Black lives matter, monument defacement and media erasure: unpacking the ethics

Finally, the continued rise of a populist, white supremacist movement that brings together spurious nonsensical claims about COVID-19, 5G technologies, vaccination as well as conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and other liberal elite figures, has also spurred people to respond to the real issues of life and death for those who are often silenced or sidelined by those supremacist political positions.

Together, these three conditions are responsible for what is a sudden, unexpected but long-overdue transformation in our social world on a global scale.

Cultural defacement and erasure

Public anger about the very palpable link between colonial histories, racism and minority deaths is understandably finding its outlet in the defacement of historical monuments connected with white settler culture as well as demands for removal of media that depicts racist stereotypes.

While the exact method of engagement with the issues should be led by those most affected by racism, police brutality and custodial deaths, defacement and erasure may not necessarily be the most productive way of maintaining an ethical focus on listening to the issues and developing remedies to ensure liveable lives are enjoyed equally by all.

There have been some arguments against the removal of monuments or cancelling media. For example, Boris Johnson argued against calls to remove the Winston Churchill statue, rightly pointing out that "Britain cannot 'photoshop' its long and complicated cultural history and that to do so would be a "distortion" of our past." Similarly, British classicist Mary Beard has argued that while no one imagines that every statue of every historical figure (such as a nazi official) ought to remain in the public, cultural erasure of every problematic figure blames past racism on a few bad individuals rather than recognising it as a huge social problem with implications for the present.

The 'evil individual' motif has always been a cop-out: for example, blaming Captain Cook for invasion rather than seeing both himself and the invasion as a product of a longer colonial history exonerates those who benefitted from that history, including those of us living today. It is akin to the school-aged understanding of European fascism: that some bad men called Hitler and Mussolini tricked everyone into some dreadful behaviour, if only we could go back in time and remove them. The reality is, of course, that individuals are part of the same circumstances that made such injustices possible.

As sensible as the argument to keep history in focus by preserving statues may be, it does not mean we simply leave intact the monuments and cultural expressions that commemorate imperial, white settler, slave-trading and racist pasts. It is not simply a two-sided argument in which we either maintain the tributes to flawed individuals or remove them because they are shameful reminders of a troubling history.

Nor is it helpful to suggest 'light erasure', including the solution offered by Winston Churchill's granddaughter who argued the Churchill statue in London's Parliament Square might best be moved to a museum, where it will be both safe and non-offensive.

Rather, a third position is needed: one in which we make use of those very monuments and cultural expressions as a site of education to produce real change, inclusion, socio-economic equality, equitable access to health and wellbeing, and equal capacity to build and enjoy a liveable life.

We cannot yet know in advance the best form for such an education, as there is much further listening to be done to understand what will 'work best' for those who are genuinely affected by racism, discrimination and inequality.

However, one possibility is to consider how those monuments serve not as 'reminders' but as educational opportunities. There are many ways in which monuments can be converted from 'shameful reminders' to 'educational opportunities. For example, for each statue of a figure like Winston Churchill, Captain Cook, Edward Colston or Robert E Lee, we could build a bigger, grander, permanent piece of art next to it that makes clear why the past was not always an ethical past. It might be art produced by a person or group affected today by that shameful history, (literally) overshadowing the original monument.