Helen Keller:

[MadameButterfly]

11. I think sometimes it's unfair for us to judge people of that time

or imagine what it was like to know as little as they knew, or expect them to fully understand the ramifications of how these policies might be carried out. We have the benefit of hindsight, and Keller once she knew what we have always known, made the right decision. Fortunately, society as a whole learned from that experiment.

I have watched condemnation of a famous family member, the renaming of a chapel at college, and I wonder what we are accomplishing. Unless we can put ourselves in their shoes, in their time, I wonder if we really know what we ourselves would have thought--at lease at the beginning when it was an ideal without the grim realities of carrying it out.

I can't help but see comparison with the deportation of immigrants today. The idea that we can solve problems by expunging ourselves of perceived undesirable people by making them go away. Requiring the ignoring of the human ramifications of such an idea.