Non-whites should go back to where they came from rather than tearing down controversial statues

The argument

Non-white people who come to live in the United Kingdom try to rewrite its history. This is because when these people come to the UK, they bring their own cultures and ideas about living. In some instances, their ideas and ways of life clash with British culture, often calling for a change to British culture to include their culture. An example of this lies in the discussion surrounding the wearing of burqas and niqabs. Part of the United Kingdom's identity is the practice of Christianity, a religion whose practice is generally exclusively. Including Islamic practices and beliefs arguably does not fit with the UK's identity, thus changing it would be the same as trying to rewrite the UK's history. This trend also manifests itself in the Black Lives Matter Movement, when protesters began tearing down statues. Statues are one of the ways people connect with history. Dismantling these statues serve as an erasure of sorts, and in a way, serve to rewrite British history by removing them from society. In turn, if non-whites want to practice their respective religions or ideologies in peace, they should go back to where they came from, not try to rewrite the UK's history, or change its own set of beliefs.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Telling people to go back to their country of origin may not resolve the issues non-whites are trying to address. One can make the case that, as citizens of the United Kingdom, they have the right to voice their concerns over issues they find problematic. Having statues like the one of Edward Colston in Bristol propagate systems of power non-whites may find offensive. Tearing down the statue is not so much an act of rewriting the United Kingdom's history as it might be to fight deep-rooted concepts they find problematic.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise treats British culture as a single fixed inheritance that arrivals either match or threaten, which does not describe any actual society. The United Kingdom has never had one culture — its constituent nations differ in law, language and religious history — and it has been continuously reshaped by migration, including by the Windrush generation and by South Asian migrants recruited to staff the health service and the mills. The specific example also fails: there is no uniform Christian practice established in law across the UK, freedom of religion is legally protected, and Muslim communities in Britain include families settled for generations and British-born citizens who have no other country to be returned to. [Rejecting P2] Removing a statue does not alter the historical record, which is held in archives, books, museums and school curricula. Public monuments are honours conferred by a community at a particular moment and reconsidered periodically; statues of former rulers have come down across Europe without any history being erased. As the counter notes, the removal of the Colston statue in Bristol brought his role in the slave trade to far wider public attention than the statue ever had. Neither premise, moreover, reaches the conclusion: whether a monument should stand is a question about the monument, while the demand that people leave the country addresses the speaker rather than the argument, and applies a test of belonging — ancestry — that British citizenship law does not recognise.