Trevor - // Followed by the removal of all the statues of racists. No point in dwelling on their "achievements". //
I believe that history can only be objectively viewed in context, and that means accepting the differences from the past to now, due to the constantly changing and evolving culture of the western world.
Of course, no-one today can condone slavery in any shape or form, but it must be accepted that it was the norm for its time, and retrospectively analysing it with modern attitudes with a view to 'apologising' is a complete waste of time.
Was slavery an evil trade? Yes of course it was, but in the examples of someone like Colston, his philanthropy played a large part in making Bristol the city it is today.
The only way for any society to move on is to embrace the good parts of its past, acknowledge the bad parts, and ensure that the second does not obscure the first by cherry-picking individuals and incidents and singling them out for retrogressive attention.
Am I pleased that Colston invested his money in the city of Bristol? Yes I am.
Am I sorry that the money was derived from slavery?
Yes I am.
Would tearing down the buildings and streets he financed make an ounce of difference to the peoples wronged by the slave trade?
No it would not.
It's necessary to have a realistic and balanced attitude to history.
As soon as we go back even a couple of generations, we find society's attitudes to many things utterly abhorrent, but we cannot change them,only acknowledge them, and appreciate the changes we have made in our attitudes.
Racial segregation was the norm within my lifetime, capital punishment still is - these will be eradicated and looked upon with horror by future generations, but they, like us, cannot change what happened before they were here, and to pretend that they, or we, can do that, is a pointless self-aggrandising dream, and i for one have no time for it.