The protests in solidarity with the Black lives matter movement also seek to examine the uncomfortable past of historical figures celebrated with statues and monuments, not without criticism.
Throughout the month of June, people around the world took to the streets to show their support for the Black lives matter movement, following the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed on 25 May by the police in Minneapolis, in the United States. In response to the wave of protests, a significant portion of media attention focused on the toppling and defacing of statues that have ties to the racist history of the United States as well as other countries. These demonstrations sparked a great deal of controversy. While on one hand they ignited a productive debate and positive change, on the other they were exploited to divert attention from the movement's real objectives and to stir up negative sentiment towards the protesters.
The Black lives matter (Blm) movement was founded in 2013 in the United States after the man who killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old African American, was acquitted of all charges. The goal of Blm is "to eradicate white supremacy and to build local structures to intervene in cases of violence inflicted by the state and vigilantes against Black communities".
Over these seven years, many protesters have marched under the movement's banner, particularly in response to cases of police brutality and racist violence more broadly. Recent incidents, including the murders of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor and Ahmad Aubury, and the impact of coronavirus, which has disproportionately affected minorities such as Black communities, have fuelled the wave of protests, which stands apart from previous ones by virtue of its mass participation.
The Blm movement also aims at inclusivity and support for other marginalised groups. This principle became evident with the growing visibility of the Black trans lives matter movement, which organised protests following the murders of Riah Milton, Dominique "Rem'Mie" Fells and Tony McDade.
These murders are not isolated cases in the United States, where systemic racism and police violence are constant sources of injustice and oppression. The recent protests express widespread anger and dissatisfaction, and have drawn large numbers of people in all major cities and thousands of smaller urban centres. A great deal of solidarity with the American protesters has come from around the world, but it has also been an opportunity to draw attention to the injustices caused by institutional racism in other countries.
A common practice during the Blm protests has been the removal or defacement of statues, a highly powerful symbolic gesture targeting monuments that celebrate historical figures with racist views who actively contributed to the oppression of marginalised groups and to institutional racism.
In the first days of protest, dozens of statues and monuments of political and military leaders of the Confederate States of America were torn down, burned and defaced. The Confederacy fought against the abolition of slavery, and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries all the states that belonged to it enforced racist policies and entrenched the segregation and oppression of Black people for many years after slavery was abolished.
Black lives matter demonstrators then broadened their scope, for example removing statues of Christopher Columbus and other colonisers linked to the genocide of Native American peoples, such as Juan de Oñate and Junípero Serra. This led to the removal of several statues of former United States presidents, in some cases by the authorities themselves: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson and Ulysses S. Grant all owned enslaved people and actively displaced Native Americans from their lands. The statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York, meanwhile, depicts him on horseback, followed on foot by a Black man and a Native American — something that, according to the city's mayor Bill de Blasio, "explicitly depicts Indigenous and Black people as subjugated and racially inferior".
The removal of statues was also widely discussed in the United Kingdom after protesters in Bristol toppled the statue of Edward Colston on 7 June. Like many other wealthy English people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Colston was deeply involved in the transatlantic slave trade, but his philanthropic activities allowed him to be widely commemorated; after being pulled down, his statue was thrown into the city's harbour.
A few days later in London, the authorities removed the statue of Scottish slave trader Robert Milligan and planned the removal of other monuments in the capital and in other cities, including statues honouring white supremacist Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College in Oxford — monuments that had already been at the centre of controversy during the "Rhodes must fall" protests that arose in South Africa in 2015. Protesters in London also defaced the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, which was subsequently enclosed in a wooden box to prevent further damage.
In Belgium, protesters burned and defaced several statues and monuments honouring King Leopold II, who ruled the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. Throughout the occupation, the king treated the region as his private property, committing terrible atrocities against its inhabitants.
Between five and ten million people disappeared from the state during that period. In France, protesters in Paris defaced several colonial-era statues dedicated to the Enlightenment intellectual Voltaire, whose wealth was partly derived from the slave trade, and to Hubert Lyautey, a general who administered several French colonies. In Italy, Black lives matter demonstrations took place in many major cities. In Milan, activists poured red paint over the statue of Indro Montanelli, a writer and journalist who had espoused fascist ideas and had served as a commander during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, where he also purchased a twelve-year-old girl named Destà.
The common thread linking all these examples is the desire to confront the colonial past of many Western countries. Among the responses to the BLM protests in many European countries, the comparison with the United States frequently comes up — a country where slavery was more pervasive and where police violence still has a greater reach today. However, it is important to acknowledge that the majority of European states have directly benefited from slavery and that their current status as world powers depends on the great wealth accumulated also through colonialism. Moreover, police violence against minorities is a serious problem in Europe, so it is important to remember that the protests outside the United States were not merely acts of solidarity, but also sought to bring visibility to these issues, examining the uncomfortable past of historical figures celebrated with statues and monuments.
In the United Kingdom, for example, there is now a strong push to reform the education system so that the country's colonial history is addressed more clearly in curricula. The figure of Winston Churchill is also being called into question; celebrated for having led the country during the Second World War, there is a growing demand for a critical approach to this figure whose racist opinions and political actions are rarely scrutinised. To give one example, the imperialist policy pursued under Churchill caused a famine in Bengal, in India, which led to the deaths of millions of people.
A better education on colonialist and imperialist history is an important step towards beginning to address the systemic racism that BLM activists are fighting against, and all countries could benefit from a change of this kind in their own education systems. In this regard, tackling the issue of statues can be read as a simpler, more direct method of educating the public about their country's colonial past and of generating debate and positive change in the public sphere.
Although the removal of statues is linked to the desire to encourage a more critical approach to history, this practice has been criticised from various quarters. People who disapprove of the defacing and toppling of statues often cite the illegality of these practices, and articles have also been published arguing that the removal of statues (even by the authorities) would amount to a desire to hide or deny a part of history.
Counter-demonstrations organised by far-right activists and white supremacist supporters have also been held in the United States and the United Kingdom. Rather than challenging the ideas at the heart of the Black lives matter movement, these groups use the argument of protecting statues and monuments to mask their fundamentally racist views. We are also currently witnessing a rise in materials circulated by far-right groups that are exploiting the popularity of the debate over monument removal in an attempt to broaden and radicalise their own supporters.
An alternative solution to the removal of statues and monuments that is frequently cited is the addition of signs and plaques capable of outlining the history of the individuals depicted. While on the one hand this practice might perhaps constitute an improvement, supporters of removal argue that transferring statues to museums is a more effective solution. They contend that placing statues in public spaces tends to imply a celebration of the person portrayed and that museum visitors are far more likely to read explanatory plaques than passers-by.
Another solution, proposed by Yasmeen Serhan in an article in The Atlantic, is the establishment of a "statute of limitations for statues," consisting of a periodic review of statues and monuments in public spaces, through which st
