Even if these books are deemed politically incorrect, they are still part of history. Trying to get rid of the evidence now is a dangerous idea isn't it ?
We should be teaching why the message is wrong, rather than trying it to cover up and erase it.
This just screams of white folk (and yes, I'm white too) not being able to put their hands up and say "sorry, our ancestors fucked up".
We should be teaching why the message is wrong, rather than trying it to cover up and erase it.
That's the key element. But... what if such wrong message wasn't there in first place?
Asterix and Tintin were my favorite comics when I was a kid. I had the full collection. And yeah, there was a lot of stereotyping, but it was background decoration, like the French guy with a striped shirt and an Accordion in American movies. On the other side, the main characters in the plot were layered and balanced. It was nowhere close (to compare) to modern media which divides main characters into (1) good guys belonging to some ethnic group/gender, and (2) evil or stupid guys belonging to some other ethnic group/gender (aka white dudes).
If the original content is easily available, people can do some checking. Once you erase or ban the original content, you can say that the message was whatever you want and it will stick.
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Those were the ones written by Goscinny, art by Uderzo. After Goscinny died, Uderzo did the writing. He tried his best, but the drop in quality is noticeable.
Ok. Post-Goscinny volumes are worse, but they're not "modern Hollywood" level of worse. Uderzo is actually quite a decent storyteller, which is no small thing.
This just screams of white folk (and yes, I'm white too) not being able to put their hands up and say "sorry, our ancestors fucked up".
I dont think the idea is to purge all evidence of these books from history , its to get them out of classrooms
People make the same point when someone says
"Hey perhaps we shouldnt have this statue (e.g. Cecil Rhodes) up in the town square
someone else:
"but its our history , to forget is to not learn and repaet mistakes"
Which is all fine , you record the history - but once we've figured out, 300 years later , that invading entire continents , pillaging the natural assets , enslaving the population, and ruling over them isnt all that cool .
you dont celebrate the perpetrators of this in the same way.
To leave them as a statue , in a city centre ,on a plinth that says "Here is cecil Rhodes - our hero who slaughtered thousands to bring new african countries into our portfolio of stolen countries"
is taking the piss a bit isnt it?
TLDR:
Remeber , record , sure , but you dont have to "celebrate"
If you believe statues of Hitler and Osama Bin Laden are not appropriate, then you understand the reason why statues of certain people are being removed. It's obviously not about history or you'd want a statue of both men.
Well, I don't believe that any statues of Hitler exist today.
So I must say that discussing theoretical statues of him is a non-issue.
I'm not sure that any statues of Bin Laden exist either.
But if there are any out there, it is up to other people in that country to decide what to do.
Nope. The reason why there are no statues of Hitler and Bin Laden is exactly the issue.
We can't discuss 9-11 and Afghanistan without discussing Bin Laden. And Hitler dominates any discussion about WWII. Both Hitler and Bin Laden are important historical figures.
Statues are created all the time like Princess Diana's, therefore a statue of Bin Laden placed at the site of the former Twin Towers could be commissioned. How do you think that would go over?
Obviously, statues have zip to do with remembering history. Statues are created to honor a person or event.
Societies change. It's no longer acceptable to ignore or support human rights abuses conducted by a "hero" which is the reason they're being removed.
Ah, the poetic irony of burning Fahrenheit 451. They can have my copy of it for their bonfire of insanities.
Leftists, Right-wingers is such a simplistic way to label everything, as if all people are divided into two distinct political teams. Most folks with common sense are dotted across the long stretch of this wide divide.