Sorry Ben Stein, These Presidents Were Way More Racist Than Obama

Boston Globe ^ | November 4, 2014 | Shan Wang

[DoughtyOne]

Maybe they would have appreciated it more if the British hadn’t introduced it in the United States in the first place.

[dsutah]

George Washington was said to have a fairly integrated army in his time too! He even had a few black officers. They were not very high up, but for his time, they did exist!

[sakic]

Slavery is immoral. Citing the times and prevailing attitudes as a means to lessen its immorality is moral relativism, something more likely to be spoken by liberals.

Right and wrong is not situational.

[eddiespaghetti]

And it was the (liberal icon) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who (IINM), ended his concurring opinion in a case upholding a state’s forced sterilization of mentally handicapped women, “three generations of imbeciles is enough.”

[x]

Ironically, it was the rise of liberty and democracy that did away with White slavery of that sort. After the Revolution, when all (White) men were created equal one couldn't have White slaves, and Black slavery became an entrenched institution (if it wasn't one before).

It's a little silly to rant about the racism of individuals in an era when the concept of "racism" didn't exist and pretty much everybody was racist. But it's also silly to say that someone could own Black slaves and support the institution of slavery and (explicitly or implicitly) support the ideas that underlay that institution and not be what 21st century Americans would have to call a racist.

Where that leaves us I don't know, but how could you support and financially benefit from an institution that rested on the inferiority of a whole race and not be what a much later era would call a racist? If the thinking of the time had been more subtle about racial inferiority I might be more inclined to agree with you, but the opinions expressed at the time were far from subtle.