allenLondon - // These people were SLAVE OWNERS. //
They were - but none of this is going to alter that simple fact.
The way forward is not to whitewash (!) history and try and pretend that our ancestors behaved in a way that we find unacceptable today, because that simply denies history, which is neither feasible, or a particularly good idea.
If we were glorifying the contribution of slave labour to the contents of the Museum, then fair enough - but no-one would wish to do that either.
It is perfectly possible to accept and acknowledge that historically, people behaved in a way that today would not be acceptable, but editing it or airbrushing it does not make it un-happen, so we must simply acknowledge it for what it is - part of our history.
What these self-righteous attention-seekers don't appear to grasp is that pointing out our historic failures does not make us modern-day failures. History is about learning from the past, so we can do better in the future.
Shall we raze Auschwitz to the ground? After all, it is a colossal monument to the colossal inhumanity that occurred in the world's history, and unlike most of slavery, it is will within modern memory.
No, we leave it there to remind us of just how evil mankind can be - which assists in preventing a recurrence of such barbarity and inhumanity.
The German people do not try and gloss over it, or pretend it didn't happen, or adopt faux-shame for their parents and grandparents - they accept that history is just that - history, good and bad, and airbrushing and editing does not mean that history is where we came from, good and bad, and you can't cherry-pick the bits that allow you to polish your right-on halo, you have to take all of it.
Ironically, virtually every exhibit in the Museum has been taken from its rightful place and the descendants of its rightful owners, so are we going to remove everything in the Museum, or just pretend we won't mention the funding issue.
Selective virtue-signalling is a stain on our modern culture, and the sooner these self-aggrandising morons develop a sense of perspective, and a sense of actual history, not the bits that suit them, the better the world will be for a dose of adult honesty, not adolescent 'look at me' stupidity.