News / David Olusoga
Protecting controversial statues is ‘nonsense’, says Olusoga
Since the statue of Edward Colston was torn down by Black Lives Matter protesters last summer, conversations around this moment’s significance are continuing to take place around the world.
And the question still remains: does removing statues erase history? For many, including historian David Olusoga, tearing down the statue was not an erasure of Colston – it was the acknowledgement of a wider and more important narrative.
Until recently, the name of slave trader Edward Colston was found across multiple roads and venues in Bristol. Colston Hall, Colston’s Girls’ School, Colston Yard – his name and presence was a normalised part of the city map.
is needed now More than ever
As Colston’s atrocities are brought to the forefront of the conversation and we are recognising the statue’s one-dimensional view of history – the same question is being asked towards similar statues of controversial figures across the world. Is it time to take them down?
For Olusoga, the idea that removing statues is the same as removing history is “palpable nonsense” and celebrating such figures will only validate people “who did terrible things”.
“I think his statue pretended the only story about him was his philanthropy, which was undoubted – he gave lots of money to Bristol. But that money came from slavery,” he said.
The Colston statue came down during the Black Lives Matter protest – photo by Colin Moody.
Instead, we must aim to provide a broader education around the British Empire and its reliance on the slave trade in order to understand the people whose statues have been in our cities for so long.
On Thursday, the author and TV presenter will be teaching online history lessons to students across the UK to share the importance of the national census and how it can reveal hidden histories.
His lesson, which was put together along with the Office of National Statistics, will look at how sailors recruited from Asia to work on British ships faced tougher conditions and lower wages than their white colleagues.
David Olusoga’s online lesson, Equality, Representation and the Census, is part of the Census 2021 Let’s Count primary school programme and will be streamed on the Census 2021 YouTube channel at 11am on February 4.
Main photo: BBC
Read more: David Olusoga: ‘Bristol is a better place since the toppling of Colston’s statue’
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