Lot of “don’t judge the past by the standards of the present” being used to justify monuments to slavery going around at the moment. You gotta understand: this idea is historically illiterate at best.
It should be no surprise to anyone who thinks about it for more than five seconds that slavery and colonialism WERE criticised at the time! By the standards of the time! Primarily by people who were being enslaved!
Please read Priyamvada Gopal’s meticulously detailed “Insurgent Empire”, which shows how colonial subjects were not only agents of their own liberation, but also that they profoundly shaped Britain’s own ideas about freedom! versobooks.com/books/2965-ins…
Britain’s “enlightenment” on the issue was powered by the very people who were forced to prove their own humanity to Empire, time and time again.
Anyway. Yes, people criticised slavery “at the time”. And yes the NAACP picketed outside Birth of a Nation when it opened. “At the time” is frankly BS. Racists exert power to make racism seem normal, and “good people” lie to themselves to pretend as though no-one knew until now.
If you think “it was okay at the time” it’s because the standards you’re imagining are those of the oppressors and not those of the oppressed. Mind-boggling this needs saying.
