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Comment by true_religion | Hacker News Reader

Being from a former colony myself, I understand the virtue in decolonization of culture. Usually when that term is used, it means that we want to reinterpret history through the view of our native culture and not merely the notes and proclamations of our colonial masters at the time. For example, it can be used to focus on the tribal conflict that lead to X city being conquered, rather than simply mentioning how important it was for Britain to get one over on France.

However, if you are talking about European music in Europe, and are sitting in a European university then what can you decolonize? The culture is the colonial power, if you remove the imperialism of it… aren’t you left with next to nothing?

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Exactly. Eg South Africa renamed most (all?) road names to native names - is the UK going to change all British road names to African names because colonialism?

The UK is a great example because for most of the islands history, some foreign power had seized land as part of an imperial conquest. First the Romans. Then the French and the Danes. Then finally, then “United Kingdom” was created via bloody conquest of a single tribal body over other tribes that spoke different languages and had different religions.

Had the Spanish Armada not failed, the UK would likely have become a colony yet again.

When I went to school, we were taught the Brits were benign and flawless.

Imagine my surprise to learn that English still carries remnants of Britain’s history as a colonial backwater (e.g. cow vs beef).

If ZA makes all road names African, the UK should make all road names English.

What would you say about Winston Churchill being celebrated as a hero while, Indians who are aware of the atrocities committed by him well call him a monster and an equivalent of Hitler?

Shouldn't the British children be taught about the atrocities committed by British because, if you talk to general British public, they think that the British Raj was benevolent & a very good thing happened to the Indian subcontinent.

I’m not sure at all what that has to do with music; but since you bring up a historical topic then let’s discuss it.

Historical figures should be treated within academia in a holistic fashion, neither as heroes nor villains but as people who accomplished things.

Whether or not an act is good or evil is something that a history class shouldn’t seek to teach. That should be left up to either the minds of the students, or more pertinently to an ethics and philosophy class.

As someone who took the later, I must say I leaned more about good and evil in ethics classes than in history.

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