Racism is undoubtedly a problem in Scotland and Britain

of the university described “moral step”.

We are, though, running to catch up with other cities, such as Bristol and Liverpool, where these conversations have been ongoing for much longer. Of course, at the weekend, frustration at lack of progress in dealing with a statue of slave trader Edward Colston saw it torn down by protesters and rolled into the harbour.

It’s perhaps a message to our council to make sure work is more fleet.

We are not the only country having these conversations. In the Netherlands there have been discussions too about how to approach the country’s colonial past with a primary school named for a Dutch East Indies governor changed and changes to museum names. In Barcelona there have been period calls to remove the statue of Christopher Columbus due to his association with genocide.

And of course, in America the debate about removing Confederate statues rumbles on.

To have honest conversations about our imperial past and our racist present requires open acknowledgement and empathetic listening. Instead, there have been it as a the usual reductive, pathetic retorts of “Well, all lives matter,” or, “Why isn’t there a [Insert White Person’s Name] Street?” Another classic: “This is all going too far now.”

These are embarrassingly silly arguments. Does removal of street names or statues erase history or highlight history? That’s a legitimate argument. “Why don’t you want to rename it Jock Stein Street?” is emphatically not.

We all accept the idiom “Nobody’s perfect”. So, if nobody’s perfect then we must acknowledge we all have room for improvement.

Yet for some people, as soon as the word “racism” is mentioned, they become defensive. They take personal offence.

The only way to ever fix a problem is to acknowledge it exists. Only then can you start to apologise, make amends and develop solutions.

There is a conversation under way and it’s a vital one. Prickly defensiveness from people who can’t or don’t want to see a problem will take us nowhere. If it offends you to be called racist then don’t behave like a racist, don’t share racist attitudes. Please put your own self-importance aside for a minute and just listen.