A Gene Tunney question...?

The norm was what was perceived by the large majority as he norm.

Thing is, I sometimes can't understand the way my grandparents think. The farther we go back the harder it get's. But I like to think about it.

 

he wasnt african, but I dont think a chiliean would make it into the KKK membership clup do you? If laughran was racist he wouldnt fight GODOY.

 

Isn't that interesting? Gene only died in 1978, yet I don't recall ever seeing him on television or speaking in a film clip. Of course there's simply no way such a recording does not exist.

My father recently purchased a superb CD of historical recordings from the late 1800s and early 1900s (consisting of then contemporary acts like minstral performances and some other such cultural curiosities no longer considered, "politically correct"), and included is a pristine comedic dialogue involving Corbett. Not only did Gentleman Jim have a superb speaking voice, it may actually have the best vocal quality of any heavyweight champion I've ever heard speak. (This shouldn't be surprising. The urbane Corbett came from a family of "Lace Curtain" Irish, had a quality education, and was a trained and experienced stage actor.)

 

To have over seventy fights and not one black opponent speaks for itself.

 

You obviously aren't able to understand history. I pity you.

 

I don't think he's saying that it isn't wrong but that being a racist then did not necessarily mean you were a horrible person. All people are just a product of their time. I imagine in the future we will be criticized for many of the things we do on a daily basis but again, this doesn't necessarily mean everyone at the time is a bad person. Misguided perhaps.

 

In the UK after the civil war, the contemporary press was sneering about the witch hunters. I don't think that educated people believed it generaly.

What would you i9dentify as being the high point of slavery, and were the practicioners necesarily of a different race to the slaves?

 

absolutly. its ignorance not badness. old people said terrible things, i remember folks from that generation, it did not make them bad. they reached an age where they didnt think they needed to reasses their beliefs and said embarasing outdated things.

 

Like I said the time of the witch craze was a strange era. The middle ages just ended. The enlightment just stared. The 30 year war was just over and whole middle europe was devestated. The pestilence burned through the population like a bushfire. The so called "little ice age", a drop of around 2 degrees on averave per year which changed agriculture big time, had just begun. People died like flies, 80% of the people from the village I came from died in just 5 years in these days. Of hunger, of the plague, of the hands of former soldiers.
People needed somebody to blame. These were witches. Interesting fact, in Catholic territories about 50% of people burned for withcraft were male. In protestant areas 90% were female.

And no, not even the educated people doubted the existence of witchcraft. For the people back then magic, he devil, spirits and so on was fact. hey didn't believe in it, they knew it existed. It's hard to understand for people of today but if you read contempory sources and reports of witch trials, and there are a few hundred around, you will see this is true.

Fascinating stuff if you can view it from a distance.

Depends. Of modern times I'd say mid 18th to mid 19th century. In the middleages slavery wasn't that common, because the church was against it. The Christian churches thought of all humans to be equal and thus one human can't be owned by another - and no serfdom is not the same as slavery. Slavery became just big again when new "races" (in Germany we are taught there is no such thing as different races which actually is supported by genetic sciences) were discovered and seen as inferior and not really human and so the protection of the church wasn't there for them.

Of course then there is the antique. Slavery was even more common back then than in modern times. Slavery was he backbone of heir economy. And seen as something completly different than later on. In the Roman Empire some slaves were even something like shadow emperors.

 

Nah. What I say is that we can't judge them by the standards of our time but we have to judge them by the sandards of their times. That is the historic method actually.

 

Isn't that essentially the same thing?