• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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    4 months ago

    As I said to someone else- Hitler was not happy about Jesse Owens winning gold and racists are racists.

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      4 months ago

      Yes, they are, and unlike Germany our racists didn’t volunteer to get killed enmass on the Eastern Front. They just got old and bitter, and passed it on to their children as best they could.

      I think it’s also rather important in the context of racial history to quote Jesse Owens directly on the matter of national leaders.

      “Hitler didn’t snub me- it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me.”

      And all the other 18 African-Americans who earned golf medals, Roosevelt did not congratulate a single one, but did offer congratulations to the white athletes.

      Of course, that context might simply have been Jesse not realizing that Hitler’s “congratulatory” wave to him, a Nazi salute, after some of his victories probably meant something far different to Jesse than it meant to Hitler, but it doesn’t change the fact that we don’t need to compare modern American racists’ Olympic reactions to Hitler’s.

      We have, and have had always had, plenty of our own to compare.