It has become one of the more divisive topics in today’s culture wars: what to do with the statues of historical figures with controversial pasts. And while many can agree that the monuments of Robert E Lee and Edward Colston should not stand in city centres, the debate becomes murkier when the likes of Winston Churchill, John A MacDonald, Queen Victoria, and Abraham Lincoln enter the fray. Those calling for statues to come down and streets to be renamed argue that this is not a case of ‘cancel culture’. Rather, it is an overdue re-examination of past heroes and their subjugation of marginalized groups. Those who promoted racist and imperialist policies in their time should not be given the privilege of public glorification in ours. Others argue that social justice “mobs” are ignoring the context in which these transgressions took place, viewing history through a distorted lens comprised of their own values and assumptions and purposely rewriting the past to serve their ideological purposes today. If progressives succeed in their purity purge we will be left with no heroes, no history, and no nuanced understanding of our own past.

Arguing for the motion is Cornell William Brooks, Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former President of the NAACP.

Arguing against the motion is George F Will, Pulitzer-prize winning columnist for the Washington Post and author of American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent.

QUOTES:

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS

“When you have commemoration, as opposed to education, it leads to misinformation. And it literally debilitates our ability to grapple with the past in order to come to grips with the present.”

GEORGE WILL

“My worry is about the question of control. I don't want to control the past. I want the past to be faced as what it was, and not controlled for any political agenda, good, bad or indifferent."

Sources: City News, CTV, Washington Post, ABC, WPRI, 

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