When I see people tearing down a statue of a notorious slaver and then refusing to buy any products from companies who benefitted from slavery, now or then, I'll be more content.

As it is, I see people turning up to tear the statue down in the very fucking clothing that's being made by actual slaves right now. Taking photos of it on phones whose minerals are mined by actual slaves, right now. Telling all their friends about it on social media platforms hosted by companies supporting actual slavery right now. — Isaac

Right, I get that. But let's temper our expectations a little. I presume you have a phone like everyone else. That doesn't mean we should sit at home and do nothing about anything, does it?

I presume you have a phone like everyone else. — Baden

It's really weird that I always get this kind of response when I mention these issues. You're quite happy to get people to fund and suffer the upheaval from changing the entire police force of a city but somehow you think changing phones is so hard you'd be making a reasonable guess presuming I hadn't done so. I have a Fairphone. They're not more expensive than the latest Apple. Before that I had a second hand phone. One can do the same with clothes, banking, energy, cultural activities, social media... If you'resstuck I'll provide a list.

Some cost more money (and so only available to few), but many don't even cost more, they just require giving up on a group identity (carefully crafted, of course, by the very people selling it).

Amazon were recently derided for near slavery treatment of their workforce. We could bring down Amazon tomorrow, just stop buying stuff from them. Target (to use a relevant example) have been shown to use modern slave labour in the manufacture of their clothes. Burning down the store just causes an inconvenient amount of insurance paperwork (not that I object to doing so anyway). Not buying any of their stuff, even for a few weeks, is crippling, and it's not even hard. Ethical suppliers do exist for almost all products.

All good ideas. Thanks. My only point was that for practical reasons most of us are going to be implicated in some way, whether it's our phones or whatever. But yes, there is a lack of awareness and/or will to take direct action of the sort you mention.

Committing to disband an entire police force is a big step — Baden

Wel Im glad to find someone discussing this here, because I have raised a problem with this proposal. This very much tracks what happened after Freddie Gray in Baltimore, 2015. There the police were told not to intervene in any events unless explicity asked by the victim. Within a week, the murder and assault rates tripled in all-black neighborhoods, staying at almost one a day for several years.



Thus this demand for removing police intervention, which was directly initiated by the 'Black Lives Matter' movement, killed several hundred black people, mostly by citizens of their own color. This is all statistical fact, but whenever I try sharing it on Facebook, now for two weeks, I immediately receive comments criticisms that I am a privileged white animal, followed by a series of requests to ban me from Facebook altogether. I've been banned three times now, so Ive started writing journalists directly about the problem. I used to get responses, but with the increased amount of puerile messages shooting around on Facebook, I am not sure how to elevate my concern above the noice level, especailly as I must concede, I am a white animal. Ive been told it enough times that by Rousseau's logic of truth by consensus it can only be true. Even so, even animals might be of occasional benefit to other people in some ways, and I was hoping to save some black lives here.

Have you any suggestions?

My point was more that the lack of will/awareness is not isolated from the focus on the police, the statues, the latest celebrity advocate... It is directly linked.

The reason why there is a lack of awareness is because it is not talked about, the talking points are taken up with mythological villains deliberately to occupy the narrative space so that actual solutions never get discussed. Changing buying habits (particularly moving towards lower consumptions) harms the very people who benefit from systemic racism. Pulling down a few statues or changing the make-up of the police force doesn't. It's not a coincidence. It's a deliberate attempt to dominate the narrative with something amenable to consumer culture.

The reason why there is a lack of will is because our social structures are still set up to reward indicators of group membership klike having the right phone, being on the right social media platform) and again, it's not coincidence that these very narratives are being filled with identification tokens which are conveniently of no harm to capitalists.

I don't think it's sufficient to simply acknowledge that these issues exist alongside. They'll never be talked about until there's space in the narrative for them.

As it is, I see people turning up to tear the statue down in the very fucking clothing that's being made by actual slaves right now. Taking photos of it on phones whose minerals are mined by actual slaves, right now. Telling all their friends about it on social media platforms hosted by companies supporting actual slavery right now. — Isaac

I quite like tearing down statues. Let's not pretend that statues are a neutral form of speech; they're not part of a scientific discourse, they're literal historical monuments.

So what do historical monuments do? I see two functions; firstly and less importantly they are soft historical reminders - little more than an injunction to wonder, maybe someone sees a statue and finds out a bit about the past through the autobiographical detail of who the statue is of.

That past is always written though, it's always been alloy of old stories tempered with current spin therefore it's an alloy of old spin too. So the second function; they are ideological symbols; the cast body of the person stands in for the spinned old stories they're involved with; they're metonyms. But what fucker had enough power to tell stories speaking in statues and plinths? Statues are a history shaping discourse almost invariably told by the interests of the powerful. There's a statue outside Westminster Abbey of William Wilberforce; who in our popular historical myth "ended slavery".

But no statue of Thomas Clarkson; he's a literal footnote, commemorated with a small tablet in the same place in 1996; who was more instrumental in organising the British public against slavery. And even then; it's certainly not an admission of guilt in statue form that the government absolutely loved slavery and indentured servitude until the public was agitated against it, the colonies were revolting and they could sell huge "reparation" payments to the gentry for the resources they were losing (which only ended in 2015). Of all the things they could've commemorated, they choose the guy who the parliament hated until it was convenient to turn him into a symbol of their benevolence, and teach UK kids that it was the fucking parliament that ended slavery, not the slaves, not even the people. (anger not directed at you, anger directed at the UK)

Tearing down a metonym is a way of fighting the injustice in how history's shaped. Destroying shrines to unjust nation-myths is good; but it doesn't suffice.

The reason why there is a lack of will is because our social structures are still set up to reward indicators of group membership klike having the right phone, being on the right social media platform) and again, it's not coincidence that these very narratives are being filled with identification tokens which are conveniently of no harm to capitalists. — Isaac

I lived next to a poor all-black neighborhood for 10 years. While I was there, the city built a new good bank, organized two enormous concerts in the local park, upgraded the sports fields to the best in the city, built the city's only skate park, added a waterpark with spray fountains for children, started two community gardening projects, sponsored artists to spray graffiti art all over the place, installed a new perfectly paved courtyard for a weekly farmers market, free bicycles for anyone who wanted them at stations all over the area, and paid for 20 acres of new low-income housing. Other neighborhoods in the city have been totally neglected, due to escalating and increasingly violent complaints about mistreatement from Oak Park for at least five years.

Within two weeks of the new children's park opening, complete with brand new shiny slides and adventure climbing frames and everything, the drug pushers had moved in and chased all the mothers away who werent buying drugs from them. And I could say much more about it, but Ill stop there.

Frankly, no district I know of anywhere in Northern California has ever received so much fiscal investment, not even the richest districts of silicon valley, since I moved here in 1988.

I get very tired of hearing these lame complaints about 'reward indicators of group membership' and other such crap. Sorry.

You don’t call that racism, so I suppose you don’t find it necessary to fight against it.
— Congau

These responses are a bit rabid. You keep labelling people in simplistic terms. If someone questions a definition they’re regarded as accessories to racism. This is really making me question the real intent of many posts. — Brett

That was a rhetorical question. I’m sure is against private individuals who dislike people because of their skin color, and I’m sure he would want to change their attitude. That’s why wonder why he insists on that narrow definition. For him only systemic racism is racism.

Of course you can define any word the way you want, but when you choose a definition that goes against the common understanding of the word, you must have a particular purpose. Most people would call it an act of racism if someone spat a person in the face or burned down that person’s house because of resentment of skin color, even if the incidents were individual and not connected to any social system.

Words that are in common use only mean what people take them to mean. So what is the purpose of giving this particular word a more narrow definition contrary to the common perception. Certainly it can’t be to condone certain hideous racially motivated acts by not calling it racism, so why then?

I suspect some feel that since the problem is highly complex the term signifying it can’t be simple. A fancy definition somehow seems to be needed. But no, racism is a very complicated phenomenon, but the definition can still be simple.

Ernestm, I gave one response to another thread, but seems that thread is nowhere to be found. As the subject is quite close to this, I'll respond here. (Sorry to hear about your rough time and of the typical tone deaf response you get. Guess you haven't lived in the nicest neighborhoods.)

Why is this so difficult?

"The race issue", "systematic racism" and the discourse around the subject usually doesn't go anywhere in the US as the whole discourse falls into a repeating circle where basically nothing will improve. I should add this isn't something just limited to the US, this is a more of a general phenomenon of how societies are unable to approach the problems they have. The public debate follows a vicious circle that leaves basically people on opposing sides. Many think the problems are inherently about people themselves, not factors like poverty or that the society is broken. Many of those who oppose racism still think that that it is all because of some group of people that are racists that all the problems exist. So they are looking for certain culprits, not looking at how complex the issues actually are.

A big problem is when the discourse turns into a pseudo-religious sermon: that there's a correct way to talk about the problem in the society and there's the correct response to be given, just like when the priest says something and the congregation answers. The event isn't meant to be a discussion. Anything other and you are defined to be a bad person. There's no genuine effort to improve things as in the end the debate just falls into the category that people want to blame someone. What I'm basically trying to say that we fall in the end usually to the traditional left-right juxtaposition or a similar divide and fume in our hatred of the stupidity of the other side without any will to listen.

Hence if you tell about incidents with people belonging to group X, people will at first think your a bigot or a bad person (etc.) as some racist/xenophobic populist is telling how bad group X is. That you don't share at all the view of the populist that group X are inherently inferior to others doesn't matter, people just notice that you are speaking about same kind of incidents.

If you live in a "rough neighborhood" with poverty, poor economy and social problems with presence of gangs, these issues what happened to you can happen totally without the American racial factor. You will also get similar hostility when telling about your reality, I can assure you that. You will get similar responses. Of course people can deny this and say that the skin color issue is totally different from everything else, which means that they aren't seeing the larger underlying structure of the problem.

It should be obvious that this isn't just confined to race. Don't think the the division, distrust and hate wouldn't be there even without race being a factor as being white doesn't create social cohesion itself. Humans can be always look with suspicion and hatred at others, be it the nationality, ethnicity, religion or simply class. You don't need skin color for that. Especially ludicrous in Europe is this idea of "Caucasian" meaning something. Looking at history you can easily see just how evil people can be to each other. Just look at North Ireland, the Balkans etc. Poverty, problems in the distribution of wealth and other social problems or unresolved historical tensions are the real underlying factors.

I just replied on the other thread, cant you see it? Well it doesn't matter, I'm just an over-privileged white animal with a despicable education at a useless shithole called Oxford, where I was taught, according to Rousseau's theory of truth by consensus, it must all be true. I dont really have anything more constructive to offer than that currently.

I agree with all of that. Education is the way through I think, but it will be a slow process. I can't speak for the US, but here in the UK recent protests have had some effect and perhaps due to the media cycle government and public sentiment does respond. In small steps, I admit, but there is a demographic divide here and the young are on message about equality and tackling racism, like being on message on climate change and a need for more socialist political policies. But unfortunately the majority of the older generation is stubborn about such issues and hides its head in the sand and old fashioned endemic racism, climate change denial and rightwing capitalist policies harking back to Thatcherism. They are in denial on a lot of these issues, but are continuing to vote for rightwing governments which perpetuate this denial. There will be big changes here as they die off and the ranks of the young grow.

I admit that the exploitation fostered by capitalism is abhorrent and may be harder to rectify. Because the affluence we enjoy as a result of it is difficult to give up, or we are terrified of social and economic collapse, loosing our fortunes, descending into poverty and depravity etc etc. Which may result from making systemic change. What is more likely is that catastrophic events will make such change.

Firstly, I love a good statue toppling as much as the next anarcho-syndicalist, so I agree with much of what you say, but I have a few caveats, mostly related to the modern age and so if they seem a bit fusty then feel update me.

Let's not pretend that statues are a neutral form of speech; they're not part of a scientific discourse — fdrake

Absolutely, I hope I was clear enough in my initial comment, but if not I'll reiterate it here - any statue representing an oppressing institution in the very community oppressed by it (or one expressing solidarity with them) deserves everything it gets. Putting one up is offensive and failing to take one down is at best wilfully ignorant of that offense, at worst just as offensive.

But...

So the second function; they are ideological symbols; the cast body of the person stands in for the spinned old stories they're involved with; they're metonyms. — fdrake

It's this second function that concerns me. If a statue can act as a symbol in its erection, then it can no less act as a symbol in its toppling. A statue of Wilberforce says "We [parliament] dismantled slavery". The problem is that if they can perform this function in their erection, they can do so in their toppling. Its erection says Parliament destroyed slavery - when in actual fact there are more slaves now than there have ever been. So the very same trick is committed in tearing it down. People haven't decided they're not going to tolerate slavery anymore, they tolerate it daily by their very purchases, but by tearing a statue down they get to re-write the narrative in exactly the same way that putting it up did. "We [the protestors] dismantled slavery, we must have done, look at the lack of symbol"

In the past I don't think there would have been enough of a temptation to re-write the narrative in real time (it's all very well denying history, but denying the present is a lot harder). But in the modern age, dictating reality through filtered social media images has become not only easy but the standard. I think this changes the way these symbolic actions are used, hence the hypocrisy we see.

People haven't decided they're not going to tolerate slavery anymore, they tolerate it daily by their very purchases, but by tearing a statue down they get to re-write the narrative in exactly the same way that putting it up did. "We [the protestors] dismantled slavery, we must have done, look at the lack of symbol" — Isaac

Interesting. Many years ago I was struggling with why black Dutchmen were advocating against Zwarte Piet so vocally.


We just had a surge in right wing parties being popular and I was like, "hello, aren't there bigger issues to deal with here?"

So I think symbols are also rallying points. Destroying a racist symbol can in fact be motivating, first in the accomplishment of the goal in itself - see, we can make a difference and second, due to symbols being understood in more ways than the abstract policy, debate or speech. So more people will get it as they don't reach the insight through rational deliberation but through feeling.

Have you any suggestions? — ernestm

I suggest you stop talking about how victimized you are because I don't believe your stories. As for the graph, if you go about reforming the police, it has to be done in the right way. You don't leave a vacuum there or criminals will take advantage of it. On the other hand, if the police do not have the trust of the communities they are supposed to protect and serve, there will be so little cooperation that, again, criminality will prosper. The idea of creating an acceptable police force is so they can be an effective police force.

There is a debate raging in the UK about which statues should be pulled down and if it is justified to pull them down and how to determine which should, or shouldn't be pulled down. People are saying should we now pull down the statue of Churchill in parliament square.
I was there when this happened, nice Mohican.

Sick. Barbarism premised on presentism. It’s Year Zero nonsense. A culture that will not defend its past is unlikely to defend its future.

The past is rubbish. The future is nothing but the attempt to get over it by the present.

Is it presentism though? What were the prevalent ideas on race, racism and race hatred in the 30s and 40s? It was certainly more widespread but was it acceptable? What were the Nazis accused of with respect to the Jews and their idea of the "ubermensch"?

Who said this?

I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

And people around him were aware:

On the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane... I didn't see much difference between his outlook and Hitler's — Leo Amery

It's not so black and white in this case. The "crime against humanity" convictions for the Germans were based on: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

If you look up "Bengal famine" then by that definition Churchill committed a crime against humanity by standards they were only too happy to retroactively apply on the Germans in 1945.

Judging Churchill by the standards of some woke, effete, privileged college kids from London doesn't make any sense to me.

How about the standards of 1945 as I just did?

I don't think one opinion of Churchill is sufficient either.

That's not an answer.

It wasn’t much of a question.

Droll. You complained about presentism, I set out common declarations of his time on the basic of which he could be considered a war criminal and racist. So no presentism. What other problems do you have with this qualification?

Droll. You complained about presentism, I set out common declarations of his time on the basic of which he could be considered a war criminal and racist. So no presentism. What other problems do you have with this qualification?

You are applying present-day attitudes to a historical figure and have furnished one quote in order to pretend that was the general attitude of 1945.

Barbarism premised on presentism. It’s Year Zero nonsense.

Nothing but straw. As I said there is a debate about these issues.

[quote A culture that will not defend its past is unlikely to defend its future.[/quote]Vacuous twaddle. Perhaps it's time for Britain to invade Europe, it would be the British thing to do. The bulldog spirit and all that, what what.

there is a demographic divide here and the young are on message about equality and tackling racism, like being on message on climate change and a need for more socialist political policies. — Punshhh

I don't really see any evidence of that. The gap between rich and poor is larger than it's ever been, there's more people in modern slavery than there's ever been and both issues affect minority groups disproportionately. If we had a large sector of the population who were 'on message' then these things would be at least better than they were, but they're not.

The young buy more mobile technology than ever despite the fact that Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Google have all been implicated in the exploitation of Congolese children in the extraction of cobalt for their phones.

The young still flock to cheap clothes shops like H&M, Primark, or Gap, all of whom have been shown to exploit child labour laws in developing countries.

Nike are as popular as ever despite a long history of exploitation.

Premier League Football clubs have been called out by the Select Committee as being woefully clandestine about their legal requirements to produce a modern slavery statement despite being identified as a high risk group, but Football is as popular as ever.

People still look around for the cheapest mortgage, the best loan, the best credit card without a second thought to the industries those banks are investing in.

These activities are not primarily the older generation, they're primarily the young. If they really are aware and care about things like equality and ending oppression why aren't they taking these very simple steps to bring about and end to these practices?

The cobalt issue alone is suggested to affect 35,000 children as young as six, and could be solved in one simple move - don't buy Apple, Microsoft, Google or Samsung phones. Instead it's been tackled in a painfully slow way by legal suits and the tireless work of charities like Amnesty over several years while kids take photos of themselves 'fighting racism' on the same fucking phones made (in part) by 6 year old Congolese kids paid less than 50 cents a day.

Nothing but straw. As I said there is a debate about these issues.

A mob defacing statues is not the sign of a debate but of the perverted and illiberal use of violence and force to assert political expression.

Oh, I didn't know that threads could be put into the Lounge and then not be shown at first page.

Well it doesn't matter, I'm just an over-privileged white animal with a despicable education at a useless shithole called Oxford, where I was taught, according to Rousseau's theory of truth by consensus, it must all be true. I dont really have anything more constructive to offer than that currently. — ernestm

Is somebody here saying that to you?

(Besides, this is just the typical way how to shut people: "You cannot say anything because you are X and you aren't Y, so you cannot know how it is". Wonderful way to stop interaction, btw.)

I just hope this time it wouldn't go with the same old lines as before: a new generation thinks it's on a cusp of change, but then again, as this time it's different, nobody looks just why things didn't change the last time.

I think symbols are also rallying points. Destroying a racist symbol can in fact be motivating, first in the accomplishment of the goal in itself - see, we can make a difference and second, due to symbols being understood in more ways than the abstract policy, debate or speech. So more people will get it as they don't reach the insight through rational deliberation but through feeling. — Benkei

This is all very possible, but it being theoretically possible is not the same as it actually happening in reality. I won't repeat what I've just written to Punshhh above, but the summary is I just don't think it's happening in any meaningful way. It's all symbol and no substance.

I don't doubt progress has been made, and will continue to be made, but there's absolutely no need for it to be made at this snail's pace, years of legal battles to get one bit of hard won legislation, years of pinning down the inevitable non-compliance, more years of political wrangling to appease those who lost out... Every single one of these inequalities is perpetrated by some company selling some product or service and every purchase legitimises their practices.

A mob defacing statues is not the sign of a debate but of the perverted and illiberal use of violence and force to assert political expression. — NOS4A2

Indeed. Yet toppling statues don't change or topple usually the institutions that put them up.