re: #152 sliv_the_eli

I don’t think many of the founders were motivated by racism, not in the way that became all-too common in the South prior to the civil war. They were racist because the dominant culture was a racist one; it was a rare and enlightened person who wasn’t a racist, and it was easy for an otherwise decent person to remain a racist because they rarely met people of other races, and if they did, it was often an illiterate, brutalized slave who could be seen as ‘proof’ of the lesser nature of black people.

Similarly, it was easy for people in that time to dismiss women as having less intelligence, fortitude, courage, etc. because women weren’t given many opportunities to prove themselves in those areas. Systems like that are self-perpetuating without a lot of impetus from actual hate-in-the-heart racists.