If you think cancel culture is bad now, you'd have hated living in the United States in the 1950s, when Congress was actually throwing people in prison for thinking the wrong way. A lot of people got their livelihoods destroyed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and a disproportionately large number of the people destroyed were Jewish. You also wouldn't have liked the 1980s, when the Religious Right was carrying on a less harsh version of the House Un-American Activities Committee with Reagan's blessing.

Theres just no stopping it at this point. History is getting rewritten and art, speech and entertainment are being censored all the time. At least we can still criticize things...for now.

You can't change history. Just learn from it. I don't get offended (anymore...🙄) when I see things that are a product of their time. You shouldn't force your moral beliefs on something that was totally acceptable at the time. It's insane. But, that's what we do. Even things like comedy or ten year old tweets. People get mad at something from 20 years ago and try to "cancel" someone. I can't condone that.

Well... This was an awesome post. I didn't read the article, either. Just jumped to a conclusion based on the OP. Hell, I might have just read the thread title. I don't remember. Either way, thanks for the logical response. A lot of us may just be jumping to conclusions based on other things going on in the world today that prompt strong emotions.

Of course I read it. Your reply is both condescending and off-base, because my source does clearly state why they will remove the shrunken heads -- and it has everything to do with "political correctness."

Yes, museums routinely remove and add pieces to their displays. That has nothing to do with the article which states that the museum "has removed 1230 human remains from its display as part of a museum-wide effort to 'decolonize' the institution" (emphasis added). That's not simply the cycling out of a few pieces, to put up a new display, to freshen up exhibits, or whatever. That's an explicitly political effort. Further, this began with "an ethical review of its artifacts" due to "the derogatory language used in the historic case labels," which I think sits comfortably with what we all understand as political correctness. (So maybe cool it with the obnoxious "spoiler tag" kind of cleverness, and maybe spend that time making sure you've understood what you've read, instead?)

The heads, "one of the museum's most popular attractions since the 1940s," are being removed to soothe the sensibilities of guests who find those remains "a testament to other cultures being ‘savage’, ‘primitive’ or ‘gruesome'," per the museum director, as quoted in the article. She goes on to say, as I'd quoted initially, that "the displays reinforced racist and stereotypical thinking that goes against the Museum’s values today." So that's the point: to combat "racist and stereotypical thinking," because people find the heads "savage," "primitive," and "gruesome," not to "actually present these people and cultures more accurately," as you have represented. (It could be that a culture is presented completely "accurately," however that is measured, and yet some people might still judge that culture as "gruesome," or whatever. That's people, you know? Always having opinions.)

Further, the museum has complete control of presentation: so if this were really about simply presenting "these people and cultures more accurately," it could always provide additional information to help visitors understand the artifacts or further contextualize them, with additional displays, pamphlets, lectures, etc. Museums do that all the time; plenty of historical artifacts are strange or upsetting to modern eyes, and require additional information or context to be properly understood. In a way, that's a museum's entire job (vis a vis display) and how they educate and inform. They are choosing instead to hide genuine artifacts from view (one of their most popular attractions, mind), because they do not like how people respond when provided with the actual evidence of earlier cultures.

Not only is it perverse for a museum to hide information from its visitors rather than provide the same (I could as easily have referenced Bradbury as Orwell; it's as backwards as his "fire department"), but it is both insulting and controlling. The visitors cannot be expected to understand what they're seeing. They cannot be allowed to reach their own conclusions.

And speaking of conclusions, how is it you (who questioned whether I'd read the article) managed to read it and present it so dishonestly? Or maybe you are simply so blinded by your political perspective (because anyone who takes aim at "political correctness" must be the enemy, I'm sure) that you cannot see this straight. But yes, when a museum begins removing artifacts from display because the people who view them form "incorrect" opinions, that's a problem. We do not employ museums to hide from us the evidence of the past, but to show it to us.

Thats funny, not even museums are safe anymore. Some art/artifacts can't even be seen on a freaking museum. Some people argued that all those racist statues that needed to be tore down by the peaceful protestors should not be destroyed but sent to a museum so people, in the correct place, could see history with the eyes of that time. Nope.
A museum should never do it to pander to the progressives, it is the best place for us to see something that is not acceptable by society anymore, in a way to preserve history and allow everyone to look at our past and learn from it. I hope other museums don't follow the same practice.
I hope we someday do not find out that Da Vinci was a racist.

I'm confused.. a museum self-selecting what they want to display so they can properly control the narrative of their own exhibits is being compared to state-sanctioned thought police?

My BS-meter is dinging on "manufactured outrage". I think some of you just want a reason to be mad.

And on the subject of PC culture, the great irony is that "hating on political correctness" is just a politically correct way of saying "I want to be disrespectful and discompassionate to people I hate without societal backlash".

I get it, sometimes public opinion can be seemingly exhausting, retrograde, or even oppressive. Try being gay. Not fun. Or for a more gaming related reference, I am clearly in the minority in regard to my negative opinions of the Final Fantasy XVI trailer. But Square Enix owns the property, and fans are seemingly on board for another action-oriented rpg. I can have opinions on how it's bad for the series and bad for gaming, but that doesn't make me right or make everyone else wrong.

The point is, you can disagree with their decisions, but it was their decision to make. That's the problem with getting upset with PC culture. In the end, it's just an example of Capitalism... Actually doing what it's supposed to.

EDIT: To clarify on a point I alluded to, but didn't explicitly state, getting vaguely upset at how public opinion changes by attacking strawmen like "PC culture" doesn't really accomplish meaningful change.  If there something you disagree with, engage in a dialogue on that specific subject.  This is why I disagree with motive of the OP here.  This is not a discussion about the heads being removed.

This is not just about political correctness. It's about changing society radically. Taking away power from those who are seen as oppressors and giving it to those who are seen as oppressed.

This museum has completely been taken over by the woke mob. And the pattern is the same that we've seen hundreds of times in the past few months.

From their own news release September 14:

"At the Pitt Rivers Museum, we condemn racism in the strongest terms; we work towards becoming an anti-racist institution and stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. As a museum, we know it is important not to be silent and to lend whatever support we can, both to our own staff members, and to the broader communities that are impacted by institutionalised, everyday racism and other exclusionary practices. We express our solidarity and our recognition of how museums like ours, and collections likeours, cannot be separated from the ongoing violence and systemic racism happening in Oxford, in the UK, in the US, and elsewhere."

It's right there in its mission goal. Western society is systemically racist. The (new) purpose of Oxford Museum is to be actively anti-racist and work for communites who suffer from "institutionalised racism" and "exclusion".

1) Ok let's first talk about this " 'decolonize' the institution". You have to know that Historical science for the longest time was not used to find some truth about the past but to legitimise the power of the powerful. The British Empire did this too, they used museums and exhibitions to convince the people and themself that the people they're colonizing are stupid savages who are better of if they rule over them. 'decolonizing' is the attempt to remove this colonial lens in order to truly understand who these people were.

I'm also surprised that you find this part so controversial: "the displays reinforced racist and stereotypical thinking that goes against the Museum’s values today.", racism and stereotypical thinking are of course not part of the museums values. There is a large academic consensus that racism and racial science is nothing but pseudoscience, again invented to justify the rule and extermination of other people, stereotypical thinking is self explanatory. And yes, if the museum thinks that "savage," "primitive," and "gruesome," are the wrong conclusions they should change the exhibition so visitors come to the right conclusion.

2) Neither of us knows why they chose to remove these exhibits vom the exhibition, maybe they couldn't find a good way to present them or they have better exhibits they want to show, we just don't know but please stop with this "omg they hiding exibits from us, they hiding the truth", first of all, historians are still able to examine the removed pieces and secondly, again there are hundreds of thousands of historical pieces lying around in museums who get never shown to the public.

It also seems like you don't understand what a museum is supposed to do. A museum should educate the visitor, it should present the current state of research among historians, what a museum should not do is showing historical piece without context so the visitor have to figure it out on its own and come to its own conclusion. It is also simply impossible to show everything to the visitor, the museum always has to pick and choose exhibits and they have to pick those who overall present the most accurate picture to the visitor.

It is absolutely possible that after the exhibition started well-known historians start criticising the museum for its decisions but until then I will trust the museum to do the right thing because the people at the museum are historians and I'm not.

You however seem to be absolutely convinced that this is a huge scandal and I wonder what expertise you have for such a harsh judgment?

I don't like political correctness all that much.
Or to put it another way, and to use a very unpolitically correct phrase that was popular 20 or so years ago which I like to use out of nostalgia - political correctness is gay.