History suggests that the disillusioned and the disaffected do not readily take to the streets nor man the barricades to defend a system that failed to defend them.
Most people involved in the delivery of history, in universities, publishing, museums and the heritage industry, are aware that we have a problem with diversity and inclusivity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the lack of diversity and inclusivity in institutions that represent history.
David Olusoga's quote emphasizes a significant issue within the fields of education, publishing, and heritage, where the representation of diverse perspectives in the narrative of history is often lacking. This awareness among professionals signals the need for increased efforts to address and remedy these gaps to ensure a more inclusive understanding of history that reflects the experiences and contributions of all groups.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a university lecture about historical representation, a professor could use this quote to initiate a discussion on the importance of inclusivity.
More from David Olusoga
All quotes βNo matter that you're a British citizen, no matter that you were born here - your skin colour means you do not have the same rights as others to express critical opinions about your own country.
Public buildings, built from the rates and taxes paid by past generations, are being auctioned off by impoverished councils who need the money to pay the redundancies of workers they can no longer afford to employ. Many of these grand Victorian buildings will be turned into flats that most people will never be able to afford.
Black history is a series of missing chapters from British history. I'm trying to put those bits back in.
We nonchalantly expect that next year's smartphone will be faster and better than this year's, yet we struggle to imagine that society and our lives could progress at anything like the pace at which technology advances and we meekly accept it when things go backwards.
Our national history cannot be national if, in the near future, one in three young adults feels their stories remain untold, if this country's long global history of empire and interconnections is marginalised and if the historical reality of race is rendered almost invisible.
Similar quotes
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.
Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.
Children need models rather than critics.
Teaching literature is teaching how to read. How to notice things in a text that a speed-reading culture is trained to disregard, overcome, edit out, or explain away; how to read what the language is doing, not guess what the author was thinking; how to take evidence from a page, not seek a reality to substitute for it.
Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.
The thought of these vast stacks of books would drive him mad: the more he read, the less he seemed to know β the greater the number of the books he read, the greater the immense uncountable number of those which he could never read would seem to beβ¦. The thought that other books were waiting for him tore at his heart forever.