Both a thief and philanthropist
Dec. 27th, 2015 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lokifanI had a lovely Christmas! I will post about that soon. But right now I am going to give you A FACEFUL OF OPINIONS. As ever, differing opinions welcome but be prepared for my likely reply of LET ME TELL YOU WHY YOU’RE WRONG :P
So a news story at the moment here in the UK is that at Oxford University, there at students campaigning to have their statue of Cecil Rhodes pulled down. Cecil Rhodes, if you don’t know, was a famous nineteenth-century politician and philanthropist -- his estate funds the Rhodes scholarships.
Guess where he got the money. Go on, guess. Did you guess ‘stole it from South Africans as part of the imperial project’? Well, you should have, because where else did nineteenth-century shitheads get their wealth?
He set up his own colony in Africa, Rhodesia (where Zimbabwe is now) and was central to colonising South Africa. He was a central architect of apartheid and he massacred tens of thousands of black Africans. While PM of the Cape Colony, more black people were beginning to vote so he raised the enfranchisement requirements. He was a massive imperialist, he wanted Britain to rule the world and wrote about how nice it is for inferior races when they come under Anglo-Saxon influence; he used his own money, having made it from exploiting African workers in his South African diamond mines, to expand and support British colonies.
So the students want the statue gone. Tony Abbott, former Australian PM, who studied at Oxford and is The Worst, is very against this -- apparently it substitutes “moral vanity for fair-minded inquiry… The university should remember that its mission is not to reflect fashion but to seek truth and that means striving to understand before rushing to judge.”
*snorts* Firstly, I think seeking truth and fair-minded enquiry are not at all incompatible with thinking Rhodes made the world substantially worse and that his scholarships are blood money. It’s great that Commonwealth (and American & German) students can use them now but he made that money by exploiting Africans and stealing their resources. Also, dismissing the campaign as “fashion” is incredibly patronising and gross.
“The students of Oriel should be clear-eyed about Rhodes' faults and failings but proud of his achievements.” This was also my uncle’s argument when I discussed it with him last night: “everyone’s got their seamy side”. RW Johnson, an author who compared the campaign to ISIS’ destruction of historical artifacts (!!!) said “there are many people in history that are far worse than Rhodes”.
Well sure, everyone does have their dark side. But it’s intellectually lazy to efface the differences in scale between Rhodes’ dark side and that of others’, even those of eminent nineteenth-century Brits. Dickens was anti-semitic and cruel to his wife. Rhodes was responsible for a vast degree of human misery. People keep calling him a man of his time but actually most men of his time were not central to the development of apartheid. And while there are certainly plenty of people in history worse than Rhodes, WE DON’T ERECT STATUES IN THEIR HONOUR.
And let’s be real, it’s a lot easier for the largely-white Establishment to dismiss the deaths at Rhodes’ hands as all part of his life’s rich tapestry and complex yada yada yada because it was black Africans far away who did (and do) the suffering.
The Independent, a national lefty newspaper, continued this theme (as well as that of patronising the students) in an editorial: “One hopes it is naivety that motivates such activists, but they should pause to remember that labelling heroes and villains among the figures of the past is a practice that lacks the necessary nuance of a first-class scholar.” Classicist Mary Beard made an argument along these lines too: “a dangerous attempt to erase the past”.
I have sympathy for where they’re coming from, but in this context I think these arguments are completely misguided. We will still discuss Rhodes, there are still books about him, we should keep talking about him as long as he’s relevant and sticking binary labels on people is a mistake. But we’re talking about a STATUE OF HIM. We don’t put up statues of everyone! We do that with role models, with people we want to positively remember. There’s no point in saying people shouldn’t be labelled heroes or villains in this context; that’s purely status-quo thinking. He has been labelled a historical hero already by the mere fact of the statue. Now we decide if we want to keep doing that, and keep inflicting that tribute to him on BME students and African students into the bargain.
So a news story at the moment here in the UK is that at Oxford University, there at students campaigning to have their statue of Cecil Rhodes pulled down. Cecil Rhodes, if you don’t know, was a famous nineteenth-century politician and philanthropist -- his estate funds the Rhodes scholarships.
Guess where he got the money. Go on, guess. Did you guess ‘stole it from South Africans as part of the imperial project’? Well, you should have, because where else did nineteenth-century shitheads get their wealth?
He set up his own colony in Africa, Rhodesia (where Zimbabwe is now) and was central to colonising South Africa. He was a central architect of apartheid and he massacred tens of thousands of black Africans. While PM of the Cape Colony, more black people were beginning to vote so he raised the enfranchisement requirements. He was a massive imperialist, he wanted Britain to rule the world and wrote about how nice it is for inferior races when they come under Anglo-Saxon influence; he used his own money, having made it from exploiting African workers in his South African diamond mines, to expand and support British colonies.
So the students want the statue gone. Tony Abbott, former Australian PM, who studied at Oxford and is The Worst, is very against this -- apparently it substitutes “moral vanity for fair-minded inquiry… The university should remember that its mission is not to reflect fashion but to seek truth and that means striving to understand before rushing to judge.”
*snorts* Firstly, I think seeking truth and fair-minded enquiry are not at all incompatible with thinking Rhodes made the world substantially worse and that his scholarships are blood money. It’s great that Commonwealth (and American & German) students can use them now but he made that money by exploiting Africans and stealing their resources. Also, dismissing the campaign as “fashion” is incredibly patronising and gross.
“The students of Oriel should be clear-eyed about Rhodes' faults and failings but proud of his achievements.” This was also my uncle’s argument when I discussed it with him last night: “everyone’s got their seamy side”. RW Johnson, an author who compared the campaign to ISIS’ destruction of historical artifacts (!!!) said “there are many people in history that are far worse than Rhodes”.
Well sure, everyone does have their dark side. But it’s intellectually lazy to efface the differences in scale between Rhodes’ dark side and that of others’, even those of eminent nineteenth-century Brits. Dickens was anti-semitic and cruel to his wife. Rhodes was responsible for a vast degree of human misery. People keep calling him a man of his time but actually most men of his time were not central to the development of apartheid. And while there are certainly plenty of people in history worse than Rhodes, WE DON’T ERECT STATUES IN THEIR HONOUR.
And let’s be real, it’s a lot easier for the largely-white Establishment to dismiss the deaths at Rhodes’ hands as all part of his life’s rich tapestry and complex yada yada yada because it was black Africans far away who did (and do) the suffering.
The Independent, a national lefty newspaper, continued this theme (as well as that of patronising the students) in an editorial: “One hopes it is naivety that motivates such activists, but they should pause to remember that labelling heroes and villains among the figures of the past is a practice that lacks the necessary nuance of a first-class scholar.” Classicist Mary Beard made an argument along these lines too: “a dangerous attempt to erase the past”.
I have sympathy for where they’re coming from, but in this context I think these arguments are completely misguided. We will still discuss Rhodes, there are still books about him, we should keep talking about him as long as he’s relevant and sticking binary labels on people is a mistake. But we’re talking about a STATUE OF HIM. We don’t put up statues of everyone! We do that with role models, with people we want to positively remember. There’s no point in saying people shouldn’t be labelled heroes or villains in this context; that’s purely status-quo thinking. He has been labelled a historical hero already by the mere fact of the statue. Now we decide if we want to keep doing that, and keep inflicting that tribute to him on BME students and African students into the bargain.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-27 07:42 pm (UTC)At the very, very, very least, put up a statue of a great African leader past or present who championed scholarship - someone who would have made Rhodes grind his teeth - right next to him. Or put up a huge honking explanatory sign in front of Rhodes' statue; "Cecil Rhodes - racist, conqueror, killer, who tried to buy his way into heaven with this university."
no subject
Date: 2015-12-27 08:10 pm (UTC)