Quote:
Originally Posted by flybigjet
For frell's sake.....
CONTEXT.
People need to learn to apply it.
Were Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, *insert name here*, etc. racist?
The answer is "probably to undoubtedly"...... IF you judge by 21st century mores.
However..... FOR THEIR DAY AND AGE..... they were extremely enlightened individuals in comparison to their contemporaries.
I'm so, so, SO sick of people using the lens of their beliefs of today to judge people in the past.
It's all about the context. Would Lincoln be considered racist today? yes. Would Lincoln be considered racist in the 1860's? He would (and was) judged to be a progressive and thought that slavery was abhorrent enough to risk the fate of the entire Union on that belief.
He was also a realist to know how far he could successfully push, and at what point he'd lose the backing of the public/Congress/financiers, etc. who's support he needed to achieve his vision of freeing the slaves.
He knew he could only push so far, and had to compromise on a lot of things he probably didn't want to in order to be successful in his quest.
But, let's cancel and denigrate him because he wasn't "woke" enough from a 21st century perspective and offends 21'st century sensibilities, ok?
Context. It's what history is made of.
Sheesh.
R.
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I agree with a lot of what you wrote, however there is nothing wrong with pointing out that together with the enlightened attitudes they were also *insert bad quality*. You can still celebrate the good things they did while frowning upon the bad.
A lot of the people decrying "cancel culture" are in fact the ones that want to sweep the bad stuff under the rug and "erase history".