fair enough, but it would be better to say so.

[Ellipsis]

Perhaps our very attitude to statues is wrong. Everybody has their flaws, and sometimes those flaws are amplified e.g. by the time they are living in, the company they kept or the age that they were when those flaws became apparent (e.g. perhaps they changed in later life, or perhaps they died before they could change). If we're going to remove statues because of character flaws, perhaps we should not have statues at all.

Usually statues commemorate a good thing about somebody. If they have to be removed because it turns out that person also had flaws, there are going to be very few statues of real people - of angels. maybe.

If a statue celebrates, rather than commemorates/reminds, and if it celebrates a bad thing, e.g. slavery, then it's probably a good candidate for being removed or replaced with something more fitting for our time.

[Garaman]

I too can see that some might not think a statue shouldn't be torn down, but now how they think that it would be rewriting history.

[sp1814]

One has to wonder what kind of experiments he was carrying out on those slave women without anaesthetic.

Sounds pretty horrific. Hopefully it wasn't at Josef Mengele levels

[andy-hughes]

I don't think you can adopt a one-size-fits-all policy here.

The history involved in the individual, together with the views of the local people need to be taken into account.

As has been advised, removing the statue does not remove the history that goes with it. Culture, and history, are about context.

[webbo3]

but this goes to show the intelligence of some people, who is missy elliott and what has she done.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/missy-elliott-statue-confederate-monument-petition-portsmouth-virginia-city-council-signed-thousands-a7902966.html

http://news.sky.com/story/thousands-petition-to-swap-confederate-statue-for-missy-elliott-10998960


Dave

[Samuraisan]

Honestly, they can't have much going on in their private lives.

[-Talbot-]

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2017/08/21/man-tried-planting-bomb-confederate-statue-houston-feds-say

[andy-hughes]

The approach seems to be to zero in on one negative aspect of a statue subject, and make that a reason to demonise them, and demand the statue is taken down.

Look at musician statues - Dublin is rightly proud of Phil Lynott as a son of the city, a wonderful musician who took music all over the world. He was also a philandering heroin addict - but the people see his good side, which hugely outweighed the damage he did to himself, and are happy to see him remembered.

Here is food for thought - if you can take a negative aspect and denigrate a historical figure for it, can you take a positive, and put them (literally!) on a pedestal for it? Hitler loved dogs, shall we put a statue outside the headquarters of the RSPCA?

[-Talbot-]

Columbus
https://www.baltimorebrew.com/2017/08/21/columbus-statue-in-baltimore-vandalized/

Poor old Joan of Arc got it a few months back

[pixie374]

It's surprising anyone ever thought to put up statues of humans, because it's not likely anyone is appreciated by everybody. Where, like this, they clearly caused a lot of harm to other people, it can't be that controversial to get rid of them.

[Togo]

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell.

[albaqwerty]

I'm certain that I saw a clip on the Beeb news that somewhere, there is some sort of memorial museum where the 'owners' are taking the statues to be placed in a more appropriate setting and not having the statues languishing about the place.