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| Should statues of prominent confederate civil war figures be removed? |
| Yes |
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21% |
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| No |
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57% |
[ 8 ] |
| Don't know/unsure |
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21% |
[ 3 ] |
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| Total Votes : 14 |
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Morrigu 
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
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Will anything change or be resolved by removing them?
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Last edited by Morrigu on Mon Aug 21, 2017 4:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| What happened to small school in the Matopos Hills called the Cecil Rhodes school for children - it provides the chance for local kids to get an education free of charge it costs in Zimbabwe to send your kids to school and this school was and is funded free of charge by Rhodes and his descendants Mugabe refused to visit the school unless they changed their name - they had no choice and the funders thankfully understood that ? |
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thesoretoothsayer
Joined: 26 Apr 2017
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Seems like a pretty fair call, doesn't it? Again, a real instance of something differing in context depending on where it's placed: Gandhi represents one thing in India, one thing in Africa and something else in the rest of the world. Of course many in Africa might still admire him for the example he set as a resistance leader, but if his legacy on the continent is a mostly negative one then I can see why this would be a controversial monument.
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thesoretoothsayer
Joined: 26 Apr 2017
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| Who decides what a statue "represents"? |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Society as a whole?
Sure, these things are at least somewhat subjective, but all language is just symbols. A statue will have an intended meaning and a generally perceived meaning which are often more or less the same (to put it simply, "this is a great person who is worthy of honour"). Sometimes intended meaning and received meaning are totally different, and you can run into problems like the subjectivity of offence. But as a communication form, public statues seem pretty clear-cut as meaning goes.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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When we've torn them all down, we can put up a statue of the Wiggles. They might be inoffensive enough for people who do not wish to understand history.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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On the contrary they are examples of Primary Colour Privilege in action. 
More seriously, there is the question of whether anyone really deserves to be the subject of a statue. Such worshipful representations near-deification of individuals is kind of a questionable exercise to begin with. Perhaps this is something the Abrahamic religions got right: "thou shalt make no graven images".
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | | Seems like a pretty fair call, doesn't it? Again, a real instance of something differing in context depending on where it's placed: Gandhi represents one thing in India, one thing in Africa and something else in the rest of the world. Of course many in Africa might still admire him for the example he set as a resistance leader, but if his legacy on the continent is a mostly negative one then I can see why this would be a controversial monument. |
Again, context of the times. We're talking about the turn of last century. Christ, the Zulu wars were in 1879 and barely 15 years before that, Africans were still being captured and sold as Slaves, basically 2 legged cattle.
His argument, at the time, was that the Indian society was at a higher level than the black African, and they clearly were.
Seen through the lens of the present, his comments are racist. Seen through the lens of the time, they were factual. He wasn't trying to promote the cause of the black African, but the Indian .
I quite like this quote:
| Quote: | | One of Gandhi's writings cited in the petition reads: "Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness. |
Credit where it's due, nothing really wrong with that ambition.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | On the contrary they are examples of Primary Colour Privilege in action.
More seriously, there is the question of whether anyone really deserves to be the subject of a statue. Such worshipful representations near-deification of individuals is kind of a questionable exercise to begin with. Perhaps this is something the Abrahamic religions got right: "thou shalt make no graven images". |
I think that's a position it might be reasonable to take today, so that we make no future statues of people. But I think we owe respect to those who commissioned, and made, the often rather stately and dignified statues around us today. Totalitarian states are masters of state-enforced forgetting, and we should be better than that.
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Two more flags before I die!
Last edited by Mugwump on Mon Aug 21, 2017 7:31 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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I don't necessarily disagree. Even on this discussion, I had to pick the "unsure/don't know" option.
On Gandhi: look, I don't want to harp on about one thing he said (and possibly later retracted) in a lifetime of anti-colonial activism, but what he said was pretty clearly racist. Claiming that an equivalence between Indians and Africans is a 'degradation' of the former (not to mention that Africans are primitive and lazy) is ... well, what else can that statement possibly be?
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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thesoretoothsayer
Joined: 26 Apr 2017
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| David wrote: | On the contrary they are examples of Primary Colour Privilege in action.
More seriously, there is the question of whether anyone really deserves to be the subject of a statue. Such worshipful representations near-deification of individuals is kind of a questionable exercise to begin with. Perhaps this is something the Abrahamic religions got right: "thou shalt make no graven images". |
So Bob Rose and Lou Richards don't deserve their statues? |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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No more than Rolf Harris deserves one for contributions to Australian music, arguably.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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thesoretoothsayer
Joined: 26 Apr 2017
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| David wrote: | | No more than Rolf Harris deserves one for contributions to Australian music, arguably. |
Looks like I descended to trolling. Unfair. Removed. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | I don't necessarily disagree. Even on this discussion, I had to pick the "unsure/don't know" option.
On Gandhi: look, I don't want to harp on about one thing he said (and possibly later retracted) in a lifetime of anti-colonial activism, but what he said was pretty clearly racist. Claiming that an equivalence between Indians and Africans is a 'degradation' of the former (not to mention that Africans are primitive and lazy) is ... well, what else can that statement possibly be? |
Accurate at the time? Certainly the primitive part compared to the Indians.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/history-indians-south-africa-timeline1654-2008
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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