Sarnia
Doodledog
How is putting wildlife on banknotes airbrushing people out of history?
Serious question. I genuinely don't follow the logic at all.
How many times have we heard about statues, book, etc being removed or discarded because they depict a part of our history that doesn't sit well with some?
The OP's thread says Austen and Churchill no longer fit our natural and cultural diversity so someone, no idea who, has decided they have to go. To me that is airbrushing our history, which I don't like. History has happened, we can't change it.
Something else has to appear on banknotes now which will be our wildlife, which suits me fine.
We hear of those things, but they aren't always true. Churchill has not been 'axed' or 'discarded' personally - it is just a change of image on banknotes.
Airbrushing is usually to make people look better, not to edit them out of a photo, and arguably that has happened with some figures in the past. Churchill was a good leader in the war, but Jarrow marchers and Welsh miners had a different view of him, for instance, and those views are not necessarily known to all. We've just had the centenary of the General Strike, and there will be people alive whose grandparents were starved into submission because of Churchill's actions. To them, he is unlikely to be a hero - the scars of that sort of thing last for generations. We can't change history, but we can recognise it for what it was, and respect those on both sides of conflicts.
IMO it's fine to have his face on notes for a while to recognise the good things he did, but then replace him with, say, Aneurin Bevan or Shirley Williams after a few years to recognise their contributions too. Or a stoat or a ladybird, for that matter. People may take issue with any of those images, but they would know they would also only be there for a limited time.
When statues have been removed it has usually been because of connections to slavery, I think. Whilst some who profited from the sale of humans may have been responsible for good deeds too, I can understand why those whose families were enslaved would object to seeing statues celebrating the architects of the slave trade, as would others who object to it whether they were 'involved' or not. The figures don't have to be written out of history, but nor should they be seen as heroes. They should be seen 'in the round' rather than having the bad bits airbrushed, IYSWIM. That's how I see it, anyway.
