Originally Posted by
Bob Viking
With all due respect, I believe you’re wrong.
Nobody is calling Guy Gibson a racist for naming his dog as he did. Nobody is saying 617 Sqn were racist or that the RAF are racist for allowing the name to endure.
Some people, me included, just think that the name is no longer appropriate. Just as other words have fallen out of useage.
It is not erasing history. It is merely glossing over the name of a dog.
If you would honestly feel comfortable standing in front of a crowd of people and proudly stating aloud the name of the dog without feeling just a hint of embarrassment then well done you. I certainly couldn’t.
I know the black dog’s name is something of a cause celebre on here but I think there are far better things to gnash your teeth about than this.
BV
i understand where you are coming from Bob but I also disagree, The name may no longer be appropriate but that does not remove the fact that it was and is fact.
To take it to an extreme, naked images of children are no longer rightly deemed appropriate, but the world if full of art and statues featuring Putti and Cherubs, from the Royal State Coach through to the Vatican there are statues and art featuring putti and cherubs, history is full of art from Rome onwards, do we now remove those items That offend because they to are no longer appropriate in the modern world? Where do you draw a line or stop?
Rome took and put to death slaves, do we delete them from history, one could list faults with most “Civilisations” but at some point if you destroy all history and wipe the map clean, are we better people for it?
I think not, because we learn from our history, our faults, and our progress, without that learning, Slavery, Racism and hate would possibly still be with us at far more prevalent levels than it is now.
Christ is more or less always portrayed as white, but when I was still at School we visited a monastery in Spain or Portugal that had a black infant Christ, and they pointed out that in the Middle East it was quite possible that Christ was of Middle Eastern or of African origins..
History draws a finicky line.