We’ve become such a binary ‘pick you side and stick with them regardless’ society in recent years that nuanced debate is more difficult than its ever been imo mate.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I knew absolutely nothing about Colston until last weekend, and I speak as someone who’s from Liverpool, a city who’s slave trade past lead to the creation of the International Slavery museum at the Albert Dock, a place I’ve visited a couple of times.
However, I do now, as I researched him and more importantly the history of both the statue itself and the local battle to see it removed, that been going on for the last 20-30 years. Plenty of locals did their utmost to have it rightly removed and were blocked at every turn, even the erection of a second plaque explaining his slave trade past was blocked - notably by a Tory councillor called Richard Eddy (google him).
So I completely understand why in the context of a BLM protest that particular statue attracted the focus of locals, who’d been failed by the local politicians and decided to take direct action.
The wider point about racism in our society is way more complex, have things improved in the last 40 years? Of course they have, is the issue now firmly a thing of the past? Absolutely not.
