A thought on the figures in History

Today, as I flipped through articles on various news sites, I stopped on one with the headline, "Albert Einstein's travel diaries from 1920s reveal racist views, "unpleasant" comments".

Of course, my first reaction was disappointment. One never hopes to find that the people in history they admire had character flaws, and let's face it; racism and xenophobia are about as pretty serious as you can get when it comes to character flaws. Of course, in retrospect, we now know that Charles Lindbergh was a Eugenicist who snuggled up with the Nazi Party. We always knew that H.P. Lovecraft had little to no love for the 'negro people'. And even Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose 'New Deal' politics helped pull America out of the Great Depression, held views of the Jewish people that are seen today as 'anti-Semitic' at their best. Same can be said of Walt Disney, and a host of other men and women from our History that people like to look back on for their wisdom, kindness, and talent.

As I read through the Einstein diary entries, I realized that, when viewed through the more open-minded worldview of today, sure, these statements all looked bad. But, when you take into account how the world was then, in the 1920's, and how vastly different things were (how separated and misunderstood people were), it becomes a little easier to, if not approve of, at least understand, how these larger than life figures could be on record for what we now consider a very narrow-minded way of viewing the people of the world.

Take, for example, Roosevelt, and his well-reported anti-Semitic views. As rough as we see them today, back in the 1930's, when Jews were seen by most of the world as 'less than human', for FDR to enter a room and say otherwise would have been a non-starter. His record of words may paint him as an anti-Semite, but his record of actions, leading up to, and during the war, says otherwise. And, like Einstein, many of his reported comments were never meant to be made public. That doesn't really excuse them, but it does help one understand that, even as those thoughts were had, they were questioned enough internally so as to not be publicly broadcast. Even in a time when doing so would not have been a deal-breaker in any sort of way.

So, when looking back on things like hundred-year-old diaries, or even newspaper reports from people often considered heroes, it never surprises me to find racism just below - or right on - their surface. Because that was the norm for the world in which they lived. We are FAR more lucky now, to live in a time when we look at these ideas, and we know better - we know racism and discrimination are wrong and baseless.

I am far more concerned about people living here and now, that can still find ways to convince themselves that their racist and discriminatory views are correct, than I'll ever be when finding out that people living almost a century ago suffered under those same delusions. The ones in our history - many of them changed, learned, and helped build what we have now, where we ALL know better. The one's living under the ignorant thumb of racism now - they do it by choice, and with a presumed superiority that we know to be false. These are the ones we should be watching. Forgive this behavior in the past; but don't excuse it in the future.