People who rationalize historical personages or actions in history as understandable because its just how everybody thought or beleived at the time are minimizing the anguish of the victims who were the target of those actions. It is a white privilege or a male privilege thing to do, becuase it is usually the white culture (at least in the US) that perpetrate these actions and similarily is ususlly a white person who is trying to rationalize the action away.

This includes such sins as slavery, the churches handling of young girls who had babies out of wedlock (especially the Catholic Church, but not limited to them), treatment of women in general, treatment of Native Americans, minorities in general, and gays.

To rationalize the historical mistreatment of groups of people upon another as just the way it was seen at that time, is to minimalize the pain, anguish, and viloence perpetrated upon them. Its a very white privilege thing to do in this culture.

(I'm sure someone will find examples and exceptions of the reverse, but just remember, exceptions do not make the rule, they are afterall, exceptions).

And it is not revisionist history writing to point this out. Just the opposite, it is correcting the mistakes of the past reporting. Afterall, history is most often written by the victor, and in our case the victor, white privilege. did not want to be criticized for what they did.