Ok guys, gals, and non binary pals! I went onto twitter, and pretty much regretted it instantly. Today during a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol, UK, the protesters pulled down a statue of a man (and I won’t dignify him by using his name) who was responsible for the transport of 86,000 people for slavery in America. You can read about that here. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary say this ‘…thuggery undermines the point the protesters are trying to make’ which is a load of garbage since the glorification of a man whose ships chucked 19,000 black men, women, and children overboard because they got sick and therefore were ‘useless cargo’ really doesn’t gel with ‘black lives matter’. Chucking that statue in the sea is exactly what he deserved.
Nevertheless, racists on twitter are now using strawman arguments to whip out Herodotus and say we should pull the Pyramids down because they were ‘built by slaves.’ As an Egyptologist there’s so much wrong with that statement I don’t even know where to start. a) they were built using a large group of permanent stone masons, and then seasonal corvee labour, i.e. the conscription of workers not currently farming (off season), to spend 3 months working on projects for the King (it seems odd to us now, but it was an honour to work on projects for the King), b) these workers were paid (in bread, beer and other goods - non monetary economy) and had access to doctors and good medical treatment (tombs show that people had injuries that were healed well and they for lived decades afterwards), c) these workers were Egyptian. Here are three articles on it: one, two, three.
The construction of the Pyramids using corvee labour in no way resembles going to another continent, kidnapping people from said continent, putting them on ships in horrific conditions, chucking them overboard if they got sick, arriving in a new country, selling them, erasing their identities by giving them the names of the people that bought them, and then forcing them to work for you or killing them for not doing so.
The building of the Pyramids did not lead to a continuing 400 year suppression, exploitation, and murder of black people for the monetary benefit of white people.
The building of the Pyramids did not cause systemic racism within police forces and governments around the world.
The building of the Pyramids has not caused black people to be misdiagnosed and undertreated by doctors
The building of the Pyramids has not caused the pay gap between white women and black women
The building of the Pyramids did not cause the murder of Trayvon Martin for being suspicious with a bag of skittles
The building of the Pyramids did not cause the murder of Breonna Taylor when police unlawfully burst into her home and shot her to death
Systemic racism, continuing glorification of those that began this, police brutality, and the unwillingness of those in power to do anything about it has caused this.
Get your racism the fuck out of my discipline
(also if the furries and k-pop stans could go hijack that trending topic too, that would be great. Y’all out here doing us a solid)
(via thatlittleegyptologist)
