Colston Statute Taken Down

Today, Black Lives Matter protestors in Bristol pulled down the statute of Edward Colston, who made his fortune in the slave trade and plowed some of it back into the city. There have been campaigns in the past to have it removed, but they came to nothing. A Cambridge academic that I follow on Twitter wrote "So all this guff about 'erasing history' is the cover story for the real anxiety: the attack on property. If they come for statues today will they come for our houses and land tomorrow? And indeed they might. Hence the anxiety." The tweet echoed my feelings. White liberals are all for ending police brutality but the moment the conversations starts to move beyond that they get uncomfortable. White supremacy, the caste system, misogyny are all wage suppression systems and wage suppression or what Marxists would call exploitation of labour is the framework for living standards. The moment you threaten these mechanisms you are threatening living standards of privileged groups, not just the rich. Just like solutions to the climate crisis might involve a drastic change in living standards of middle-class Westerners. A change in living standards doesn't mean they will be fighting for scraps in the streets. But how many people are willing to acknowledge and make amends for white privilege, caste privilege, gender privilege, etc. by accepting a change in their standard of living?