Tearing down a previous era’s symbols of oppression
‘No one should be towered over by a dead man who regarded them as subhuman’
TO TEAR down a statue is not to deny history, but to make it. The tearing down of a statue is an assertion, by the people of a given age, of their difference and rejection of a prior age.
Why, in an age that does not believe in the divine right of kings, are statues erected in the first place?
In order to communicate, in a given age, values that those with the power to erect statues wish to inscribe on to the very architecture of their country.
The Confederate statues being torn down across America are not great historical relics (not that it would matter if they were). They are, for the most part, celebrations of the age of slavery put up in the years since my birth – a century after the time of the Confederacy – in order to create pride in segregation in the US, at a time when segregation was beginning to be challenged.
The purpose of their erection was wholly cynical.
In other cases, such as the statue of slavetrader Edward Colston in Bristol, UK, or the mass-murderer and colonist Cecil John Rhodes, statues were erected because what we now see as abhorrent, those who had the power to erect statues did not.
Indeed, in the case of Rhodes and others the statues were erected to celebrate the very things that now rightly horrify us.
It is conceivable that in 100 years, for whatever reason, any statues we erect will be torn down.That is the right of the future, as now it is the right of the present. The default position, for any statue, should be that it belongs in a museum unless the people of each age will otherwise.
The banal fact that a previous generation chose to commemorate someone is no cause for us to continue to honour, or even tolerate, their wishes. To say otherwise is to live in a democracy of the dead.
No statue should ever stand over citizens of a free country other than by their continued consent.
This is a separate statement from noting that statues of colonists, slave owners, segregationists and the like should be torn down, and that this should be done with vigour and pride by those who tear them down – which is also true.
No one should face the indignity of being towered over by a dead man who regarded them as subhuman.
But statues are symbols, and symbols only. And to tear them down is to tear down symbols of oppression. This is not a small thing. It matters. But even once they are gone, as they should be, the material realities of that oppression will linger.
In the US, super-wealthy conservative bigots would far rather be discussing statues than material and legislative changes that would introduce dignity, security, and a lack of oppression into the lives of black Americans.
The situation is not so different here. No doubt, when Rhodes fell, among those who have inherited the wealth stolen from the people and from the land they occupied, there were those who feared: “First they come for the statues…”
Whether it is those at De Beers, at Anglo-American, or their equivalents in the UK, the US and elsewhere, one can see this sentiment in the ridiculous defences that “history” must be protected and respected.
I hope their fear is well founded. Because for all the symbolic value of knocking down pieces of metal or stone depicting long-dead monsters, it has always proven far harder to move on from there to the question of redistributing what those monsters stole.
Rhodes Must Fall, yes, but what Rhodes built must be decolonised.
That is an economic process far more than a symbolic process. It is far harder to achieve and has all the forces of wealth and political power in the world stacked against it.
It is a long march.
But this is the start.