Regardless of whether the Wentworth statue stands or falls, it's a conversation worth having | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on Tue, 11/06/2019 - 3:16pm

Here’s the reality check: Wentworth was indeed a racist who saw the demise of Indigenous people as inevitable and desirous

Predictable outrage from the usual dreary quarters has greeted the call by supposedly “radical” University of Sydney students to tear down a statue of their institution’s founder, William Wentworth, because of his racist approach to Indigenous people.

While Australia’s leading tabloid, a few ultra-conservative historians and one or two hyperventilating, glorified DJs tie themselves in cultural knots over the students’ Wentworth Must Fall campaign, here’s the reality check: like many purported Enlightenment figures, Wentworth was indeed a racist who saw Indigenous people of this continent as inferior and their demise inevitable and desirous.

Might Wentworth have known how the future would unfold? No. But there is plenty to suggest he was quite comfortable with the way it did