Don’t Censor the Past: Historical Language Tells the Truth, Even When It Hurts! By Paul Walker

In the Left's rush to sanitise the past, they are in danger of forgetting what it was really like. The growing trend of editing historical texts to remove racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive language, whether in novels, history books, or old television scripts, might be well-intentioned, but it is ultimately destructive. As historian David Olusoga recently argued at the Hay Festival, young people don't need censorship, they need context and the intellectual courage to confront the ugly truths of history head-on.

Because the truth is this: sanitising the language of the past erases more than slurs, it erases reality.

Take, for instance, the removal of racist language from reissued editions of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels or Agatha Christie's mysteries. Or the editing of classic British comedy shows like Little Britain or The League of Gentlemen for their use of blackface. These changes may spare some viewers or readers discomfort, but they also create the illusion that these artifacts came from a less prejudiced time. That's a lie. It's not "progress" to pretend the past was cleaner than it was, it's historical malpractice.

Racist, sexist, and colonial attitudes did exist, they shaped laws, culture, power structures, and institutions, to some degree, but far less than the Left imagines. To hide those attitudes under a modern coat of whitewash is to falsify the historical record. The very reason we know they were wrong, supposedly, is because we can compare them to today's moral standards. But that comparison only works if we see the past in its raw, uncomfortable form.

David Olusoga puts it perfectly: "Our ancestors had those words shouted at them; we just have to read them in a book." If anything, the current generation is being protected from the psychological reality of what actual racism and sexism meant on the ground. That protection isn't a kindness, it's a barrier to understanding.

There is also a serious intellectual cost. How can students study colonialism, slavery, segregation, or women's oppression, if the primary documents and literature from those periods have been neutered? Historical literacy demands direct engagement with the language of its time, not a bowdlerised version tailored to 21st-century sensitivities. A warning label is one thing; rewriting the book is another.

Moreover, censorship infantilises readers. It assumes that people, especially the young, cannot handle encountering offensive ideas, even in academic or historical context. This is an insult to both their intelligence and their moral judgment. Education should prepare people to face complexity, not erase it.

History is not therapy. It's not there to make us feel good about our identity, our nation, or our progress. It's there to show us where we've been, warts, slurs, and all. By confronting uncomfortable texts, we don't endorse their views, we study them, learn from them, and better understand them. Sanitising the past, as the Left is doing, only makes it easier to repeat.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/david-olusoga-stop-demanding-racist-182507140.html

"Racist language should not be removed from classic books or TV shows and young people should toughen up, David Olusoga has said.

The historian and presenter said it was more useful to confront the language of the past than to censor it.

"The thing I'm very aware of is that I'm from a different generation to the generation that is familiar with trigger warnings. I get their argument that it is good to be told that a book has certain stories or certain words that might come as a shock.

"Where I disagree with the idea is that we should remove those words or remove those books from the syllabus," he told an audience at the Hay Festival.

Olusoga recently contributed to a documentary about the BBC's Black and White Minstrel Show which ran until the late 1970s and featured white performers using blackface.

'We just have to read them'

Olusoga said: "To understand how that form of entertainment delivered racism, delivered racial stereotypes and delivered racial language into the British idiom, you have to confront those words. I don't think it is possible to get across just how toxic it is unless you put your hand in the fire.

"Nor is it better to hide from those words and not be able to obtain a proper knowledge of the power of that entertainment.

"I think we need to be tougher. Our ancestors had those words shouted at them; we just have to read them in a book. So I'm afraid I have a much less tolerant attitude with people who, rather than warnings, want words removed."

Novels that have been edited to remove racist references include the James Bond series. Ian Fleming's books were reissued in 2023 with some language edited after a review by sensitivity readers. Some Agatha Christie mysteries have received the same treatment.

Episodes of Little Britain were edited on BBC iPlayer and The League of Gentlemen was removed from Netflix because of their use of blackface to portray some characters.

Olusoga and Yinka, his sister, in 2024 published a book they wrote together, Black History for Every Day of the Year.

Explaining the theme, Olusoga said: "It makes black history into normal history, literally everyday history. It turns it from something which is seen as political and specialist into something which is just part of history. These histories of Empire, migration and movement are just normal parts of history."

Olusoga added that Black History Month is a valid idea but "it doesn't solve the big problem, which is understanding that this is part of our mainstream history. It, in some way, reinforces the idea that this is a separate channel alongside the mainstream."

"Any honest, wholehearted telling of Britain's Industrial Revolution has to recognise the key raw material alongside coal was cotton, and that the vast majority of that cotton came from the Deep South, produced by 1.8 million African-Americans who were part of British history, [although] they never set foot on British soil.

"We cannot tell the story of the Industrial Revolution without them, yet that's exactly what we've been doing."