How do we think about taking down controversial statues in the UK?

The controversial statues are a distraction from the real issue at hand in the UK

Question: How do we think about taking down controversial statues in the UK?
Position‹3 of 3: We should approach the statues issue with caution
Argument‹3 of 7›: The controversial statues are a distraction from the real issue at hand in the UK

Putting emphasis on statues in a debate about UK race relations detracts from the problem.

The argument

This argument holds that the focus on controversial statues in the UK is a needless distraction from the serious racial inequalities that pervade British society. The case is comparative rather than dismissive: it does not claim the statues mean nothing, but that when they are set beside the facts about how people are actually treated, they are shown to be unimportant by comparison. Those facts are offered in two areas. On policing, a report published in 2018 showed that black people were at the receiving end of 12 percent of cases of violence and use of force against citizens, even though they make up only 3.3 percent of the population — a disparity of a kind that cannot be explained by population share and that concerns the state's use of physical force against its own citizens. Beyond police brutality, recent Covid-19 numbers have also forced British citizens to come to terms with the inequality within their society: according to an IFS report, the death rate for people of African descent was 3·5 times higher than for white British citizens. The comparison between the two registers is what carries the argument. One debate concerns whose likeness stands in a public square; the other concerns who is subjected to force and who dies at several times the rate of their neighbours. Attention spent on the first is attention not spent on the second, and the first is far easier for a government to hold a position on. With all of these difficult truths forced upon the UK, proponents of this view argue, it is easy to understand why the British government is hyper-focused on the statue controversy — which is a reason to approach the statues issue with caution rather than to treat it as the substance of the matter.

Premises

[P1]The focus on controversial statues distracts from serious racial inequalities in British society — black people faced 12% of use-of-force cases despite being 3.3% of the population, and COVID-19 killed people of African descent at 3.5 times the white British rate. [P2] Compared with these disturbing disparities, the statues themselves are relatively unimportant, and dwelling on them lets government draw attention away from the real issues. [C] Because the statues are a distraction from the real issue at hand, we should approach the statues issue with caution.

Counter-arguments

Many British protesters believe that bringing attention to these statues is not a distraction from the real issues, it is bringing attention to those issues. They believe that coming to terms with the injustices that famous figures in British history have committed will bring attention to the oppression that has been embedded in the system for years. For them, the statues are the trademarks of inequality.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The disparities cited are real, but they show that inequality exists, not that public attention is a fixed quantity drawn away by the statue dispute. The same protests that raised the statues raised policing and health inequality together, which is the opposite of the displacement the premise assumes. [Rejecting P2] The premise moves from 'the statues matter less' to 'proceed with caution', and those are different claims: if the monuments are genuinely unimportant, that is a reason for indifference to their removal rather than for care about it. It also attributes the dispute's prominence to government strategy without evidence, when the removals were initiated by protesters and local councils.