History Main / FairForItsDay

* ''TheJackBennyProgram'' is sometimes criticized for the character of Rochester, Jack's black butler. Rochester is a servant who is poorly paid and refers to Jack as "Boss". Because of this, Rochester is seen as an uncomfortable stereotype. However, after WWII, Jack Benny became very uncomfortable with racial humor, and made a great effort to erase stereotypical aspects of the character of Rochester. Rochester [[NoHeroToHisValet was able to deflate Jack's giant ego better than any other member of the cast]]. In later shows, Jack and Rochester are seen as each other?s best friends, even though Rochester still worked for Jack. Rochester was seen, at the time, as a very positive role for a black actor.

* On ''TheManFromUNCLE'', (which started running several years before ''{{Star Trek|TheOriginalSeries}}''), Illya Kuryakin (as portrayed by David McCallum) was one of the first positive portrayals of a Russian - more precisely, Soviet - character on ColdWar-era American TV. This was all the more revolutionary because Illya was portrayed as being not just a patriotic Russian citizen, but ''a serving officer in the Soviet Navy'' (he's shown in uniform in one episode). in one second-season episode, "The Indian Affairs Affair", Native Americans in Oklahoma were portrayed in what would be considered a somewhat cringeworthy manner today, but it was quite clear from the context that they were the good guys (and THRUSH was portrayed in this episode as dressing up like stereotypical "black-hat" cowboy villains and treating the Native Americans in a contemptuous manner), and the Native Americans lent crucial help to Napoleon and Illya at the episode's climax in foiling the THRUSH plot.

This doesn't automatically make the work immune from criticism: something less prejudiced than its contemporaries can still be pretty darn prejudiced, and while it might certainly be unfair to hold a work to current standards of acceptability... well, those will always be the standards that matter most to the modern viewer. Still, oftentimes a little research will show that something cringe-worthy today is also something worthy of applause for what it stood for. Still, only the most skilled of authors manage to portray something that is not only Fair For Its Day, but [[ValuesResonance fair for any day]].

[[folder: Real Life]]
* AbrahamLincoln, despite being known for his firm stance against slavery, held views that would be considered very racist today, having been quoted as considering black folk not up to snuff against white folk.
** AbrahamLincoln was a classic politician. He was what his audience wanted to hear at the time and he wrote in private letters that he was more than willing to let slavery stand if it would get the Union reunited.
*** However, in the same paragraph where he said the above, he said that allowing slavery to stand for the sake of the Union was his view of his ''official'' duty; his personal wish was (as it had remained) that all men could be free.
**** To give a different view, Lincoln was much like many other white abolitionists, in that he believed the concept of slavery of any man was morally and ethically wrong, but did not actually view black people as equal to whites.
*** Noting that this does not necessarilly imply support for repression of blacks by either the state or society; the view held by most abolitionists was that blacks should be entitled to prove themselves individually on a level playing field, but that, at least on average, they wouldn't do as well as whites. Horribly racist to our ears, yes, but, well, see the trope title.
* The Athenian democracy gets some deserved flak for excluding women, non-Greeks, immigrants, non-landowners and slaves. Yet, a society where the leaders were elected rather than born into power, and where the guy who cleaned the streets for a living had exactly as much of a say in the running of the state as the rich land-owner, is pretty good going for several centuries BC. Assuming that the street-cleaner isn't a slave.
** Well, they weren't ''[[HistoricalHeroUpgrade that]]'' pure (among other things, they were capable of imperial brutality you might have expected of the Spartans), but compared to the rest of Greece at large, yes, they were near saints.
* Any American schoolchild learns that ThomasJefferson put an anti-slavery section in the Declaration of Independence and only took it out under strong pressure and the very real threat that the Declaration wouldn't pass with it in. But do you know why he didn't do more to end slavery later, like oh let's say, when he was President? It's because he couldn't figure out the logistics of shipping all the black people back to Africa (as he was always skeptical of peaceful black/white coexistence), and because he felt all the slaves would have wreaked havoc on the South's economy. Back then, the South was MUCH more dependent on the slave-plantation system, and Jefferson identified ''heavily'' with the farmers of the south. He didn't see much point in making one group of people happy, when he thought it would mean his base would be ruined.
** ...and, of course, he lacked the power to just abolish slavery, the support for such an action, etc...
*** And he would have had to give up Sally Hemmings.
* GeorgeWashington was the only of the slave-holding Founders to even make an attempt to free his slaves. For him, the matter was excruciatingly complicated: He wanted to free his slaves late in his lifetime, but most of his slaves weren't technically ''his'', instead being "dower slaves" owned by his wife Martha, and technically not his to do with as he wished. Further, freeing his own slaves and leaving Martha's slaves in bondage (outside of looking like gross hypocrisy) might conceivably have broken up slave families. He published a will that upon his and Martha's deaths, all slaves the two held were to be freed and educated enough to let them enter society as free men, and those too old or infirm to enter free society were to be cared for at the expense of Washington's estate for the rest of their lives. He had the will published, but Martha's relatives (Washington himself was the last of his line) did their best to get it quashed.
** That being said... he did go to extreme lengths to try and retrieve an escaped slave [[WhatTheHellHero while President]], and observed the letter, but not the spirit of Pennsylvania's slavery laws by making sure his slaves were shipped back to Virginia after five months of residence in the Executive Mansion in Philadelphia (according to Pennsylvania's laws, any slave spending half a year on Pennsylvania soil was automatically considered manumitted and had to be freed immediately).
** In large part because the laws at the time meant 'free' blacks could easily be re-enslaved, especially if they weren't educated or under someone's protection.
* The Inquisition is usually portrayed as a sinister and oppressive organization. However, The Papal Inquisition was the first European secret police more than anything else. The Inquisition was also revolutionarily lenient for its time, as it limited the use of torture (which was very common in secular courts), allowed the defendants legal representation, and issued death sentences much less often than in municipal proceedings where petty thieves usually were sent to swing. However all this pales compared to the fact that the Inquisition were the first legal body to place the burden of evidence on the prosecutor. That's right, folks! Inquisitors pioneered [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence Presumption of Innocence]].
** And the Spanish Inquisition ended witch trials in Spain a full century before the rest of Europe because it required scientific proof of witchcraft-not just witness accounts.
* Hammurabi's Code had a good deal of {{double standard}}s and even triple standards (not to mention the rule about "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"), but it still compared favorably to what his contemporaries in the region were doing.
** For that matter, "an eye for eye, a tooth for tooth" was a step up from the previous standards, since it ''limited'' the amount of retribution to the amount of harm.
** Also, the oft-quoted "An eye for an eye" bit in Hammurabi's code has a qualification rarely mentioned when the law is quoted: it only applied when the victim was a nobleman. For the common folk, the loss of an eye called for the payment of a piece of silver.
** It still allowed punishments against people who had nothing to do with the offense. For example, if your house collapsed killing your son, the son of the bricklayer who built it would be killed in turn.
* Many people call Dr John Langdon Down racist for claiming that 'Mongoloids' (now referred to as people with Down Syndrome) were a throwback to an earlier stage of evolution. However, what they don't realize is that he considered mentally handicapped caucasians to be proof that non-white races were actually ''human beings'', something that was a topic of much debate among white people then.
* Similarly, Johann Blumenbach (who gave us the term Caucasian for white people) underwent a weird CharacterDevelopment with regards to race. He initially believed that race determined who person was mentally (with "Negroid" races being below all others). However, he later fell in love with a black woman and came to the conclusion that black people were just as capable as any other race.
* The Meiji Era (1868-1912) language and educational reforms of Japan now look like efforts to eradicate dialects and enforce a single, very specific restrictive standard on people, but at the time they were progressive efforts to create class equality and open up scholarship to the lower classes by making scientific or literary writing accessible to people who couldn't afford years of education in heavily Chinese-influenced writing.
* Many of the Islamic rules concerning women are unfair by today's standards, but were actually quite progressive when Muhammad delivered them: for example, the rule that women receive half as much inheritance as their male relatives. It's unfair now, but at the time, women had no legal right to claim ''any'' inheritance and could be left penniless when their relatives died. The rule that men could have four wives so long as they could take care of them was intended to stop the practice of men marrying dozens of wives, exploiting them, and then moving on.
* The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia contains a provision that Parliament may make laws about "The people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws." The 1967 referendum finally recognizing indigenous Australians ''as people'' in fact DELETED "other than the aboriginal race in any State." This makes more sense once you realise that this provision is interpreted such that it only allows ''beneficial'' laws to be made about any one race (Thus allowing Federal Indigenous Scholarships, grants, etc) and overrode State laws that did ''very bad'' things to indigenous Australians.
[[/folder]]

<<|MetaConcepts|>>
<<|UnexpectedReactionsToThisIndex|>>

This doesn't automatically make the work immune from criticism: something less prejudiced than its contemporaries can still be pretty darn prejudiced, and while it might certainly be unfair to hold a work to current standards of acceptability... well, those will always be the standards that matter most to the modern viewer. Still, oftentimes a little research will show that something cringe-worthy today is also something worthy of applause for what it stood for. And sometimes, if an author is particularly skillful, he or she will manage to portray something that is not only Fair For Its Day, but [[ValuesResonance fair for any day]].

** It was also based on actual biographical writings, albeit likely exaggerated somewhat, by said white woman. Who was hired by the king as part of an attempt ''on his part'' to educate his wives and children to make Siam more able to interact with the then-still-dominant British Empire.

This doesn't automatically make the work immune from criticism: something less prejudiced than its contemporaries can still be pretty darn prejudiced, and while it might certainly be unfair to hold a work to current standards of acceptability... well, those will always be the standards that matter most to the modern viewer. Still, oftentimes a little research will show that something cringe-worthy today is also something worthy of applause for what it stood for.

* Isaac of York in ''{{Ivanhoe}}'' is a stereotypical GreedyJew and at least one of the epigraphs from a chapter involving his character is taken from ''TheMerchantOfVenice''. [[hottip:* :indeed, he and his daughter, Rebecca, are sort of expies of Shylock and Jessica]] On the other hand, unlike Shylock, Isaac isn't villainous and is shown to care for his daughter more than wealth (there's definitely an implication that this isn't true of Shylock). More importantly, some effort is taken to indicate that he might not have ended up so greedy and cowardly were it not for all of the people constantly threatening to rob or kill him and his coreligionists.

** To put this in perspective, the movie came out in 1961, the same year as {{Breakfast at Tiffanys}}, which had Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese landlord with no problems. {{So yeah}}

*** Noting that this does not necessarilly imply support for repression of blacks by either the state or society; the view held by most abolitionists was that blacks should be entitled to prove themselves individually on a level playing field,but that, at least on average, they wouldn't do as well as whites. Horribly racist to our ears, yes, but, well, see the trope title.

** Annoying, the reboot series in the 1990s gave a more racist "OhMyGoodnessMe" accent to Hadji than he had in the original.

* Jodie on ''{{Soap}}'' suffers from a pretty bad case of HaveIMentionedIAmGay (and later SuddenlySexuality when he sleeps with a woman), but was downright groundbreaking at the time, given that he was the first openly gay regular cast member of a primetime American television show. Not only that, he ''wasn't'' a stereotype - in fact, he frequently played the OnlySaneMan role. Additionally, later on in the series run, there was a story arc in which Jodie sued for sole custody of his daughter (the result of the aforementioned SuddenlySexuality situation). Since the mother is a vindictive and unstable woman, Jodie is presented as being the unquestionably better parent and more sympathetic character, and the idea that he would be denied parental rights because of his sexual orientation a gross injustice.