5th October 2004, 4:37 PM
Yeah... it's a very tricky issue. It's hard to look at history and say 'why were things so unfair for almost all of human history?' Even with a specific case like this it's hard... because humanity as a species hasn't changed. We are built the same way we have been for thousands and thousands of years. So in the right circumstances those people could have understood... still, the fact remains that they didn't. Racism against Asians just wasn't on anyone's radar (except the persecuted Asians, that is)... but the hard question is how much can you say 'it was a different time and things were different then than they are now' and how much can you blame them for being wrong. It seems that both sides of that are correct... on the one hand they are inarguably wrong. So are racist people and things today. But on the other hand, it was much less of an issue then... and if even someone who knew about the issue like Theodore Geissel (or whatever Dr. Seuss's real name was, I think it's something like that) didn't jnotice, then to some degree we can excuse it to the differences of the time... while condemning it for being wrong. Ideally they should have known better.