[Music]
it was in a draftee community center in
st. Pauls area of Bristol in 1999 when I
informed the largely black audience
there that Edward Colston Bristol’s most
famous philanthropist had been a major
player in the slave trade the very next
morning f off slave trader was slashed
in red paint across his statue in the
city centre this began a civic Rauh
which has rumbled on ever since I live
in Bristol and I’ve taught about slavery
in Virginia the heartland of the
Confederacy so I’ve seen firsthand how
statues can become a lightning rod for
racial division and social tension in in
the country now as a recovering
historian who spent most of my
professional life studying slavery and
racism and trying to make good research
more widely available to the public
right now I’m dismayed I’m just reeling
from the explosion of bile
misinformation righteous indignation in
silo thinking that’s characterizing the
current controversy over public
monuments so tonight I want to see if we
can go beyond the simple polarities and
that characterized the public debate and
to do so I want to tell you a tale of
two statues the first is of Edward
Colston that 17th century Bristol
merchant who was the city’s most
generous benefactor and the second is
dedicated to robert e lee the general
who led the South against the north in
the American Civil War during the 1860s
now the statue of Lee I want to talk
about is in Charlottesville Virginia and
it’s become the site this summer of a
serious battle and what’s become known
throughout the globe as a statue Wars so
what might a fair-minded historical
perspective do to help us better
understand what’s really at the root of
these bitter and sometimes violent
disputes and my contention is that many
of the people who want to defend the
memorials erected in the honor these two
figures have been sold up up they’ve
been sold a phony
version of their own actual history but
debunking such fake history isn’t enough
because I’m gonna argue that the
suppression and removal of such statue
so it may will win short-term victories
against racism could be
counterproductive in the longer run so
what does Charlottesville it’s hard for
people who care about racism to see how
Trump’s very fine people as you call
them would be happy to march alongside
neo-nazis and Klansmen in defense of
that Monument but many of the whites who
want to keep that Monument have
ancestors who fought and died for the
Confederacy and many of them are now
sincerely convinced that the Confederacy
stood not for slavery but for the rights
of the southern states to run their own
affairs and to defy centralized
government control they see themselves
as freedom fighters for them robert e
lee the commander of the Confederate
forces is still an exemplar of southern
manhood they see him as brave in battle
and gallant in defeat a refined
humanitarian who so the narrative now
goes saw slavery as an evil this is
phony history the ideology aside the
facts are that the monument in
Charlottesville like so many others was
put up a generation after the Civil War
ended to serve a new political agenda it
was an agenda put forward by a resurgent
southern elite whose aim was to promote
Jim Crow to promote racial segregation
and to rollback the racial reforms of
the immediate post Civil War era from
the 1890s influential groups like the
hundred thousand strong Daughters of the
Confederacy promoted this new version of
history throughout the south in school
textbooks in after-school clubs in
colorful pageants and beautiful plaques
and impressive public monuments the
circle of empathy that these were
designed to promote encompass the
undoubted suffering of the white
Southerners during the Civil War but it
didn’t extend
to the pain of those enslaved according
to the new Gone with the Wind version of
the past that they were promoting black
people were happiest slaves and the
civil war was fought to preserve a
gracious southern way of life not to
preserve slavery and over the next 70
years in the 1890s onwards at least 700
monuments were thus reportedly erected
to back up this revisionist view of the
past the Charlottesville monument which
was erected in 1924 is a case in point
it recast the charismatic Lee as a man
of benign sensibility who fought for the
right of the south to rule itself and
not to defend slavery and whilst it’s
true that Lee did say he saw slavery as
an evil he was a slave owner he saw
abolitionists as troublemakers and
revolutionaries he whipped his slaves
it was also under his watch during the
war that the Confederate troops
kidnapped slaves and freed blacks who
had fled to the north and forcibly
returned them to the solvent to slavery
more to the point
Lee’s much vaunted reservations about
slavery had more to do with the way he
thought it undermined white morality and
not with the suffering it caused to
black people Lee considered black people
as inferior to whites and unready for
political equality but the violence
erupting over Charlotte’s fields
monument to Lee and elsewhere in the USA
also points to deeper divides regarding
the way both politics and the past are
perceived as we know from brexit
evidence based arguments founded on
logic and notions of universal truth cut
little ice when set against deeply felt
emotions about place in tradition for
white Southerners who grew up with them
such statues embodied their own memories
and those of their families they confirm
their sense of place and belonging which
is partly why they evoke such loyalty
now if their stance in this current
controversy reveals an
sensibilities of their black
fellow-citizens racism isn’t the whole
story it’s part of a wider story it’s
part of a revolt against the imposition
of liberal values per se for many whites
in the south
liberalism represents an intrusive and
sweeping impulse to homogenize and
intellectualize to impose abstract
values on them regardless of their own
patriotic sentiments or local loyalties
such cosmopolitanism cosmopolitanism is
identified with New Yorkers often code
for Jews or the Washington political
elite a group of both groups are seen as
divorced from the visceral concerns of
ordinary everyday people’s lives it’s
why so many in the self and the Rust
Belt voted for Trump they perceive the
campaign against the Confederate statues
to be part of this whole thing they see
it as at odds with their own attachment
to place family honor and local
traditions it may not be a rational
response but it is perilous simply to
ignore it indeed the democratic process
itself is at stake here if we are not
simply to drive white resentment
underground for to re-emerge somewhere
else in a more virulent form at present
it has proved untenable simply to Bree
Brown the Charlottesville monument with
a new plaque and a renaming of the
squares emancipation square which is
what the city’s liberal mayor initially
attempted to do the atmosphere became
too toxic for compromise in
Charlottesville because the monument
began to serve as a rallying point for
the most extremist racist elements in
society Lee had to be removed in that
case in the interest of public safety
yet if the removal of that monument
alone will not heal the deep division
within American society the dilemma is
grave the Enlightenment values of
critical thought of a reverence for
facts of universalism are crucial to
democracy but the terms of the debate
also need to be widened to take account
of people’s emotional needs how we do
that without pandering to out of Vista
Crace ISM and exclusionary ideas of
national identity is a challenge of our
times but what can Britain learn from
the American experience how analogous is
a controversy over Bristol’s Colston
statue with that over robert e lee’s
monument in Charlottesville today
Colston statue is hailed by some as an
icon of Bristol’s unique and particular
identity to be preserved against the
forces of political correctness the
fondness for the statue is not entirely
down to racism or insensitivity people
held hands kissed got drunk met friends
under that statue it’s part of their
identification with the city it is a
constant in a bewildering ly fast
changing urban landscape and most do not
know that Colston twas a sectarian
figure his charity did not extend to
those who were not members of the Church
of England he didn’t give charity to
those who would not subscribe to his
high Tory politics nor do people know
that the statue was erected in 1895 way
after his death in 1721
because 1895 was a time of growing
working-class unrest in Bristol it was
the statue was intended in part as a way
to rally the workers to identify with
the bristol elite all in it together as
Bristol Ian’s rather than with the
labour movement and at the time it was
not a popular project now as it stands
today the statue proclaims Colston to be
a wise and virtuous son of the city it
is fulsome about his philanthropic
generosity to the city which is
undoubted but it’s silent about the fact
that he personally presided over the
organization of slave trading and that
he made money from the proceeds of slave
produce sugar how insulting this is to
Bristow Lien’s whose ancestors had been
enslaved should be manifest
yet many white Bristow lian’s field
detractors are too sensitive some make
the point that the city also made a fail
to acknowledge that another forgotten
piece of history was that of Bristol’s
white wage slaves their own ancestors
now most white Brazilians have little
idea about the size scale and relentless
intensity of the Atlantic slave trade
its continuing legacy of economic
exploitation right up into the late 20th
century or the psychological damage that
to this day still exercises in the minds
of the young young black people there
what about us argument ignores the fact
that wage slaves
unlike enslaved Africans had human
status under the law and theoretical
protection but their argument about the
omission of white working-class a
commemoration in the city even if it’s
made to deflect criticism of Colston
still needs to be addressed if we don’t
we are deepening the divide which became
evident with brexit and which threatens
to become deeper still we do not yet
have neo-nazis marching in our street
and using Colston as a rallying point
but extremist groups do parade in our
streets and just 60 years ago oswald
mosley the charismatic leader of the
british fascist party attracted huge
crowds at the Colston Hall the crucial
crucial questions now are how do we
acknowledge all this without pandering
to racism and implicitly excluding black
Risto lian’s from a sense of civic
belonging and do we have the time to
reinterpret such statues in a way that
invites informed historical discussion
rather than foreclosing on it I think we
still have time but it is running out we
must decide what sort of City and what
sort of paths we wish to commemorate how
to do this without driving resentment
underground is a challenge and that’s
why we must we must listen to all of
those who feel excluded
we must engage artists and imaginative
new ways to foster difficult civic
conversations we need to talk thank you
you
it was in a draftee community center in
st. Pauls area of Bristol in 1999 when I
informed the largely black audience
there that Edward Colston Bristol’s most
famous philanthropist had been a major
player in the slave trade the very next
morning f off slave trader was slashed
in red paint across his statue in the
city centre this began a civic Rauh
which has rumbled on ever since I live
in Bristol and I’ve taught about slavery
in Virginia the heartland of the
Confederacy so I’ve seen firsthand how
statues can become a lightning rod for
racial division and social tension in in
the country now as a recovering
historian who spent most of my
professional life studying slavery and
racism and trying to make good research
more widely available to the public
right now I’m dismayed I’m just reeling
from the explosion of bile
misinformation righteous indignation in
silo thinking that’s characterizing the
current controversy over public
monuments so tonight I want to see if we
can go beyond the simple polarities and
that characterized the public debate and
to do so I want to tell you a tale of
two statues the first is of Edward
Colston that 17th century Bristol
merchant who was the city’s most
generous benefactor and the second is
dedicated to robert e lee the general
who led the South against the north in
the American Civil War during the 1860s
now the statue of Lee I want to talk
about is in Charlottesville Virginia and
it’s become the site this summer of a
serious battle and what’s become known
throughout the globe as a statue Wars so
what might a fair-minded historical
perspective do to help us better
understand what’s really at the root of
these bitter and sometimes violent
disputes and my contention is that many
of the people who want to defend the
memorials erected in the honor these two
figures have been sold up up they’ve
been sold a phony
version of their own actual history but
debunking such fake history isn’t enough
because I’m gonna argue that the
suppression and removal of such statue
so it may will win short-term victories
against racism could be
counterproductive in the longer run so
what does Charlottesville it’s hard for
people who care about racism to see how
Trump’s very fine people as you call
them would be happy to march alongside
neo-nazis and Klansmen in defense of
that Monument but many of the whites who
want to keep that Monument have
ancestors who fought and died for the
Confederacy and many of them are now
sincerely convinced that the Confederacy
stood not for slavery but for the rights
of the southern states to run their own
affairs and to defy centralized
government control they see themselves
as freedom fighters for them robert e
lee the commander of the Confederate
forces is still an exemplar of southern
manhood they see him as brave in battle
and gallant in defeat a refined
humanitarian who so the narrative now
goes saw slavery as an evil this is
phony history the ideology aside the
facts are that the monument in
Charlottesville like so many others was
put up a generation after the Civil War
ended to serve a new political agenda it
was an agenda put forward by a resurgent
southern elite whose aim was to promote
Jim Crow to promote racial segregation
and to rollback the racial reforms of
the immediate post Civil War era from
the 1890s influential groups like the
hundred thousand strong Daughters of the
Confederacy promoted this new version of
history throughout the south in school
textbooks in after-school clubs in
colorful pageants and beautiful plaques
and impressive public monuments the
circle of empathy that these were
designed to promote encompass the
undoubted suffering of the white
Southerners during the Civil War but it
didn’t extend
to the pain of those enslaved according
to the new Gone with the Wind version of
the past that they were promoting black
people were happiest slaves and the
civil war was fought to preserve a
gracious southern way of life not to
preserve slavery and over the next 70
years in the 1890s onwards at least 700
monuments were thus reportedly erected
to back up this revisionist view of the
past the Charlottesville monument which
was erected in 1924 is a case in point
it recast the charismatic Lee as a man
of benign sensibility who fought for the
right of the south to rule itself and
not to defend slavery and whilst it’s
true that Lee did say he saw slavery as
an evil he was a slave owner he saw
abolitionists as troublemakers and
revolutionaries he whipped his slaves
it was also under his watch during the
war that the Confederate troops
kidnapped slaves and freed blacks who
had fled to the north and forcibly
returned them to the solvent to slavery
more to the point
Lee’s much vaunted reservations about
slavery had more to do with the way he
thought it undermined white morality and
not with the suffering it caused to
black people Lee considered black people
as inferior to whites and unready for
political equality but the violence
erupting over Charlotte’s fields
monument to Lee and elsewhere in the USA
also points to deeper divides regarding
the way both politics and the past are
perceived as we know from brexit
evidence based arguments founded on
logic and notions of universal truth cut
little ice when set against deeply felt
emotions about place in tradition for
white Southerners who grew up with them
such statues embodied their own memories
and those of their families they confirm
their sense of place and belonging which
is partly why they evoke such loyalty
now if their stance in this current
controversy reveals an
sensibilities of their black
fellow-citizens racism isn’t the whole
story it’s part of a wider story it’s
part of a revolt against the imposition
of liberal values per se for many whites
in the south
liberalism represents an intrusive and
sweeping impulse to homogenize and
intellectualize to impose abstract
values on them regardless of their own
patriotic sentiments or local loyalties
such cosmopolitanism cosmopolitanism is
identified with New Yorkers often code
for Jews or the Washington political
elite a group of both groups are seen as
divorced from the visceral concerns of
ordinary everyday people’s lives it’s
why so many in the self and the Rust
Belt voted for Trump they perceive the
campaign against the Confederate statues
to be part of this whole thing they see
it as at odds with their own attachment
to place family honor and local
traditions it may not be a rational
response but it is perilous simply to
ignore it indeed the democratic process
itself is at stake here if we are not
simply to drive white resentment
underground for to re-emerge somewhere
else in a more virulent form at present
it has proved untenable simply to Bree
Brown the Charlottesville monument with
a new plaque and a renaming of the
squares emancipation square which is
what the city’s liberal mayor initially
attempted to do the atmosphere became
too toxic for compromise in
Charlottesville because the monument
began to serve as a rallying point for
the most extremist racist elements in
society Lee had to be removed in that
case in the interest of public safety
yet if the removal of that monument
alone will not heal the deep division
within American society the dilemma is
grave the Enlightenment values of
critical thought of a reverence for
facts of universalism are crucial to
democracy but the terms of the debate
also need to be widened to take account
of people’s emotional needs how we do
that without pandering to out of Vista
Crace ISM and exclusionary ideas of
national identity is a challenge of our
times but what can Britain learn from
the American experience how analogous is
a controversy over Bristol’s Colston
statue with that over robert e lee’s
monument in Charlottesville today
Colston statue is hailed by some as an
icon of Bristol’s unique and particular
identity to be preserved against the
forces of political correctness the
fondness for the statue is not entirely
down to racism or insensitivity people
held hands kissed got drunk met friends
under that statue it’s part of their
identification with the city it is a
constant in a bewildering ly fast
changing urban landscape and most do not
know that Colston twas a sectarian
figure his charity did not extend to
those who were not members of the Church
of England he didn’t give charity to
those who would not subscribe to his
high Tory politics nor do people know
that the statue was erected in 1895 way
after his death in 1721
because 1895 was a time of growing
working-class unrest in Bristol it was
the statue was intended in part as a way
to rally the workers to identify with
the bristol elite all in it together as
Bristol Ian’s rather than with the
labour movement and at the time it was
not a popular project now as it stands
today the statue proclaims Colston to be
a wise and virtuous son of the city it
is fulsome about his philanthropic
generosity to the city which is
undoubted but it’s silent about the fact
that he personally presided over the
organization of slave trading and that
he made money from the proceeds of slave
produce sugar how insulting this is to
Bristow Lien’s whose ancestors had been
enslaved should be manifest
yet many white Bristow lian’s field
detractors are too sensitive some make
the point that the city also made a fail
to acknowledge that another forgotten
piece of history was that of Bristol’s
white wage slaves their own ancestors
now most white Brazilians have little
idea about the size scale and relentless
intensity of the Atlantic slave trade
its continuing legacy of economic
exploitation right up into the late 20th
century or the psychological damage that
to this day still exercises in the minds
of the young young black people there
what about us argument ignores the fact
that wage slaves
unlike enslaved Africans had human
status under the law and theoretical
protection but their argument about the
omission of white working-class a
commemoration in the city even if it’s
made to deflect criticism of Colston
still needs to be addressed if we don’t
we are deepening the divide which became
evident with brexit and which threatens
to become deeper still we do not yet
have neo-nazis marching in our street
and using Colston as a rallying point
but extremist groups do parade in our
streets and just 60 years ago oswald
mosley the charismatic leader of the
british fascist party attracted huge
crowds at the Colston Hall the crucial
crucial questions now are how do we
acknowledge all this without pandering
to racism and implicitly excluding black
Risto lian’s from a sense of civic
belonging and do we have the time to
reinterpret such statues in a way that
invites informed historical discussion
rather than foreclosing on it I think we
still have time but it is running out we
must decide what sort of City and what
sort of paths we wish to commemorate how
to do this without driving resentment
underground is a challenge and that’s
why we must we must listen to all of
those who feel excluded
we must engage artists and imaginative
new ways to foster difficult civic
conversations we need to talk thank you
you
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