Quote:
Originally Posted by DNSB
I do have to ask what is your basis for claiming that racism was not "normal" or acceptable by the common person at that time? Because it is not normal or acceptable today? Or because you believe it should not have been normal or acceptable at any point in history. Common -- familiar, widespread, general, ordinary.
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Hear, hear. What I find extraordinary is that people think that people will automatically recognise racism etc and combat it, even if they have been raised in a society where all the ‘isms are the norm, and never been taught anything different by secular or religious instructors? Are they suggesting that this sense of injustice will spring fully grown from their brains like Athena from the head of Zeus?
Yes, I use the simile deliberately: Ancient Greek society was racist, sexist, practiced slavery and institutionalised paederasty and yet is considered to be the first flowering of Western civilisation. So because ancient writers by and large do not condemn what we today consider to be beyond the pale, we should now condemn everything about those writers?