Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
That said, I wasn’t there, but some relatives that did live in that neighbourhood (on Grafton) were reportedly compensated fairly well for their homes, and used the money to buy a better place on the outskirts of the city where they actually turned out to be happier (I was told that this was a rough part of town in that era). It’s just an anecdote about one case, however.
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I don't know the details of this case but it's become more common to see activism or advocacy masked as history and there's often less research from primary sources. Some people say there aren't primary sources and we can't know what happened when there's a pretty rich record. You also sometimes see people lowering the bar if a story comes from an oppressed minority group but I'm not sure that does anybody any favours in the long run; it tends to make all past grievances seem folkloric when some truly are like that and some are more objective and deserve different treatment.
Typically people fought for incremental improvements in their day and if you don't understand the context it looks bad by today's standard. Of course, there are bad people in every era and as you go back culture becomes increasingly ignorant in some ways, although maybe we are sliding backward in others. Our media today is full of spectacular BS even by historical standards. We are not on the whole significantly more intelligent or moral than people who lived a few generations ago.
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