Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Here's what you're failing to understand: I disagree. By definition, anyone who used such views to justify the subjugation of "inferior" races could not possibly have been people of conscience. Thinking you have moral justification, or a right to subjugate anyone you deem an inferior race automatically disqualifies you from being a person of conscience.
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There are so many examples of this that it would take too long to list them all. A dramatic one is the Christian missionaries who went to Hawaii to convert the heathen. This was done by people of conscience but subjugate them they did.
Then there's the whites vs the indians in the USA. Much of that was done by people of conscience. Much wasn't.
Racism was always wrong by our standards today. I don't think it was always wrong by the standards of the time.
I think there are different types of racism; the kind where people of one race hates the other is the most obvious but the kind where people of one race don't hate the other but consider them inferior is less obvious but just as real.
When Jefferson did his study to prove that blacks were as smart as whites he concluded that he was wrong, not because of hatred or bias so much as because there was no real understanding of how to measure that sort of thing then.
Barry