you can't judge people from the past with morals of the present. George Washington had slaves, Gandhi talked about racism as a good thing and so on. Words today have a little different meaning then what it is today. They used the words they knew.
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Most everything people in U.S. know of George Washington is myth. Cherry trees? Cannot tell a lie? Washington ordered destruction of thousands of Peach trees to eliminate an indigenous food source. Wooden teeth? Dentures created from teeth extracted from enslaved humans. https://tinyurl.com/4ts5e5xk
If something is founded on something bad, it makes it bad. IF the people practicing said thing continue to keep it bad, then it's bad. Not sure how hard it is to understand that very basic concept, but good job managing that.
George Washington’s will said that his slaves were to be freed upon his wife’s death, but Martha freed them soon after George’s death because she suspected they they would hasten her demise if they were there knowing that her death was all that stood between enslavement and freedom.
I’m judging people from the past with my morals right now. I’m literally doing it. I’m reading contemporaneous accounts that agree with my judgements for my same reasons. You should try this it whips
People were campaigning against slavery, even back then. The ‘it was a different time’ argument is just nonsense. Washington knew what he was doing was evil, he just didn’t care.
Thomas Jefferson wrote plenty about the concept of liberty and what it means to people...while frequently raping a teenaged slave girl in his possession and forcing her to bear his children. We can just...call them hypocrites and be done with it.
As an historian, you absolutely can and saying you can't is a cheap cop out to avoid hard discussions about our past. It ignores contemporary accounts of those issues and bulldozes the past into a flat understanding that can be easily manipulated.
And while we're all pointing out that you're a fucking dipshit and posting our receipts from the dipshit store, can you really dismiss it as it as the morals of the present when a lot of people are still saying that slavery was actually good?
The Historian’s Fallacy is about as well understood on social media as the first amendment and, in much the same way, is way too frequently used to excuse horrible people from the horrible things they did.
It appears to have been posted as an attempt to contradict the quoted post, and "others have said this" doesn't do that work (especially not folks like Pappe). If that wasn't your intent, then never mind
You know who didn't have slaves? The vast majority of people who lived at the same time as George Washington. Including the Marquis de Lafayette, who routinely sent letters to Washington urging him to stop owning slaves
Well you can judge people from the past with morals from the past and slavery has been criticized by contemporaries of Washington and racism by contemporaries of ghandi
Absolutely correct. Gandhi is garbage. Nobody cares about Gandhi, the Hindutvas like having his bullshit ”non-violent“ façade that they can apply to their uniquely Hitlerian approach to life.
I really loved the book “the black count” about Alexandre Dumas father for many reasons, one of which being the author devoting a not insignificant amount of the book to dispelling the myth that American chattel slavery was a product of its time. They knew exactly how morally inexcusable it was
You absolutely can judge them but you're also intentionally omitting the fact that zionism is a philosophy that is still actively guiding Isreal's genocide of the Palestinian people. It's not in the past, it's now
Gandhi was an educated cosmopolitan. Washington was literate, wealthy, and acquainted with the intellectuals of his day. It is impossible that either of them just didn't know that slavery and racism were bad. Antiracist activity goes back 100s of years.
Jefferson literally was writing about they couldn’t free their slaves because the slaves would kill them from the horrible treatment. They fucking knew how bad it was!
They knew.
They wrote books and letters and papers trying to justify it with (pseudo)science, religion, philosophy, and so on, because they knew, and they had to work around the clock to kill their own humanity in order to make it ok.
They knew.
There were anti-slavery activists back then, too, man. Not everyone just blindly accepted it. And Gandhi had a lot of fucked-up beliefs and shouldn't be put on a pedestal. There's this very weird idea that no one in "the past" fought against societal injustice or bigotry. That's just not true.
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And when was the time that colonialism & genocide were considered good things, exactly?
"George Washington having slaves was a terrible thing and I judge him for doing so."
slave (past): not great
slave (modern): pretty bad
He and Martha had a scheme to send their slaves home to VA on rotation while they were in Pennsylvania bc if they stayed too long they would be freed.
Contemporaries and people who proceeded them knew better.
Be serious.
So, yeah, I'm pretty sure they thought slavery was bad.
If we don’t then progess is never possible and moraliry becomes meaningless.
#HTH
There's certainly something to be said for contemporaneous status quo, but it's hardly a shield against interrogation.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-florida-standards-teach-black-people-benefited-slavery-taught-usef-rcna95418
If anyone thinks that fascism hasn't taken root, they're not paying attention.
— Samuel Johnson, 1775
How the fuck does everyone keep pretending no one knew slavery was bad?
One of them was his niece right?
I seem to be able to judge them.
I'm doing it now.
I'm judging you too.
Because you also suck.
They wrote books and letters and papers trying to justify it with (pseudo)science, religion, philosophy, and so on, because they knew, and they had to work around the clock to kill their own humanity in order to make it ok.
They knew.
Judging is what historians do.
Don't stop until we say it's ok.