This wasn’t meant to be my 3rd blog post – I’ve got a banger lined up raving about my love for heist films – but the events of the year 2020 wait for no blogger, and I’ve been frustrated enough with the recent boiling over of all sorts of politicised extremes that I’ve felt a need to actually express my own perspective on the current madness.
Where to start, though? With the protesters who have railed against the scientific and medical concerns over the current pandemic, the protesters who staunchly refuse to believe the doctors and scientists (who are united in a way rare amongst academic communities) that have urged for the lockdown measures over the last months? Because make no mistake, these protesters are foolish. I’m a firm believer in trusting the experts until proven otherwise – and they will be proven otherwise, from time to time – but generally, if you know jack all about a topic, you’re probably best off trusting the people who’ve trained in it. It’s why I trust in myself if someone wants an opinion on German organ music, and why I would never try replacing a broken window myself. I know my skills and my knowledge base, and I have to rely on the expert opinions of my fellow society members for topics outside of my wheelhouse.
The people who have been protesting against coronavirus are wrong. Who knows, they may be proven right. After all, I cannot definitively say that Bill Gates did not invent the virus to be transmitted through 5G. But if you’re proven correct once in a million times, you’ll look amazing that one time, and be an idiot the rest of your life. Most of us are not trained medical practitioners, and we should trust those who are.
That being said, the people protesting against racism and police violence are now equally misguided. I’ll confess to at least having deep sympathy to their cause and their frustrations, unlike the coronavirus protesters. But having a righteous cause does not grant one a superior immune system, and even with all possible precautions, it is naïve to believe that such congregations won’t exacerbate and facilitate additional outbreaks. Apart from anything else, this is frustrating to no end as it weakens the very valid message that these protests are trying to convey. However, it is apparently impossible for people to remain aware of more than one crisis at a time.
This has also seen police around the world placed in an ironic, near-untenable position. When they show force, then they lend credence to the protesters. When they allow protests to proceed unchecked, they fail in their duty to uphold the laws designed to protect all of us. In some places, a happy balance of respect and cooperation has been found – but in far, far more, the police have proven either their brutality or their impotence (and occasionally both at the same time, in the same place).
I’m not saying that misinformation is solely the domain of the coronavirus deniers, either….though on the other side, the misinformation is both more benign, and more masked. Protesting against coronavirus measures is just wrong, plain and simple. However, mixing fact and fiction according to whatever factoid popped up on social media is also dangerous, as it reduces legitimacy when confronted with a genuine opportunity to change something for the better. For example, as an Aussie, one of the big issues leapt upon by protesters following George Floyd has been a ‘disproportionate’ rate of Indigenous deaths in custody. This was true in Australia 30 years ago. Now, though, Indigenous people are statistically less likely to die whilst being held in custody than non-Indigenous people. The true figure is that more Indigenous people die overall in custody than the other groups, but the ratio of imprisoned Indigenous people is also much higher.
Indicative of systemic racism? Absolutely. Indicative of a very real gap in living standards, opportunities and quality of life between Indigenous people and others? Of course. Indicative of a racist and brutal police force? Well….given the evidence, not really. Not to say that there are not racist or brutal police officers in Australia – but, as a force, they have surprisingly little to answer for overall. I’m not as familiar with the US, but from what I’ve heard, the policing in general there is far more brutal, far more quick to anger and to call upon aggressive tactics….and this needs to be corrected. Again, like in my home country, every piece of evidence I have ever come across points to the US suffering from deeply ingrained societal racism, but I have a suspicion that the reform of their police force may be a somewhat seperate issue.
This misinformation can also be extremely benign, however. I happened upon a video this morning of Jane Elliott, a prominent anti-racism activist. https://youtu.be/m7-y8MNzJKI 36.49. Elliott is well-informed, passionate, and deeply socially conscious, and I have no intention of taking that away from her. However, she is also less of an expert on mapmaking. Part of her video deals with the ‘Mercator Projection’, which is almost certainly the exact same world map that was on your classroom wall at school. Elliott demonstrates how this map features great distortion of physical sizes, causing some landmasses to be far larger than they should be, and others to be much smaller. Elliott is completely correct in this matter, but she then unfortunately tries to claim that the reason for these inaccuracies is that Mercator was commissioned by the Pope to create the map, and so exaggerated the Christian nations as being literally larger and more significant than the other, pagan and non-Caucasian lands. This is demonstrably false.
The Mercator map represented a huge breakthrough in mapmaking and navigation when it was first produced in 1569, as its shifting scale across latitudes allowed it to accurately represent a three-dimensional globe on a sheet of paper….if read with the correct scale, as it was for centuries by navigators. Had Mercator taken even the slightest racist fancy in its creation, the precise mathematics that underpin it would be for naught. Further, even if he had, it seems odd that he would overemphasise the size of, say, Canada….a land that would not be properly settled by Europeans for at least 10 years.
Why is this important? For a couple of reasons, at least to me. Firstly, again, I sincerely believe that it is dangerous of such prominent figures as Elliott to represent false information, as it can undermine the credibility of her legitimate and vital work. However, I also think it’s important to protect recognition of Mercator for who he was – a skilled and brilliant cartographer who solved the most significant problem of his profession, rather than a racist artist taken with flights of cultural superiority.
I swear I’m nearly done, but that also leads me to my final, great concern surrounding the George Floyd protests….namely, the defacing and destruction of historical artefacts and statues. It’s taken me a few days to realise why I’m so uncomfortable with this aspect of the protests. After all, it’s not like I knew or cared who, say, Edward Colston or King Leopold II were until this week. And frankly, having now read about them, I can’t say that I have much admiration for the former, or any for the latter. Yet, I cannot claim any joy following the defacing and removal of statues of these two, and others, over the last week. Perhaps it’s the strangely aggressive manner in which it’s been conducted, with statues suffering beheadings, mock hangings, and even recreations of Floyd’s own tragic killing. One interpretation is that such acts are meant to show how wrong they are. The other, though, is that these acts show that violence must be met with violence – and as long as that possibility exists, it will be met in kind, over and over again.
It may also be the optics of ‘mob rule’ in how these statues have been treated. History generally looks unfavourably upon mob rule, and with good reason. Here, the mob has found its target, and it will be pursued relentlessly and indiscriminately. Some of those historical figures targeted will doubtless be deserving of it. Others may be more complex, with their very real failings at least set against their good deeds. And some, such as Mercator, may well be dragged unjustifiably into this whole mess….for mob rule leaves little room for due process, for innocence until guilt is proven. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement…..or to judge at all.
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