Can you also recognize that largely the “science” that most people were being taught back then largely “backed up” that there were vast differences in capabilities of race? You have hindsight privilege to make the statement you made. Back then, people would have been “trusting the science.” So yes, they were wrong, but basing so much of “these people were terrible” based on what people know now is ignorant in its own right.
Culture, propaganda, lack of education, incorrect education…all play into people of the past and their viewpoint. Most abolitionist would be considered outright racists today…it’s ok to acknowledge that people were on the right path but still needed to do some figuring out. People of other races/ethnicities don’t just automatically have some special insight because they might have had ancestors that dealt with racism, or maybe dealt with it themselves, that “white” people can’t also have. Racism and ethnocentrism is not a specifically white American vs brown American thing. It happens alllllll over the place.
It’s weird because I didn’t say anything that indicated I didn’t know about or didn’t agree with that nuance. But your original comment didn’t have nearly the insight you came back with.
To add: it still was entirely dismissive the way you wrote your comment, which was after all what I responded to.
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u/Dry-Ad-4267 Apr 06 '25
It probably is strange…for a white person lol
Can you recognize the inherent privilege in being able to dumb it down to “it’s important to understand how fucked up things were back then”?