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SoMToZu t1_iu34sk4 wrote

Reply to comment by shpydar in Canada House of Commons unanimously agrees to describe residential schools as genocide by shpydar

Damn, never realized that Macdonald was a raging racist, all while we plaster his name everywhere...

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TXTCLA55 t1_iu44gjy wrote

Historical context: Most people were raging racists in the past.

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Mizral t1_iu44tye wrote

Even among his contemporaries MacDonald was considered to be particularly vicious towards First Nations.

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Happy13178 t1_iu3nzch wrote

they were all raging racists back then. Really, like all of them.

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a10sucks t1_iu5omtd wrote

That's not true. There were plenty of people who saw what was happening as monstrous and wrong.

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Happy13178 t1_iu5uhzm wrote

In the late 1800s, probably not as many as you'd like to think.

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a10sucks t1_iu5vmqq wrote

John Brown was the most popular man in the northern states for his actions against the slave states.

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Happy13178 t1_iu5vpkp wrote

And?

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a10sucks t1_iu5x2de wrote

If a man was massively popular for literally taking war to the institution of race-based slavery, what does that tell you about the popularity of the institution of slavery, of racism?

Sir John was a piece of shit even by the standards of his time.

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Happy13178 t1_iu5xfws wrote

Massively popular is subjective based on time period. He could have been massively popular in a town of 300, doesn't mean much. I'm still betting many in the late 1800s didn't give a shit, certainly not anywhere near to the point they are today, and you're arguing over a guy that's been dead for over a century for....what, internet points? This is a stupid discussion and you're wasting both our time on it.

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Mountain-Watch-6931 t1_iu46puc wrote

It was also more complicated in the sense he very much viewed populations west of Ontario differently, so treatment became more extreme in the west.

Amplified by the legitimate concern the Americans would steal the country west of Ontario if we didn’t get bodies (settlers) in fast, it was grim to be on the wrong side of policy.

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SomeDrunkAssh0le t1_iu4fg3m wrote

A tradition still carried on in toronto.

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not-ordinary t1_iu4n3c5 wrote

His old house is now the house of UofT’s school of graduate studies. Graduate defences take place there.

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RobertoSantaClara t1_iu4hsfw wrote

You never realized a 19th century Victorian era politician was racist?

Man you'll be in for one nasty surprise once you start reading 18th-19th century philosophy from other famous figures like Kant, Hume, Hegel, Voltaire, etc.

Shit, even Left Wing parties in the early 20th century were often racist. The Social Democrats in Sweden funded eugenics research in the 1920s-30s, and the early Labour movement in Australia supported a ban on all non-European immigration.

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TrainingObligation t1_iu4ops5 wrote

There's a reason the Harper Conservative government officially re-named the "Ottawa River Parkway" to the "Sir John A Macdonald Parkway" a decade ago, just as it was seeping into the larger public awareness that he was not worthy of being commemorated.

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DirtyThi3f t1_iu4gf0j wrote

They’ve been renaming many (all?) of the schools named after him. As a former student of one, I’m very happy about this.

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