“People then didn’t know any better”

People then didn’t know any better.

I’ve heard that phrase all-too-often whenever there’s talk about the past in the USA and Europe, about the horrific treatment and exclusion of women and ethnic minorities and the participation or inaction of white men – or white society in general – in that oppression. The excuse implies that white people – particularly white men – heard and saw only messages of their supremacy, living in a vacuum that never allowed dissenting voices and so, therefore, they didn’t know any better than to be white supremacists, abusers, fascists, whatever. We hear it about our own parents, grandparents and great-grandparents in particular.

For so long, I believed it.

But in the last 10 years, I’ve read and seen more material from specific times when, supposedly, dissenting voices weren’t widely known and alternative viewpoints weren’t expressed. As I’ve read, I’ve learned that, particularly in the last 250 years, most definitely, people DID know better.

Let’s take American slave narratives, for instance: these interviews with formerly enslaved Americans from the 1700s and 1800s are readily and easily available online from a variety of sources – and were widely available in newspapers during those times as well. Take the case of Oney “Ona” Judge, enslaved under George Washington and his wife: with the aid of Philadelphia’s free black community, Judge liberated herself in 1796 and lived as a fugitive slave in New Hampshire for the rest of her life. She was twice interviewed by abolitionist newspapers in the mid-1840s. Washington wanted her abducted and brought back to him, but the plan was abandoned when a local official warned that news of an abduction could cause a riot on the docks by supporters of abolition.

So, at a time when people supposedly didn’t know any better, Ona was one of many slaves having her story told in publications in the 1700s, and there were so many vocal supporters of abolition that a local official feared that they would RIOT if Ona was abducted and returned to the man who, we’ve all been told, was the most respected and adored man in our country.

Look at the editorials in newspapers in the 1800s: the evils of slavery are regularly talked about. People were regularly hearing those messages, all over the USA, via newspapers and lectures and pulpits. They either listened to those voices or they deliberately, purposely ignored them.

People then didn’t know any better.

I’ve been told repeatedly that, before the USA got involved officially in World War II, Americans had no idea that Nazis were that bad. I was told the USA government turned away Jewish refugees because Americans just didn’t understand what was happening under the Nazis. But one day a few years ago, TCM showed four movies, back to back, all released before 1943 and all strongly stating the horrors of Nazism – and this was before the depth of the Holocaust was widely known. I watched them all and then decided to try to find and watch every English-language anti-fascist movies released before 1943. I’m now up to 14 titles. The first I’ve found is in 1939. These aren’t obscure films: these are mainstream movies that feature the biggest stars of the day, including Edward G. Robinson, George Sanders, Margaret Sullavan, Jimmy Stewart, Joan Bennett, Joel McCrea, Paulette Goddard, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Leslie Howard, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, of course, Charlie Chaplin. Millions of Americans saw those movies and, therefore, WERE WARNED ABOUT NAZIS.

People then didn’t know any better.

The movie Hidden Figures was a revelation for me. This wasn’t about just one or two black women working within the space program. This was about a room FULL of black women working out mathematical problems and crunching data for the space program. How many white men saw these black American women working, benefitted from their mathmatical and analytical knowledge and skills, and still joined their local White Citizens League or remained quiet during the Civil Rights movement?

People then didn’t know any better.

Recently, a Playboy interview from 1971 with John Wayne resurfaced where Wayne said he believed in white supremacy. It shocked a lot of people, which, in turn, shocked me – I’ve always known John Wayne was an extreme right-winger, his views were widely reported at the time and have never been a secret. But let’s be clear: John Wayne wasn’t the way he was because he was born in 1907. He wasn’t that way because he was 30 in 1937. He wasn’t that way because he was 64 in 1971. He wasn’t that way because of when he was born nor because of when or where he lived. He was that way because of the CHOICES HE MADE ABOUT WHAT TO BELIEVE. There were people all around him in the 1930s and 40s and 50s and 60s who didn’t think like him and didn’t vote like him and were talking about and marching about civil rights. He saw them, he heard them and he CHOSE to oppose them. His racism and sexism didn’t come from the time or place he lived in – it came from WHO HE WAS.

And, yet, I heard the excuses. And when I pushed back, I was told, “So, the majority of white people in the early to mid 20th century weren’t racist and supportive of racist laws or at the very least complicit in racism through their silence?” That statement implies we should assume that anyone born in certain times was a racist because, you know, People then didn’t know any better.

Your birthdate doesn’t give you a pass to be a racist nor a misogynist – at least not in the USA. Not now, now 50 years ago, not 100 years ago, not 200 years ago.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelly (Frankenstein), wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, arguing that women are not naturally inferior to men and that both men and women should be treated as rational beings, with equal access to education. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was an immediate success and well received upon its publication, reviewed favorably by the Analytical Review, the General Magazine, the Literary Magazine, New York Magazine and the Monthly Review. And she was NOT the only person saying such in 1792. Or 1892. And don’t even get me started on how more feminist archeology is turning common assumptions about who was making tools, who was hunting and who was leading in primitive and ancient societies on its head – those common, sexist assumptions are recent, not thousands of years old.

People then didn’t know any better.


Fuck that.