At an old stone harbor in the English city of Bristol, young people gather at a bent railing by the water and peer into the murky deep. They're looking for the defaced statue of the 17th century slave trader Edward Colston. And just maybe, they're looking at an era gone by.
Protesters last weekend wrenched Colston's statue from the plinth, rolled it down cobbled streets and tossed it into the very same waters on which his ships arrived hundreds of years ago, carrying shackled African men, women and children for him to sell on as slaves in the Americas.
The police killing of George Floyd in the US last month has galvanized a global anti-racism movement. Now it is forcing Europeans to re-examine their colonial histories and even question their national identities.
Few Europeans will explicitly defend their country's historical use of slavery, yet challenging the celebration of the very leaders and merchants who profited from slavery and the horrors of colonialism is proving a less comfortable conversation.
Comments