Historical Artifacts Are Racist

Racist skulls

 

I am one of those "very fine people" who would have attended the Charlottesville protest against removing the statue. No, I'm not white or a "white supremacist". I am simply against the destruction of historical artifacts, including statues because I don't believe in re-writing history in order to cover over the parts that we [now] don't care for. I AM for adding new statues and whatnot to fill out the stories that the current statues (and whatever)  represent. Also, since I know that the demands never stop, I knew that eventually other things would be demanded and the slope is indeed very slippery and is steeper than a Tour de France "beyond category" climb.

Of course we saw that the demands to remove shit went beyond statues and a whole lot of things have been put on the table. Since liberal whites have no sense of self-respect, and are scared to death of being called 'racist" they are unable to say "no" to the mob, they capitulate at all times. 

So we come to the topic at hand. From CNN (See I told you I read across the spectrum):

Staff have been removing human remains from its collection of more than 500,000 artifacts, following a three-year review of displays and programming "from an ethical perspective." Overall, 120 objects containing human remains were removed from being on view, plus an additional 71 non-biological objects which were in the same displays, the museum told CNN Tuesday.

The museum said in a statement Monday that the changes were motivated by a desire to "deeply engage with its colonial legacy."

 So removing historical artifacts that help us to understand the past with, you know, actual evidence, needs to be removed to "engage with it's colonial legacy".  I see. Remove evidence to "engage". Like, let's not use evidence in court in order to prove the case.

Among the artifacts are the Shuar Tsanta -- or shrunken heads -- made by the Shuar and Achuar people of Ecuador and South America.

Formed from human, sloth and monkey heads, they were much sought after and collectors would pay one gun per head, "leading to a steep increase in violent warfare locally at the height of the 19th and 20th century collecting," the museum said. 

Interesting. So we could see what drove colonial warfare among native Americans.  Similar to what happened in Africa, where the slave trade included selling people for Cowry shells. 

Much of the museum's collection is "closely tied to British imperial expansion and the colonial mandate to collect and classify objects from the world over," the museum said, with many of the historic labels on the artifacts featuring "racist and derogatory language, commonly used at the time."

 

OK. We're grown up people. We'll note the language, note the era in which they were said and move on. But also, I've noticed that people in that age were quite frank about the behaviors of people unlike today where you can't call a thing by it's true name.

The heads, as well as other human remains including Naga trophy heads and the mummy of an Egyptian child, have now been moved to storage.

 

 Strong Black Kings felled by "racist" artifacts.

Laura van Broekhoven, director of the museum, said in a statement: "Our audience research has shown that visitors often saw the museum's displays of human remains as a testament to other cultures being 'savage', 'primitive' or 'gruesome.'

 Ok. Question for the "audience"? Would any of you kill people and "shrink" their heads for a gun? If not, you too a racist? No?

"Rather than enabling our visitors to reach a deeper understanding of each other's ways of being, the displays reinforced racist and stereotypical thinking that goes against the museum's values today."

Stereotypical because we have evidence that they did these things and, well, artifacts are racist. Don't want those short brown people to have inferiority complexes. Say what are the "museum values today"?  I would think that the point of the artifacts and displays was to inform the visitors of the  values those people had back then, whether we agree with them or not.