Years ago, one of my professors cut off a fellow student who was waxing poetic about people being "of" their time with respect to chattel slavery. He said: 'do you know who knew that enslavement was evil and morally disgusting? ENSLAVED AFRICANS.' Were they not of their time too? At 18, that stuck.
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It's wild how this conservative theory of time works.
And if they do read the people who have been writing from that perspective for hundreds of years, they don't ever include themselves in the group doing the oppression.
It's just v lazy about learning anything from history.
She’d insisted my whole life that “people back then” didn’t know any better
I finally lost patience and asked her WHICH PEOPLE.
It’s been fascinating to watch the seed spread ever since then.
It can work.
So I guess that line of thought is still going a decade later.
https://youtu.be/FAZJVkelgcg?si=CvugjzsN-rC9OuSZ
John Laurens: Sweet broadsword.
White people knew too.
🔆
"A man of his time? He didn't know any better?! He lived 2 subway stops away from the Harlem Renaissance!"