[Link]

So now we know

TBF Islam along with the East had a far bigger role to play in our evolution into a ‘civilised’ world than most western education portrays

All that said I’m pretty sure we learnt about the Barbary trade at school. Maybe an anomaly

Propaganda works both ways. You can find an angle here and find an equivalent there

Essentially every culture or civilisation was built upon the slave trade in some form or another, and really it simply depends on what area of the world you’re in as to the demographic that it affects the most. Ultimately, it’s important to always be prepared to challenge history, rather than just accept it or dismiss it as ‘back in the day’. It’s not as simplistic as this, but there is an element of reap what you sow going on. I’m not condoning the more extreme ends of it, or the lack of balance in how it’s been portrayed in some cases, but ultimately it comes down to what it always comes down to - how recent is the memory? How deep do the scars run? Are they a shared cultural pain, passed on for generations? Tick all those boxes and increase minority demographics and your karma is here.

I suppose what I’m saying is you can’t just dismiss this, brush it off or play the ‘it happened ages ago’ card. But at the same time you can’t hold people of the ‘now’ accountable for past actions. But you can test them once in a while to see if they’ve learnt from the mistakes of the past - and quarrel with bronzed up idols being celebrated in a square rather than taught about and viewed in a more balanced way.

I have no idea where the line is, but some of ‘our’ cultural icons should be reappraised, or at the very least exposed to create healthy debate about our previously held, perhaps ignorant views about them. And why not? Anything else is simply rewriting history for the sake of avoiding the debate.

Should every statue be pulled down? No. Should we decide to have a long hard think about our actual history? The one that unobjectively lays bare the truth rather than hides it through western flavoured teachings? I’m more interested in that version, please. The actual facts rather than what really can be equated to religious teachings (all countries and cultures are guilty of this of course, but it really annoys me when people don’t even think to challenge what they’ve been taught).

Who is "we"?

I found this piece interesting as it introduced a new perspective on these issues and as a consequence is thought provoking :-

[Link]

What this shows is that when you throw a whole load of races, creeds and religions together, they don't get on.

What a shocker.

A pity the idiot politicians of this country didn't get their faces out of the trough and learn a lesson from America.

Humans create division. It is what they do.