| It strikes me as odd that anytime a person references a characteristic of some people from some particular country, it is generalized into racism against all people who even vaguely look like them so long as the people in question are not white. If one says "the French are cowards", no one takes it to mean that you believe that all white people are cowards. This is true even if the speaker is not white themselves, but merely living in a 'white' country. To me, this means that no statement really stands on its own, but we constantly filter it through our lens of expectations, and current context. Given that, it's hard to look at someone from the past---a fundamentally alien context---then damn them using modern morals. --- As a personal example of how we see racism within an implicit context, this poster[1], mentions "negroes" and my immediate feeling is to damn him for racism as in the modern era using that terminology is a sign of racism. This is despite the fact that my CV could list me as a beneficiary of the Negro College Fund. 20 years ago, the term "coloured" was considered racist to some segments of the USA. Any variations of it, would be simiarly damned. Now, we are all people "of colour" as an accepted truth, and using 'black' is seen as vulgar, and 'african american' is seen inaccurate. Context matters immensely in these topics. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17303571 |