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Disappointed that @StAndrewsHist are putting out think pieces like this http://tiny.cc/pbcrrz at the moment. There’s always space for nuance, but when black people are fighting for their actual lives it’s not the time for white academics to fret about tone.
Okay, I feel nervous about getting into this, but here’s a bit more ‘nuance’ from me. Standing against ‘identity politics’ makes no sense. All politics is informed by identity. Perhaps the authors don’t recognise that in mainstream politics, because it reflects their identity.
The historical framing here of Puritanism is something I’ve seen a lot recently in U.K. conservative circles. Fears about iconoclasm have been whipped up by centrist and right wing press to provoke fear for their core readers (the English middle classes).
E.g. the entirely bogus Telegraph story about York minster.
Public and church monuments in the UK are not at risk of a new Reformation or Puritan movement. People are just asking that we choose carefully who we want to (literally) elevate in our public spaces, and contextualise the hagiographic memorials of bad guys with a fuller history
