There has been a lot of discussion recently about whether or not we should view historical figures with today’s lens if their actions and views were “accepted at the time”. But in the last few days, I’ve been thinking about the question: Who were they actually accepted by? I’ve come to learn this is the key to understanding and having sympathy with Black Lives Matters protestors in this country.
For example, I imagine the 80,000 men, women and children taken from their homes to be slaves were not accepting of Edward Colston’s actions. I’m sure the contemporary black community were not accepting when 19,000 of those slaves died on Colston’s ships. And all those stuck in the slave trade between his death and its abolition are not likely to have been accepting either.
As another example, I also feel like the contemporary black community would not have been not accepting of Churchill’s view that they were somehow inferior to white people. In fact, even some of his fellow ministers took issue with it.
I should just say I’m not trying to compare Colston with Churchill (as they were very different historical figures), nor am I calling for the latter’s statue to be torn down by a mob, as what he did for this country in World War Two should be celebrated. In his case, I do draw the line at complete demonisation because I understand most people aren’t quite as binary as fully good/fully evil. It’s just that in the last week or so, Colston and Churchill are the most accessible examples to use here.
The whole point of this is that if we are saying these things were accepted at the time, are we not overlooking those who suffered as a result of them? Is that not exactly what the black community mean when they say they have historically not had a voice to be listened to? If the majority of contemporary white British people accepted these things, but the black community did not, I can understand why current members of the BLM movement see it as racist to describe the examples above (just the tip of the iceberg, by the way) as “acceptable at the time”.
I have always been a student of history, so please don’t read this as me wanting to change, erase or rewrite anything. But as someone who took this discipline to university I understand what the biggest limitation of history is: the voices we *don’t* have access to. For example, in my chosen subject of Ancient Greece, pretty much everything we wrote about social issues had to come with the caveat of “we have virtually no surviving records of contemporary women” and, therefore, we can’t make sweeping judgements about what was deemed acceptable based on the writings of male authors. That’s just one example, but hopefully, you understand my point. We view history through the eyes of surviving records, so casting a different perspective on established historical facts when we gain access to a new voice is not the cardinal sin of history, it’s just how the discipline works.
Things are different for the black community now than they were during the times of slavery. Many are still suffering from the legacy of the slave trade and historical figures viewing them as inferior, but in the modern age they have something they didn’t have before: a voice. So let’s listen to it and learn about their culture’s perspective on this country’s history.
I don’t really want people to take this as the condoning of violence, vandalism or mass tearing down of statues, by the way, because it’s not. (Colston should have come down, no doubt, just not in the way it did). Nor should it be seen as a fully committed backing for the country-wide removal of statues. Honestly, I’m not sure what my exact position is on that yet, or what we do about it going forward. I simply want there to be more understanding of what it’s like to allow a new perspective on historical issues.