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Slave Trader Edward Colston's statue torn down in Bristol

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    #2642
    Christy42
    Registered Users Posts: 7,882 ✭✭✭Christy42


    suicide_circus wrote: »
    i get that its not really about her as an individual but rather the blm thing as a whole but it seems a bit shallow to me.

    blm folk tore down a statue which was then replaced with a blm statue, what did they actually achieve? the latest flavour of the month or hottest hashtags dont generally get statues, feels like putting up a statue of Jedward in 2011.

    In the UK and around the world, not much except awareness that racism is still a thing. Many more people started listening to BAME experiences. The issues in the medical field were particularly eye opening for me (white men are overly represented in clinical trials so medicine is based on what works for white men generally which is frequently but not always what works for everyone).

    In the US they have caused police force changes across the US. The death of Taylor is now being investigated properly and George Floyd's killer had his charges increased in severity.


  • Options
    #2643
    El_Duderino 09
    Registered Users Posts: 20,039 ✭✭✭✭El_Duderino 09


    mick087 wrote: »
    No

    OK. If it was a substantive claim rather than a reflexive commen, it would gave been easy to expand upon.


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    #2644
    El_Duderino 09
    Registered Users Posts: 20,039 ✭✭✭✭El_Duderino 09


    Hangdogroad wrote: »
    The crowd who pulled down the statue mostly looked like white male crusties to me.

    For "crusties", they'll have earned a small place in history. Isn't it interesting that you'd describe them with a pejorative.

    Even if they look like "crusties" they a hue Ed seething significant. Fair play


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    #2645
    mick087
    Registered Users Posts: 1,122 ✭✭✭mick087


    Christy42 wrote: »
    In the UK and around the world, not much except awareness that racism is still a thing. Many more people started listening to BAME experiences. The issues in the medical field were particularly eye opening for me (white men are overly represented in clinical trials so medicine is based on what works for white men generally which is frequently but not always what works for everyone).

    In the US they have caused police force changes across the US. The death of Taylor is now being investigated properly and George Floyd's killer had his charges increased in severity.

    You don't need to look at the UK or around the world to find social inequality prejudice or racism. Look outside your window your door look at your own city and Country. Fix our own issues first before criticizing the rest of the world.


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    #2646
    El_Duderino 09
    Registered Users Posts: 20,039 ✭✭✭✭El_Duderino 09


    suicide_circus wrote: »
    i get that its not really about her as an individual but rather the blm thing as a whole but it seems a bit shallow to me.

    blm folk tore down a statue which was then replaced with a blm statue, what did they actually achieve? the latest flavour of the month or hottest hashtags dont generally get statues, feels like putting up a statue of Jedward in 2011.

    Pretending not to understand the difference in significance between Jedward and the BLM movement. That's a low point for you Suicide_circus.


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    #2647
    Christy42
    Registered Users Posts: 7,882 ✭✭✭Christy42


    mick087 wrote: »
    You don't need to look at the UK or around the world to find social inequality prejudice or racism. Look outside your window your door look at your own city and Country. Fix our own issues first before criticizing the rest of the world.

    This is a thread about the tearing down a statue in the UK by BLM and partially about the wider BLM movement.

    Someone asked what what the BLM has achieved recently. I responded. Take a run and jump if you want to tell me who I can't talk about.

    Yes Ireland has issues and they should be fixed. That does not mean I am unaware of issues elsewhere in the world. Indeed many of the issues I have heard people talk about are likely issues common between a lot of different countries. The medical one I mentioned especially, so why would I not expand my horizons and listen to those speaking up?


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    #2648
    suicide_circus
    Registered Users Posts: 19,802 ✭✭✭✭suicide_circus


    El_Duderino 09 wrote: »
    Pretending not to understand the difference in significance between Jedward and the BLM movement. That's a low point for you Suicide_circus.
    ah no! your good opinion was the only thing keeping me going!

    it's not a direct comparison obviously, i'm saying there is more than a hint of flavour of the month bandwagoning to the blm protests


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    #2649
    robinph
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,088 Mod ✭✭✭✭robinph


    No problem with the new statute, but nobody is expecting it to be the final part of the story of the plinth, and nobody is intending for it to be. It has been put up as a response to the previous occupant of the plinth being a slave trader and to keep the conversation moving. A statue of someone descended from those slaves, who lived in the city that was glorifying the trade and who rejected that as being what their city was actually about now so they were part of the protest that then took it down.

    They don't expect it to remain in place, the person who made the statue doesn't expect it to remain in place.


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    #2650
    titan18
    Registered Users Posts: 11,936 ✭✭✭✭titan18


    Kinda funny really. The statue is still racist, just the other way around now. She's there doing a black power salute, which even MLK was against and considered it anti-white and black supremacist. NAACP were also against it and their executive director stated that Black Power was "a reverse Hitler, a reverse Ku Klux Klan...the father of hate and mother of violence."

    Good statue to have


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    #2651
    Chris_Heilong
    Registered Users Posts: 4,973 ✭✭✭Chris_Heilong


    Christy42 wrote: »
    In the UK and around the world, not much except awareness that racism is still a thing. Many more people started listening to BAME experiences. The issues in the medical field were particularly eye opening for me (white men are overly represented in clinical trials so medicine is based on what works for white men generally which is frequently but not always what works for everyone).

    In the US they have caused police force changes across the US. The death of Taylor is now being investigated properly and George Floyd's killer had his charges increased in severity.

    Medicine is not racial, that is why they are called human trials and in a white majority country like the UK it is more than acceptable to have white people as a majority in all trials.


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    #2652
    is_that_so
    Registered Users Posts: 32,136 ✭✭✭✭is_that_so


    A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »
    It might be a lot of thins: wise, foolish, heroic, illegal... how on earth is it reactionary?
    It represents complete opposition to what was there and nothing except a day in some recent month where another statue was pulled down. But if that's what merits statues these days let them have at it.


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    #2653
    Donald Trump
    Registered Users Posts: 19,172 ✭✭✭✭Donald Trump


    A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »
    :-)

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/15/edward-colston-statue-replaced-by-sculpture-of-black-lives-matter-protester




    You don't think it might be a bit patronising to assume that, given you might want to constrain your choices to a "black" person for a plinth, that the best example that you could hope for for a person that has achieved a lot, would be a nail technician?

    You obviously don't mean that directly yourself, I'm just making the point that there has to be an implicit element of that in the overall bandwagon


    I'm sure that there are some people who were actually directly impacted by slavery and fought against it and worked towards it's abolition. Irish people tend to be more familiar with Frederick Douglass because of his time spent here. Surely there is someone like him from UK history that you can put on a plinth rather than someone who was born into relative luxury about two hundred years later who just happens to have the required skin pigmentation?


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    #2654
    robinph
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,088 Mod ✭✭✭✭robinph


    Chris_Heilong wrote: »
    Medicine is not racial, that is why they are called human trials and in a white majority country like the UK it is more than acceptable to have white people as a majority in all trials.

    Not if it doesn't pick up issues that there may be with using those drugs on people other than middle aged white men, and then the results of those trials are used for selling the drug worldwide to everyone.


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    #2655
    robinph
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,088 Mod ✭✭✭✭robinph


    Donald Trump wrote: »
    You don't think it might be a bit patronising to assume that, given you might want to constrain your choices to a "black" person for a plinth, that the best example that you could hope for for a person that has achieved a lot, would be a nail technician?

    You obviously don't mean that directly yourself, I'm just making the point that there has to be an implicit element of that in the overall bandwagon


    I'm sure that there are some people who were actually directly impacted by slavery and fought against it and worked towards it's abolition. Irish people tend to be more familiar with Frederick Douglass because of his time spent here. Surely there is someone like him from UK history that you can put on a plinth rather than someone who was born into relative luxury about two hundred years later who just happens to have the required skin pigmentation?

    In this instance she was the subject to be put on the plinth because she was in the right place at the right time and her husband took a photo that got posted on social media. No other reason for it, and no claims of her being something that she isn't.

    Unlike Colston, who was put on the plinth in order to try to convince the people of Bristol that he was a great man.


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    #2656
    Donald Trump
    Registered Users Posts: 19,172 ✭✭✭✭Donald Trump


    Christy42 wrote: »
    In the UK and around the world, not much except awareness that racism is still a thing. Many more people started listening to BAME experiences. The issues in the medical field were particularly eye opening for me (white men are overly represented in clinical trials so medicine is based on what works for white men generally which is frequently but not always what works for everyone).




    If you have a medical company in the US and they are developing and testing a drug, they need to conduct tests on a representative cross section of the population for their market which is the US market.



    If they decided to use 50% Africans and 25% Asians and 15% Latin American and only 10% white they'd be exploiting poorer people in poorer countries by testing drugs on them.


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    #2657
    El_Duderino 09
    Registered Users Posts: 20,039 ✭✭✭✭El_Duderino 09


    suicide_circus wrote: »
    ah no! your good opinion was the only thing keeping me going!

    it's not a direct comparison obviously, i'm saying there is more than a hint of flavour of the month bandwagoning to the blm protests

    Sure. And pretending to not understand the difference in significance between Jedward and BLM, pretending they're comparable is still pretty shameful for you. But it is interesting to see how far out of your own way people will go to pretend not to understand the issue. You offered a perfect example of that.


  • Options
    #2658
    Wibbs
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,107 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Chris_Heilong wrote: »
    Medicine is not racial, that is why they are called human trials and in a white majority country like the UK it is more than acceptable to have white people as a majority in all trials.
    It might be acceptable, more like expedient as like you say there are more of one population available to the researchers, but it's less medically valid when it is known and has been known for quite a while that different populations can have very different results and reactions from medicines.

    Disease incidence and progression can vary quite a bit between populations too. So for example African Americans have much higher incidences of diabetes, kidney disease, high blood pressure, stroke and lung cancer(even though they smoke less) than European Americans and respond differently to therapies. Some of this is cultural and economic, but much of it appears to be genetic and may be particular to descendants of the slave trade as similar is found in places like the Caribbean and Africans don't show nearly the same differences.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



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    #2659
    Chris_Heilong
    Registered Users Posts: 4,973 ✭✭✭Chris_Heilong


    robinph wrote: »
    Not if it doesn't pick up issues that there may be with using those drugs on people other than middle aged white men, and then the results of those trials are used for selling the drug worldwide to everyone.

    No I see no issues, What country is racially testing?


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    #2660
    Chris_Heilong
    Registered Users Posts: 4,973 ✭✭✭Chris_Heilong


    Wibbs wrote: »
    It might be acceptable, more like expedient as like you say there are more of one population available to the researchers, but it's less medically valid when it is known and has been known for quite a while that different populations can have very different results and reactions from medicines.

    Disease incidence and progression can vary quite a bit between populations too. So for example African Americans have much higher incidences of diabetes, kidney disease, high blood pressure, stroke and lung cancer(even though they smoke less) than European Americans and respond differently to therapies. Some of this is cultural and economic, but much of it appears to be genetic and may be particular to descendants of the slave trade as similar is found in places like the Caribbean and Africans don't show nearly the same differences.

    A lot of the issues faced by groups is lifestyle and not race related.


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    #2661
    Christy42
    Registered Users Posts: 7,882 ✭✭✭Christy42


    Chris_Heilong wrote: »
    No I see no issues, What country is racially testing?

    Most countries, a lot of this is down to the fact that a lot of research is done in the west. I am unsure as to the gender divide but that seems like it is a different topic to the thread. It is far easier to do so which is why it generally happens as opposed to malice on behalf of researchers.

    The issue is you need to qualify said results with this fact and have studies into the effects different drugs/diseases have on other races.

    Someone mentioned not using minorities as that would take advantage of them but in this case it is the general minority users of the drugs who end up as Guinea pigs except no is recording the results properly. If insufficient testing is done then the users are the testing.


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    #2662
    titan18
    Registered Users Posts: 11,936 ✭✭✭✭titan18


    robinph wrote: »
    Not if it doesn't pick up issues that there may be with using those drugs on people other than middle aged white men, and then the results of those trials are used for selling the drug worldwide to everyone.

    Drugs will cost more then if you need to do more extensive trialing. People won't want that either then.


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    #2663
    Donald Trump
    Registered Users Posts: 19,172 ✭✭✭✭Donald Trump


    robinph wrote: »
    In this instance she was the subject to be put on the plinth because she was in the right place at the right time and her husband took a photo that got posted on social media. No other reason for it, and no claims of her being something that she isn't.

    Unlike Colston, who was put on the plinth in order to try to convince the people of Bristol that he was a great man.


    One of the first things that a history teacher told our class back in the day that it was important to understand and judge historical events by the standards of those times and not by today's standards.

    We probably all know very little about this Colston fella. I for one never heard of him before the statue event but I gather he made a lot of money. When people make a lot of money they can decide to keep it all for themselves or they can decide to share it around. Obviously the people of the city at that time were grateful to him for whatever he shared with them.


    He could have been an otherwise decent fella who happened to be working in a dirty business which was deemed "acceptable" or even legitimate back then. Or he could have been the greatest prick that ever lived.



    Should he be venerated? I don't think so. Neither do I think he should be whitewashed from that town's history. The town gained from the money he made. I think it should be recorded and known who he was and what he did and why he was important in its development - warts and all.


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    #2664
    Christy42
    Registered Users Posts: 7,882 ✭✭✭Christy42


    Donald Trump wrote: »
    One of the first things that a history teacher told our class back in the day that it was important to understand and judge historical events by the standards of those times and not by today's standards.

    We probably all know very little about this Colston fella. I for one never heard of him before the statue event but I gather he made a lot of money. When people make a lot of money they can decide to keep it all for themselves or they can decide to share it around. Obviously the people of the city at that time were grateful to him for whatever he shared with them.


    He could have been an otherwise decent fella who happened to be working in a dirty business which was deemed "acceptable" or even legitimate back then. Or he could have been the greatest prick that ever lived.



    Should he be venerated? I don't think so. Neither do I think he should be whitewashed from that town's history. The town gained from the money he made. I think it should be recorded and known who he was and what he did and why he was important in its development - warts and all.

    Indeed. And it is thanks to the protestors that his history will be recorded warts and all.


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    #2665
    robinph
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,088 Mod ✭✭✭✭robinph


    Anyone who thinks that the removing of a statue of Colston from the middle of Bristol will somehow erase him from history has clearly never been to Bristol.


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    #2666
    El_Duderino 09
    Registered Users Posts: 20,039 ✭✭✭✭El_Duderino 09


    robinph wrote: »
    Anyone who thinks that the removing of a statue of Colston from the middle of Bristol will somehow erase him from history has clearly never been to Bristol.

    Statues aren't history. The history exists completely independent of statues. Statues (such as the Colson one) are about veneration, not simply recording the history. Nothing will erase the history of Colson from the hospitals and Alms houses he established, to the involvement in the slave trade to the fact that he only wanted people who agreed with his religious and political views to benefit from the hospitals and alms houses. And all the rest of the story of his life still exists and is well recorded. This statue doesn't alter the story of his life (though it is part of the story of his legacy).

    Statues and history are separate things. Removing a statue can't remove history, they reflect what you want to venerate as a society and can be erected and removed as time progresses.


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    #2667
    Donald Trump
    Registered Users Posts: 19,172 ✭✭✭✭Donald Trump


    Christy42 wrote: »
    Indeed. And it is thanks to the protestors that his history will be recorded warts and all.




    So how did the "protestors" uncover it? Given that it must not have been recorded previously and that he has been dead for so long? Fair play to them.





    Is this kind of overall thing just another manifestation of current culture? Elevate the person with the highest instagram following? The "model" whose achievement is to get herself on Love Island? The nail technician who takes a few selfies as something is happening? C'mon, she's not exactly Rosa Parks now is she?


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    #2668
    Donald Trump
    Registered Users Posts: 19,172 ✭✭✭✭Donald Trump


    El_Duderino 09 wrote: »
    Statues aren't history. The history exists completely independent of statues. Statues (such as the Colson one) are about veneration, not simply recording the history. Nothing will erase the history of Colson from the hospitals and Alms houses he established, to the involvement in the slave trade to the fact that he only wanted people who agreed with his religious and political views to benefit from the hospitals and alms houses. And all the rest of the story of his life still exists and is well recorded. This statue doesn't alter the story of his life (though it is part of the story of his legacy).

    Statues and history are separate things. Removing a statue can't remove history, they reflect what you want to venerate as a society and can be erected and removed as time progresses.




    I don't know. I am sure that there are plenty of people who are embarrassed that the statue is there as a reminder of the origin of some of their wealth and who would be happy to try to hide it so that people can pretend that their relative prosperity was not built on the backs of others.






    Sure take down his statue, remove his name from all the buildings. Then in 20 years, there will be no tourists asking awkward questions about who your man was or what he did. It can be forgotten about and swept under the carpet.


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    #2669
    suicide_circus
    Registered Users Posts: 19,802 ✭✭✭✭suicide_circus


    El_Duderino 09 wrote: »
    Sure. And pretending to not understand the difference in significance between Jedward and BLM, pretending they're comparable is still pretty shameful for you. But it is interesting to see how far out of your own way people will go to pretend not to understand the issue. You offered a perfect example of that.
    shameful? lol, get over yourself a muinteoir, go wag your finger at some inanimate street furniture.


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    #2670
    Christy42
    Registered Users Posts: 7,882 ✭✭✭Christy42


    Donald Trump wrote: »
    I don't know. I am sure that there are plenty of people who are embarrassed that the statue is there as a reminder of the origin of some of their wealth and who would be happy to try to hide it so that people can pretend that their relative prosperity was not built on the backs of others.






    Sure take down his statue, remove his name from all the buildings. Then in 20 years, there will be no tourists asking awkward questions about who your man was or what he did. It can be forgotten about and swept under the carpet.
    Who knew about him before all this happened? Now he is widely known. How many tourists were asking questions about a statue that said great bloke gave us loads of money? Who would question it.

    The statue was whitewashing it by not mentioning where the money came from. Or do you really go around questioning people about every statue on holiday? Or do you just read the blurb? The statue was trying to hide where all the wealth came from. The people who want the statue want to ignore it and pretend he did nothing but good. The protestors highlighted the warts people have tried to hide.

    Now the museum is all but forced to put something up about him to actually educate him.


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    #2671
    Tony EH
    Registered Users Posts: 19,011 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    El_Duderino 09 wrote: »
    Statues aren't history.

    No. They are a reminder of history.

    Good and bad.


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