How to handle racists’ statues

INTHE 1895 burghers of Bristol in south-west England, swept up by the Victorian fervour for celebrating city fathers, were casting about for a big historical cheese of their own. They settled on Edward Colston, a 17th-century merchant who had endowed charities that have lifted innumerable indigent Bristolians out of poverty and educated hordes of its young citizens over the centuries. But, by modern standards, they picked the wrong guy: Colston made his money largely through the Royal African Company, which shipped slaves from Africa to the West Indies. On June 7th protesters chucked his statue into the city’s harbour.Statues become flashpoints at times of social change because they honour the values, and reflect the hierarchies, of the times in which they were erected. What some in one era celebrate, others then and later often reject—hence the battles over statues of Confederate heroes in the southern United States, many of which were put up long after the civil war to defend white supremacy. Yet statues also provide a record of a country’s past, and the desire to respect and understand that history of commemoration argues against dismantling them. It is these conflicting urges that make this area so tricky.