Let's support diversity by raising UP, rather than tearing down

As if the world couldn't get any stranger: Covid-19 is now enhanced by yet more race-related tragedy out of the United States. We've been here before. I've been here before. Literally. Here's my report from St. Louis the night similar trauma in Ferguson erupted into violence. But this time it's different.

This time, instead of just looking on, the whole world seems to have gone up like a powder-keg of pent-up frustration, anger and resentment ... undoubtably fuelled by the once-in-a-lifetime anxieties of lockdown. Everything I saw in Ferguson in 2014 is happening again, but around the world. It starts with peaceful protests about an important issue. Then extremists hijack the agenda to tip the action into looting, vandalism and mayhem. Then come the impassioned debates about where the line needs to be drawn between the two. It's all happening in a world that ... even more now than then ... is so polarised that any comment, no matter how well meaning or crafted-for-balance, is going to be hated by one side or another and risks being pulled out of context to appear extreme.

The focus this week has evolved from the "easy" territory of people calling for police reform, while corporations clamour to shout their diversity credentials, to the much thornier cultural front. Many agree that Bristol probably should have responded faster to calls to remove slave trader Colston's statue, even if they don't agree with the way it came down. Of marginal artistic value and not installed until the 19th century, it's hardly a cultural loss. But what if the argument moves to Colston's tomb nearby? Designed by Gibbs and carved by Rysbrack, it's an exceptional piece of English Baroque art.

This week, driven by anxiety not to offend, the BBC removed the entire back catalogue of Little Britain and Fawlty Towers' classic episode "The Germans". HBO withdrew Gone With The Wind, not only an acknowledged masterpiece of film making but the first oscar-winning performance by a black actor, from its streaming service. Evidently after vociferous complaints Basil is not mentioning the war again, and Scarlett and Rhett are back with a new historical preface, but these cultural battles start us down a slippery slope.

If we are to only to erect statues of blameless, universally popular people, there will be no statues. If our art is sanitised to ensure that it doesn't offend, and we only consume works created or commissioned on the right side of history, there will be no art. Wagner wrote some of the most sublime music ever created, yet he was a notorious anti-semite. Most of the exquisite art of the Italian Renaissance was funded by brutal warlords to atone for their copious sins. To sanitise everything tainted by the horrors of trans-Atlantic slavery, we'll need to eliminate 300 years of European culture that also brought us Shakespeare, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

I'd much rather learn from history than edit it to my taste. The world is not black and white; neither literally nor metaphorically. History is full of contradictions, populated by those who did both good and bad. Let's learn from that. When it comes to the current focus on racism, I'd love to see part of the energy on the streets directed towards celebrating and promoting Africa's rich cultural legacy. A legacy about which I'd guess most people, including many of the protestors, are unaware.

Here's my short list of wonders to get you started.

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr's six-part documentary series, Africa's Great Civilisations, is an enthralling introduction.  Gates is a wonderful storyteller who unfurls a rich cultural legacy against a background of gorgeous location shoots. Even those who think they're pretty good on their world art and history will find much new here; the majority won't ever have heard these tales of impressive cultures with sophisticated politics, buildings and art. It will leave you wanting to learn more, which is the point of any good documentary. Sadly, neither original producer PBS nor the show's British broadcaster the BBC are streaming the 2017 series at the moment, which seems like a missed opportunity. You can stream it on Amazon Prime.

The African galleries at the British Museum are an intriguing treasure trove that show off a cultural legacy of bronze work, ceramics, carving and glorious textiles. Any fan of modern art will know how early 20th century Europeans were inspired to explore abstraction by discoveries coming out of Africa; many of the exhibits here show off that purity of line and fascination with geometry. (And, IMHO, are much nicer than many of the European extrapolations.) Speaking of modern, one of my favourite things here is The Tree of Life, made in Mozambique in 2004 from decomissioned weapons after that country's civil war. I love the way the artist has turned something ugly and tragic into a beautiful sign of life. The greatest masterpieces here from an art historical perspective, however, are the Benin bronzes, a series of plaques that are both beautiful and demonstrative of an impressive technical proficiency. Whether they should be here or returned to a museum in Nigeria is an incendiary argument I won't get into, but if you live in or have visited London and haven't taken the time to gaze at these in wonder, you're missing out.  The art in these galleries, which you can take an online peak at here, is sub-Saharan. Other masterpieces from the continent live in the Islamic galleries and, of course, in the British Museum's famous Egyptian collection.

Speaking of Egypt ... while there is much unproductive debate in sensational media about whether or not Cleopatra was black (as the descendant of Greek usurpers who adopted the pharaonic trait of incestuous marriage, the answer is "highly unlikely"), there were black-skinned pharaohs, and they were incredibly important. The 25th dynasty took advantage of Egypt's weakness in the 8th century BC to sweep north from modern-day Northern Sudan to take over the country for just over 70 years. As incomers often do, the Nubian pharaohs (aka Kushite) tried to prove they belonged by adopting the culture of the place they conquered. They went on a restoration binge, reviving monuments the native Egyptians had allowed to decay. When they retreated back to their homeland they took their new hybrid culture with them, building wonders of art and architecture. The spectacular pyramids at Meroë are little known, little visited and high on my bucket list.

Though they come from the other side of the continent, I imagine the Ife heads (top photo) show a similar regal strength and assurance to that possessed by those pharaohs. When archeologists unearthed the 18 heads in the late 1930s, artefacts that clearly came from before the time of European influence in Africa, they destroyed the idea that African culture was primitive. These are objects of breathtaking beauty, on par with the greatest Ancient Greek sculptures in giving you a sense that they could spring to life at any moment. There's one at the British Museum and I've seen a few others in travelling exhibitions over the years. They are wondrous.

Of course, anyone who had any doubt of African technical proficiency can start with the culture of ancient Egypt or ... less known ... the fact that African mosaic makers were arguably the best in the Roman empire. The Bardo Museum in Tunis, which I wrote about it back in 2007, has the most spectacular collection of Roman mosaics I've seen anywhere. And I've seen a lot. Unsurprisingly for a town on the African coast, the artists here were particularly good at portraying both sea life and the wild animals shipped up from the continent's interior to take part in gladiatorial games. The accuracy, depth and movement they create with small pieces of stone is spectacular.

Very different again, in style and location, are the carved stone churches of Lalibela. Ethiopia was one of the earliest nations to adopt Christianity, in the 4th century, but locals really hit their stride in the 12th when they decided to carve downwards into their hills to liberate holy places from the living stone. Thus the flat roofs are at ground level (Prof. Gates is standing next to one in the photo above) and you climb down into a pit to find the buildings rising above you. All of the interior decoration has been revealed as artists hollowed out the rooms. It's a mind-boggling work of artistic engineering and another one on my bucket list.

A very different cultural tradition is preserved in the libraries of Timbuktu. This trading hub in Mali flourished from the 12th century, is the home of some of the most distinctive mud-brick architecture in the world (also on my bucket list) and became a scholastic centre that collected the best of Islamic manuscripts when Islamic scholars led the world in science, philosophy and the preservation of classical wisdom. Tibuktu would also, by the way, be on the hit list if you want to tear down those who made their profits from slavery, as it was a nexus of the trade. The documents here were almost lost as the Malian empire declined from the 1600s, but in recent years modern scholars from around the world have re-discovered the treasure trove and have joined forces to preserve it. I'm proud to say that my own university, Northwestern, led a project to bring in scanners to digitise the documents. Meaning you can appreciate their beauty online with an easy Google search.

Sadly, the knee jerk reaction to any offence these days seems to be a desire to tear things down. On the cultural front, iconoclasm is often the default reaction to conflict. More than 3000 years ago, Hatshepsut's successors tried to carve her out of history, so great was their opposition to a female pharaoh. The Roman Empire thought the only way to resolve long-simmering conflicts with the Jews was to destroy their temple. Reformers swept through the churches of protestant Europe, and particularly England, hacking apart the artistic legacy of centuries to confront the sins they saw in the Roman Catholic church. More recently, we've seen fundamentalists blow up the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan and precious classical heritage in Palmyra.

I don't suggest that any of the examples above directly equate to the removal of Little Britain, or statues of Colston, Jackson or Lee. Simply that destruction is a typical, though unproductive, human reaction. And that in every one of the older examples I mentioned, descendants of those who did the damage have regretted the action. Because that destruction wipes away part of the human story; a story that is both ugly and beautiful, soul-destroying and heart-warming, cruel and kind. I believe the world is a better place when we focus on the positive side of that equation, and work to lift our brothers and sisters up to shared heights rather than knocking down history.