+3 votes
102 views
in Politics & Government ✌ by

Read about it in the Atlanta Black Star.

https://atlantablackstar.com/2015/03/31/not-all-peaceful-13-racist-quotes-gandhi-said-about-black-people/

And somehow, the vandalizing of the Gandhi statue in Washington, DC, didn't make front-page news in the Washington Post, if indeed it was mentioned at all.

It was noticed in India, however.

https://www.newsindiatimes.com/low-point-of-protests-mahatma-gandhis-statue-in-washington-dc-vandalized/

5 Answers

+4 votes
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Whatever Ghandi meant it was in a very different time-and in a country where anyone not  white was treated differently.

As someone with a History Degree and a trained History teacher i do wonder how History is going to be taught in future...are we supposed to put modern day values on the past?And denigrate  major figures of History because something they said or the way they made their money doesn’t fit with modern values...thought provoking.



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+1

I also have a history degree. I got it seven years ago. I taught the same thing as you.

+3 votes
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I agree with Sir Furry here. I am unsure why Gandhi said those things, but I am not ready to judge him on that. To look at his whole life, as mentioned in the article also, THAT is his legacy.

I remember when I was first working with African-Americans, San Francisco 1967, and I could see them flinch at some of my back-country expressions. They were not only co-workers but friends, and they would just explain what the expressions meant to them, very different from my intentions...then, "please say it like this," and slowly I would get the communication figured out.

And I notice all those quotes in the Atlanta Black Star seem to have early dates, not when Gandhi was in his maturity. 

*  *  *

Also, with what's going on in the USA now, I am convinced you need to sort out carefully. Some of it is going so extreme that I am reminded of the French Revolution; the oppression was authentic, but the revolt got carried away into blood rage, mob mentality, mindlessly killing/destroying everyone in sight. I see a comparison with now, because pulling down statue of Gandhi is way over the top.

Even here in my town of 1800 people, there was some "protesting," but it was kids using the national protests as an excuse for vandalism.

One concept I first got from Tink is that violent revolutions virtually NEVER end well -- and we all need to work on focusing this that got going in the USA into fruitful directions but non-violent. The power does ultimately rest with the common folk.

+4 votes
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There is no perfect human. I also learnt the same as SurfurryAnimal in my university. Some historians do not respect those rules.

+4 votes
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As an Indian, I'm not an admire or against Gandhi. I just feel he was pushed up a lot by the Indian government.

I heard that most people in the 19th and 20th centuries were racist.

I can also read comments stating that "George Washington was a slave owner". Arabs had Slaves too.

And about Abraham Lincoln the following:- 

Though Lincoln argued that the founding fathers’ phrase “All men are created equal” applied to black and white people alike, this did not mean he thought they should have the same social and political rights. His views became clear during an 1858 series of debates with his opponent in the Illinois race for U.S. Senate, Stephen Douglas, who had accused him of supporting “negro equality.”

In their fourth debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858, Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed blacks having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites. - https://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-lincoln-slavery-and-emancipation

Mother Teresa was accused of not hospitalizing the people at her care even though she got a lot of donations.

Doctors took to calling her locations “homes for the dying,” and such a name was warranted. Mother Teresa’s Calcutta home for the sick had a mortality rate of more than 40 percent. But in her view, this wasn’t a bad thing, as she believed that the suffering of the poor and sick was more of glory than a burden.

“There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion,” Mother Teresa said. “The world gains much from their suffering.”

When it came to her own suffering, however, Mother Teresa took a different stance. The ailing altruist received care for her failing heart in a modern American hospital.

Winston Churchill was accused of racism towards Indians.



+1 vote
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It is just laughable that ignoramuses should apply present social/political standards to historical figures, with little or no understanding of the world in which those figures operated.

They would do well, for example, to read what Frederick Douglass said at the dedication of the emancipation monument that these ignoramuses so revile today.

https://faithfullymagazine.com/frederick-douglass-lincoln-emancipation-memorial/

"Few great public men have ever been the victims of fiercer denunciation than Abraham Lincoln was during his administration. He was often wounded in the house of his friends. Reproaches came thick and fast upon him from within and from without, and from opposite quarters. He was assailed by Abolitionists; he was assailed by slave–holders; he was assailed by the men who were for peace at any price; he was assailed by those who were for a more vigorous prosecution of the war; he was assailed for not making the war an abolition war; and he was bitterly assailed for making the war an abolition war.

But now behold the change: the judgment of the present hour is, that taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln."

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+1

That Douglass quote is just marvelous, Tink...I think you are going to the heart of things.

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Virginia, I think Lincoln was easily our greatest President, both for the magnitude of the task (our bloodiest war) and for the opposition he faced from all quarters, as Douglass noted. And despite all, he got it right!

And then to be shot on Good Friday of 1865... I wept when I first read that, and still get teary today. His was indeed the final sacrifice to that cause for which he gave "the last full measure of devotion."  

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