The predominantly ludicrous lawmaker from Georgia did Biden a solid this weekend, telling Republicans the Democratic president is fiendishly attempting to make people’s lives better.
The predominantly ludicrous lawmaker from Georgia did Biden a solid this weekend, telling Republicans the Democratic president is fiendishly attempting to make people’s lives better.
Serious question. I’m not trying to be sarcastic or trolling. Are you judging him based on 2023 standards or the 1930s? Because it’s almost like comparing apples to oranges – it was almost 100 years ago, and things that are considered blatantly racist by today’s standards were often considered progressive by many at the time.
You also have to consider the fact that any kind of race relations, for lack of a better term, would not have been anywhere near as acceptable as it is today. Had he invited Owens to the WH or granted scholarships to black people, it could easily have caused a scandal that could have brought an end to his career. I’m not trying to justify it; I’m just saying that this is the reality of our society back in the 30s. Acceptance of minorities as equals in everyday life simply wasn’t a thing back then.
A lot of people look back at history through a modern lens and act as if “they should have known better”, without a full understanding that progress is incrimental and takes time. They also don’t understand that even if people from back in that time wanted to do what we would consider today as the right thing, the reality of society at the time very likely would have prevented them from doing so.
People in 1930 understood that racism and antisemitism was wrong. This “judge them by the standards of the day” is just an excuse.
It’s always tricky isn’t it? There’s some beliefs that even as a product of the times you’d reject. The founding fathers who wanted to maintain slavery can be abhorred for it even today. At the same time you have someone like Lincoln, who said at one point that freed slaves should be sent to Liberia. We would certainly call that racist today.
I don’t think there’s a perfect, universal way to look at this, but it’s helpful to look at other contemporary beliefs. You had anti slavery advocates at the founding of the country, so it wasn’t impossible. This is difficult to do though when you have something like the New Deal that disproportionately helped white people, and no alternative to compare against.
What we can say with certainty is that interning Japanese Americans was wrong, and FDR had strong worker policies in spite of not being racially equitable.