| Comment | I feel so many different ways about this.
Having public infrastructure named after you is a great honourific. If we no longer honour the people the stuff was named after it should be fair enough to strip that honourific.
At the same time this feels like painting over history, and kind of virtue signalling.
You're going to rename the Mitchell Library to something else? Cool, but are you going to give £7 million to the descendents of Mitchell's slaves? Are you going to rename it after one of them? How does changing a name help mend the scar slavery left?
This also goes beyond slavery. It is kind of about how we see people in the past. When you rename a library after someone you're not celebrating the number of slaves they had, you're celebrating the act of leaving their entire family estates to the city as opposed to your pals.
Is it fair to condemn people for engaging in business practices that were not as condemned when they lived as they are today?
I don't think there is an easy answer here. |
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