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Ive spent the better part of a decade trying to elucidate why one of our major political parties went crazy and decided to worship Donald Trumpwith that knowledge in hand, we have the potential to begin healing both the party and America.

Trump was able to take over the Republican Party for many reasonsmost of which reflect Republican failings. But there is another perspective that is not widely understood or appreciated. According to Kevin Drum, the liberal journalist formerly with Washington Monthly and Mother Jones, It is not conservatives who have turned American politics into a culture war battle. It is liberals.

Its a counterintuitive observation. Arent Republicans the ones who are staking out extreme positions? Since roughly the year 2000, according to survey data, Drum writes, Democrats have moved significantly to the left on most hot button social issues [here, he cites immigration, guns, taxes, abortionand even religion] while Republicans have moved only slightly right. So, ask yourself this question: Was Trumps rise to power a product of a Republican backlash to Democratic provocation?

Democrats dont comprehend how it feels to stand athwart history, yelling Stop! All. The. Damn. Time. Its something akin to how it feels to be a soccer goalie. Conservatives are constantly on defense. Progressives are always coming for more. Betsy Rosss flag. Theodore Roosevelt statues. Goya foods. This constant barrage, to summarize Drums hypothesis, drives conservatives crazy. Thats whyin lieu of actually winning most policy battlesso many conservatives have radicalized.

For most people, losing something is far more painful than the pleasure of gaining something of equivalent value, Drum explains. And since conservatives are losing the customs and hierarchies that theyve long lived with, their reaction is far more intense than the liberal reaction toward winning the changes they desire. This produces more outrageous behavior from conservatives even though liberals are actually the ur-source of polarization.

Of course, one mans provocation is another mans progress. Should Democrats feel bad that they won the gay marriage debate? Today, most Republicans support it. But putting aside the deep substantive questions, we are still left with other, more technical, complications. Lets start with the survey data on which Drum premises his piece. Polling is always subject to criticism about things like margins of error and the way questions are framed, not to mention selection bias. But the most legitimate pushback concerns sample size. By starting his analysis in the year 2000, he conveniently ignores the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions. In this regard, Drums hypothesis feels consistent with criticism that Trumps more nationalistic supporters lodged at the conservative movementsaying we have conserved nothing.

A simple left-right analysis of shifts in public opinion from 2000 to 2021 also ignores the GOPs reordering from Bush compassionate conservatism to Rovian gay marriage bashing to Tea Party anti-bailout/anti-Obamacare revolt to cultish authoritarian Trumpism (mixed in with heightened focus on race/immigration/transgender issues but less focus on traditional fiscal conservatism). Still, despite all the messiness and the caveats, Drum is on to something.

Trumps presidency was preceded by an Obama era that many of us felt was relatively anodyne. While racial backlash likely contributed to some of the rights radicalization that occurred during that time, many religious conservatives saw the controversies involving Hobby Lobby (trying to force a Christian company to provide contraception) and Little Sisters of the Poor (trying to force a religious order to provide contraception) as a direct attack on religious liberty. Others resented Obamas executive order on DACA (which he previously said was unconstitutional) and his trolling of Trump during the 2016 presidential race (ostensibly to accelerate the GOPs looney lurch so they would lose the election). That did not work out as planned.

Democracy works best when we have two sane centrist parties. Right now, we have one half of one party that fits this description. Therefore, its in everyones best interest to encourage Democrats to reel it in a bit, to save themselves, and to help the GOP recover from the cancer that elected Trump.

That means avoiding crazy ideas like defund the police. That means avoiding rhetoric that essentially labels all white Americans as white supremacists. It means not imposing the kind of litmus test that would force even Joe Biden to flip-flop on taxpayer funding of abortion. It means fellow Democrats condemning rhetoric like we saw from Squad member Cori Bush over the Fourth of July. It means having Biden finally have his Malarkey Moment, where he defends America and calls out the left-wing of his party for such egregious rhetoric.

All this to say that Democrats would benefit from some introspection, adult leadership, and a bit of humilityjust acknowledging that they dont have a monopoly on virtue or good ideas. Sometimes liberals are right about big things (e.g., civil rights) and sometimes conservatives are right about big things (e.g., the Cold War). Democracy is messy, but we eventually hash things out and (usually) arrive at the right place. But it takes us all working (and sometimes fighting) together.

The crux of my message to Democrats is that you should resist the siren call of radicalism, which the GOP has not, but also the temptation to run up the score while youre in power. If the countrys well-being isnt an adequate motivator, maybe self-preservation is. Drum makes the pragmatic case that Democrats have stoked the culture wars by getting more extreme on social issues and Republicans have used this to successfully cleave away a segment of both the non-college white vote and, more recently, the non-college nonwhite vote.

Cards on the table: I am an American conservative because I believe that liberal democracy is precious and worth conserving. I believe in reformnot revolution. And it strikes me that in these crazy times, radical left-wing ideas are dangerous not just on their own merits, but also because they spur contentious right-wing backlash.

Now, you may assert that other peoples revanchist (over)reactions arent your problem. But if you care about thwarting Donald Trump and the next Donald Trumpand if you care about holding this country together and preserving this tenuous experimentI say they are.

Read more from the original source:
Dems Helped Give Us TrumpThey Shouldn't Repeat That Mistake - The Daily Beast

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., speaks at a news conference about banning federal funding for the teaching of critical race theory. Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect hide caption

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., speaks at a news conference about banning federal funding for the teaching of critical race theory.

Last month, Republican lawmakers decried critical race theory, an academic approach that examines how race and racism function in American institutions.

"Folks, we're in a cultural warfare today," Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said at a news conference alongside six other members of the all-Republican House Freedom Caucus. "Critical race theory asserts that people with white skin are inherently racist, not because of their actions, words or what they actually believe in their heart but by virtue of the color of their skin."

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., added: "Democrats want to teach our children to hate each other."

Republicans, who are fighting the teaching of critical race theory in schools, contend it divides Americans. Democrats and their allies maintain that progress is unlikely without examining the root causes of disparity in the country. The issue is shaping up to be a major cultural battle ahead of next year's midterm elections.

Academics, particularly legal scholars, have studied critical race theory for decades. But its main entry into the partisan fray came in 2020, when former President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning federal contractors from conducting certain racial sensitivity trainings. It was challenged in court, and President Biden rescinded the order the day he took office.

Since then, the issue has taken hold as a rallying cry among some Republican lawmakers who argue the approach unfairly forces students to consider race and racism.

"A stand-in for this larger anxiety"

Andrew Hartman, a history professor at Illinois State University, described the battle over critical race theory as typical of the culture wars, where "the issue itself is not always the thing driving the controversy."

"I'm not really sure that the conservatives right now know what it is or know its history," said Hartman, author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars.

He said critical race theory posits that racism is endemic to American society through history and that, consequently, Americans have to think about institutions like the justice system or schools through the perspective of race and racism.

However, he said, "conservatives, since the 1960s, have increasingly defined American society as a colorblind society, in the sense that maybe there were some problems in the past but American society corrected itself and now we have these laws and institutions that are meritocratic and anybody, regardless of race, can achieve the American dream."

Confronted by the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer, as well as the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 curriculum, which roots American history in its racist past, Hartman said many Americans want simple answers.

"And so critical race theory becomes a stand-in for this larger anxiety about people being upset about persistent racism," he said.

Legislative action

States such as Idaho and Oklahoma have adopted laws that limit how public school teachers can talk about race in the classroom, and Republican legislatures in nearly half a dozen states have advanced similar bills that target teachings that some educators say they don't teach anyway.

There's movement on the national level too.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has introduced the Combating Racist Training in the Military Act, a bill that would prohibit the armed forces and academics at the Defense Department from promoting "anti-American and racist theories," which, according to the bill's text, includes critical race theory.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said critical race theory "brings division" and "advances hate" during a news conference on Capitol Hill on May 12. Jacquelyn Martin/AP hide caption

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said critical race theory "brings division" and "advances hate" during a news conference on Capitol Hill on May 12.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said he is co-sponsoring legislation that would prevent federal dollars from being spent on critical race theory in schools or government offices.

"The ideas behind critical race theory and [its] implementation is creating this oppressor-oppressed divide amongst our people," Donalds told NPR. "And so no matter how you feel about the history of our country as a Black man, I think our history has actually been quite awful, I mean, that's without question but you also have to take into account the progression of our country, especially over the last 60 to 70 years."

Donalds said the country's history, including its ills, should be taught, but that critical race theory causes more problems than solutions.

"It only causes more divisions, which doesn't help our union become the more perfect union," he said.

A post-racial country?

Nearly half of the speakers at the Republican news conference in May invoked Martin Luther King Jr., expressing their desire to be judged "by the content of their character, not the color of their skin."

But Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a sociology professor at Duke University, said King's dream was about the future. "He didn't say, 'We are now in a colorblind society,' " he said.

Bonilla-Silva, whose book Racism Without Racists critiques the notion that America is now "colorblind," says he too shares King's dream, "but in order for us to get to the promised land of colorblindness, we have to go through race. It's the opposite of what these folks are arguing."

He says the idea that American society is post-racial is nonsense.

"We are not, because we watched the video of George Floyd, and we are not because we have the data on income inequality, on wealth inequality, on housing inequality," he said.

As an example, Bonilla-Silva noted the opposition of whites to affirmative action in the post-civil rights era.

"Many whites said things such as, 'I'm not a racist. I believe in equal opportunity, which is why I oppose affirmative action, because affirmative action is discrimination in reverse,' " he noted.

"That statement only works if one believes that discrimination has ended," he added. "But because it has not ended, claiming that you oppose affirmative action because it's presumably discrimination in reverse ends up justifying the racial status quo and the inequalities."

Motivator for the midterms?

The fight over critical race theory will likely continue to be a heated issue ahead of next year's midterm elections. Although November 2022 seems a long way away, Christine Matthews, president of Bellwether Research and a public opinion pollster, says pushback to anti-racism teaching is exactly the kind of issue that could maintain traction among certain voters.

"I think it's just one more addition to the culture war that the Republicans really want to fight and it's what they want to make the 2022 midterms about," she said.

Matthews noted that Biden's approval ratings, in the mid-50s, are significantly higher than Trump's were throughout his term in office, "so Republicans are wanting to make this about othering the Democrats and making them seem as extreme and threatening to white culture as possible."

"If Republicans can make [voters] feel threatened and their place in society threatened in terms of white culture and political correctness and cancel culture, that's a visceral and emotional issue, and I do think it could impact turnout."

These issues could be used to galvanize conservative voters and increase their numbers at the polls.

"We have seen evidence that the Republican base is responding much more to threats on cultural issues, even to some degree more than economic issues," Matthews said.

But Rep. Donalds said the Republican Party doesn't need to rally the base to get it to show up to vote.

"When it comes to the '22 elections, we don't need additional ammunition," he said, pointing to what he views as a list of failures from the Biden administration, from budget and taxes to shutting down the Keystone pipeline.

Doug Heye, the former communications director for the Republican National Committee, said in some ways, the attempts to mandate what schools can or can't teach highlights just how far the GOP under Trump has moved away from traditionally conservative principles like wanting less federal involvement in schools.

"A lot of what we might have described as conservative policy five years ago, 10 years ago, now just isn't that case," he said. "If we're pushing what is a current priority for the Trump base, that's defined as conservative, whether or not that's a federal top-down policy or not. So the old issues of federalism has really been upended under Donald Trump's reign as the leader of the party."

Heye said at this point, critical race theory is still politically a "niche issue" among conservative voters, but he expects it to play a larger role in state assemblies, governors races and school boards rather than in national politics.

He said he believes it's an issue some candidates will raise "to further rile up the base that is already pretty riled."

"So the question will be then for Republicans: What else are they really emphasizing?" he said.

From a strategy perspective, Matthews says she thinks it will all come down to messaging.

"The Republicans are trying to make it a bad thing," she said, "but I feel like if the Democrats got the messaging right, they could make it a good thing."

Both sides have a little more than a year to do that.

See the rest here:
The Brewing Political Battle Over Critical Race Theory - NPR

Although it has been widely noted that Lord Liverpool was the last prime minister before Boris Johnson to marry while in office, the more apposite precedent is Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton. In even shorter time than Johnson 253 days against 675 he managed to combine the duties of high office with both divorce and marriage.

Grafton was a notorious gadabout who, before he entered Downing Street, was caught in flagrante delicto in his box at the opera with a tailors daughter and courtesan called Nancy Parsons. His brief premiership (October 1768 to January 1770) was undistinguished. He lost Corsica to the French, which wasnt as disastrous as his successor Lord Norths loss of America, but still a blow to national pride.

A persistent critic, writing under the pseudonym Junius (probably Philip Francis, a Dublin-born MP), observed in a public letter to Grafton that the genius of your life carried you through every possible change and contradiction of conduct, without the momentary imputation or colour of a virtue; and the wildest spirit of inconsistency never once betrayed you into a wise or honourable action. If only Keir Starmer were so eloquent.

[See also:How Boris Johnson escaped the blame for Tory austerity and what Labour can do about it]

Johnson has never made a secret of his wish to appoint the former Daily Mail editor and pro-Brexit warrior Paul Dacre as chair of the media regulator Ofcom. Now, after the interview panel declared Dacre not appointable, the Prime Minister has ordered a rerun of the contest.

The four-person panel was reportedly unanimous. It is headed by Paul Potts, a journalist who is a director of Rupert Murdochs Times Newspapers Holdings and a close associate of John Whittingdale, minister of state at the culture department, who, like Dacre, is a long-standing critic of the BBC.

The others comprise a former Tory minister (albeit a Remainer); a civil servant appointed under Johnsons government to a senior role at the culture department; and a recent deputy chairman of the financial auditor KPMG. If even these people find Dacre not up to the job possibly because about 90 per cent of Ofcoms work involves smartphones, broadband and the internet, technologies with which Dacre has only a nodding acquaintance it seems likely any sane group of men and women would reach a similar conclusion.

Johnson is entitled to overrule them and appoint Dacre anyway. But that isnt enough apparently. He wants them to consider the error of their ways and repent. Will he also demand public confessions?

[See also:Can Matt Hancock survive? Here are two reasons why he might]

The resignation of the National Trust chairman, the business executive Tim Parker, is greeted as a victory for anti-woke campaigners. A group called Restore Trust, which wants a return to the Trusts apolitical ethos, had circulated a motion for this autumns annual general meeting calling for Parker to go. Parker, who has already served more than six years in the unpaid post, planned to step down anyway, but readers of Tory newspapers are told he leaves because he presided over a report last year that detailed links to slavery and colonialism among the Trusts properties.

Under Parker, no houses or gardens were shut (except temporarily due to the pandemic), no statues demolished, no paintings removed, no individuals cancelled. But with noisy commentary from self-styled libertarians such as the columnist Toby Young, Tim Parker himself has been well and truly cancelled.

[See also:Gordon Brown on vaccinations, poverty and the climate crisis]

As the end of all measures against Covid-19 approaches (perhaps), I suddenly realise there will be a very large downside. No longer can I look forward to all Leicester City football and Leicester Tigers rugby matches being brought live to my home by Sky and BT Sport.

Once more, I shall have to explore dubious, malware-infested streaming services and join betting websites. I may even have to decipher impenetrable railway timetables and pay exorbitant ticket prices to attend matches in person. Come the autumn, I wonder how many of us will be crying Can we have our lockdown back please?

Originally posted here:
First Thoughts: The culture wars reach the National Trust, Dacre and Ofcom, and lockdown longings - New Statesman

A view of the telescope domes on the roof of the Vatican Observatory, at the Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo, in 2015. Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A view of the telescope domes on the roof of the Vatican Observatory, at the Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo, in 2015.

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy At a time of growing diffidence toward some new scientific discoveries, the one and only Vatican institution that does scientific research recently launched a campaign to promote dialogue between faith and science.

It's the Vatican Observatory, located on the grounds of the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, a medieval town in Alban Hills 15 miles southeast of Rome.

The director, Brother Guy Consolmagno, is giving this reporter a guided tour of the grounds. We drive along a cypress-lined road, admiring majestic gardens and olive groves nestled near the remains of a palace of the Roman Emperor Domitian, before reaching a field with farmworkers and animals.

"This is the end that has the papal farm, so you can see the cows the papal milk comes from," Consolmagno says as he points out the working farm that provides the pope at the Vatican with vegetable and dairy products.

(Pope Francis, known for his frugality and habit of not taking vacations, decided not to use the papal summer villa, which he considers too luxurious. But he ordered the estate become a museum open to the public.)

For most of its history, the Catholic Church rejected scientific findings that conflicted with its doctrine. During the Inquisition, it even persecuted scientists such as Galileo Galilei.

In the Middle Ages, it became apparent that the Julian calendar, named for Julius Caesar and established in 46 B.C., had accumulated numerous errors. But it wasn't until 1582 that the Vatican Observatory was born with the reform of the Gregorian calendar (named for Pope Gregory XIII) that, based on observation of the stars, established fixed dates for religious festivities.

Consolmagno takes pains to rebut the anti-science image of the Catholic Church. He cites the 19th century Italian priest Angelo Secchi as a pioneer in astronomy and the 20th century Belgian priest Georges Lematre, known as "father of the Big Bang theory," which holds that the universe began in a cataclysmic explosion of a small, primeval superatom.

Astronomical text books in Latin are displayed at the Vatican Observatory. Sylvia Poggioli/NPR hide caption

Astronomical text books in Latin are displayed at the Vatican Observatory.

Run by Jesuits, the Observatory moved to this bucolic setting in the 1930s, when light pollution in Rome obstructed celestial observation.

One domed building in the papal gardens houses a huge telescope dating from 1891. It's called Carte du Ciel map of the sky and it stands under a curved ceiling that slides open. Consolmagno says, "It was one of about 18 identical telescopes that were set up around the world to photograph the sky, and every national observatory was given its own piece of sky to photograph." He adds, it was "one of the first international projects of astronomy."

A native of Detroit, Consolmagno studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, volunteered with the Peace Corps in Africa and taught physics before becoming a Jesuit brother in his 40s. He has been at the Observatory for three decades. His passion for astronomy started with a childhood love of science fiction.

"I love the kind of science fiction that gives you that sense of wonder, that reminds you at the end of the day why we dream of being able to go into space," Consolmagno says.

A passionate Star Wars fan, he tells this reporter proudly, "even Obi-Wan Kenobi came to visit" the Observatory, pointing to the signature of actor Alec Guinness, who played the role in the original movie trilogy, in a visitor's book from 1958.

Top scientists teach at the Observatory's summer school. And scientists and space industry leaders have come for a United Nations-sponsored conference on the ethics and peaceful uses of outer space. It cooperates with NASA on several space missions and it operates a modern telescope in partnership with the University of Arizona.

Left: A visitors' book signed by actor Alec Guinness in 1958. Right: A photo of a prelate decades ago reclining to view the telescope. Sylvia Poggioli/NPR hide caption

Left: A visitors' book signed by actor Alec Guinness in 1958. Right: A photo of a prelate decades ago reclining to view the telescope.

"But where we still need to work is with the rest of the world," says the Observatory director, "the people in the pews, especially nowadays. There are too many people in the pews who think you have to choose between science and faith."

To reach those people, the Observatory recently launched a new website and podcasts exploring issues such as meteorites hitting the Earth or how to live on the moon.

And an online store sells merch hoodies, caps, tote bags and posters of the Milky Way.

In just a few months, says the director, visitors to the website have doubled.

As to how the faith-versus-science culture wars can be resolved, Consolmagno says what's most important is that he wears a collar he is a devoutly religious person who also considers himself an "orthodox scientist." "That fact alone shatters the stereotypes," he says.

Another American at the Observatory shattering stereotypes is Brother Robert Macke, curator of the collection of meteorites rocks formed in the early days of the solar system.

Holding a dark rock a few inches long, he says it was formed 4.5 billion years ago providing clues on how the solar system was formed.

"In order to understand the natural world," he says, "you have to study the natural world. You cannot just simply close your eyes and ignore it or pretend that it is other than it is. You have to study it and you have to come to appreciate it."

Consolmagno asked how the study of the stars interacts with his faith says astronomy doesn't provide answers to theological questions, and scripture doesn't explain science. "But the astronomy is the place where I interact with the Creator of the universe, where God sets up the puzzles and we have a lot of fun solving them together," the director says.

And he believes the recent dark period of the pandemic has weakened the arguments of those who are skeptical of science.

"Because people can see science in action, science doesn't have all the answers," he says. "And yet science is still with all of its mistakes and with all of its stumbling is still better than no science."

The rest is here:
The Vatican's Space Observatory Wants To See Stars And Faith Align - NPR

Last week, for the first time in months, the burning eye of the outrage industry pivoted westwards and came to rest upon the city of Bristol. On Friday, the statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston, toppled last June during a Black Lives Matter protest, was put on display. To the fury of some, it was not returned triumphantly to its pedestal in the centre of the city, but exhibited in Bristols M Shed museum.

The debate around Colston in the summer of 2020 was largely conducted in a fact-free zone. So it is surely disconcerting for those determined to defend the memorialisation of a mass murderer that in this new setting Colstons bronze effigy is surrounded by displays that give a detailed history of the slave traders grim career and the strange story that explains why, in the 19th century, a cult was created around him and the statue erected.

For most of the 300 years since his death in 1721, Colston was little known outside Bristol. Few would have imagined that his statue would become the totemic image for Britains 21st-century history wars. Still, the professionally outraged have never allowed Colstons relative obscurity to stand in their way as they rushed to his defence, having first looked him up on Wikipedia.

Yet as Colston appeared on display last week, carefully preserved and presented by conscientious curators, it was not obvious what the source of offence would be. The statue has, after all, been retained and with so much actual history included in the exhibit, there was a danger that those sent to report on Colstons second coming might have to write about the suffering of his victims.

Luckily, two petty grievances were found. The first is that the statue is being displayed at an inappropriate angle. Perhaps there is a perfect angle, as yet unknown to museum professionals, for the public display of mass murderers at which their crimes become more acceptable, perhaps even quaint? The second grievance: that the statue still carries the graffiti sprayed on it during the demonstration of last June.

What the Bristol curators appreciated is what curators anywhere would appreciate that the graffiti is now an integral part of its story, like the graffiti carved into Stonehenge and the pyramids or daubed on the walls inside the Reichstag by soldiers of the Red Army in 1945. Would those who argue that Colston should have been cleaned also advocate that we chip away the historic signatures and poetry of Julia Balbilla carved into the monuments of Egypt? Should we sandblast the graffiti off the hundreds of slabs of the Berlin Wall that now stand in museums and parks across the world? The historical significance of the blood-red paint on Colstons bronze hands will become greater with each passing year.

The art critic Alastair Sooke, who last week compared Colston, a man complicit in the deaths of an estimated 19,000 people, to a disgraced celebrity, concluded that not removing the graffiti was a calculated insult. Colston, not the thousands whose lives he helped snuff out, Sooke felt, was the real victim here. Have we stumbled upon a murder scene? he asked. The answer, of course, is yes and Colston was the perpetrator, not the victim.

London art critics who casually portray mass murderers as victims, like Westminster politicians who fan the flames of cultural conflict, do so from a safe distance and in a consequence-free environment. Since Colstons fall, those of us who call Bristol home have been disturbed by the way that the city has become targeted by those from outside who seek to deepen divisions rather than heal them. At the time, I wrote of the dangers and distractions of the moment. But as a public historian, rather than a public servant, the task of trying to actually defuse those dangers fell to others.

Those fraught weeks of last summer are the subject of a new BBC documentary, Statue Wars: One Summer in Bristol (declaration: I am one of the executive producers). Filmed over the summer of 2020, it is a classic fly-on-the wall documentary, made by the Bristol film-maker Francis Welch. It follows what happened in City Hall as the worlds media, the London artist Marc Quinn and agitators from outside all focused on Bristol.

From the moment BLM went global and statues in the US began to fall, Bristol, a city that has struggled more than many to acknowledge its slave-trading history, was always destined to face difficulties. What made it all the more significant is that it also happens to be the first city in Europe to be run by an elected mayor who is a descendent of enslaved people, Marvin Rees, who has just been re-elected.

The confected battle lines of our confected culture war run through both Bristol and its mayor. Mixed-race, with a working-class, white mother and Jamaican father, Rees was brought up in one of Bristols poorest districts. For him, as for many black people, myself included, the white working class do not belong to a rival group but are family members, friends and members of the same communities.

What comes across in the documentary are the dangers of the road we are currently walking down and the nightmare of division and distraction confronting local leaders.

The culture wars look very different from behind the desk of a city mayor than on the pages of the tabloids or in our social media feed. Not for the mayor the easy gesture: he has to work through solutions, try to balance competing interests, particularly the interplay of class and race.

Anyone thinking of a future in politics might well watch Statue Wars and change their mind. Anyone unconcerned by the dangers of this moment might rethink their complacency.

Statue Wars: One Summer in Bristol will air on BBC Two at 9pm on Thursday, 10 June

David Olusoga is a historian and broadcaster

See the original post:
A year on, the battered and graffitied Colston is finally a potent memorial to our past - The Guardian