Philosophy Research Seminar - Joanna Burch-Brown

Joanna Burch-Brown (University of Bristol)

Would renaming our school erase history? On slavery, colonialism and contested heritage

Europe's transatlantic enslavement of West Africans from the 1500s-1800s had uniquely harmful consequences. Atlantic world slavery was characterized by mass human rights violations, and the ideas of racial hierarchy generated in its defence have been used in myriad ways since Emancipation to justify African exploitation and exclusion. Nevertheless, a large number of schools and civic institutions around the world are named after the people who built Atlantic world slavery. In Africa, the Americas and Britain there are countless schools and other civic institutions named after people who wrote slavery into law, enforced it, coordinated it and became wealthy from it. Is there a moral duty to rename such institutions, as an expression of acknowledgement, remorse and repudiation of slavery and racist ideologies? Or would renaming these institutions erase history? I examine these questions, focusing particularly on the responsibilities of schools. I offer three options for how schools might best approach these questions.