Good intentions, past and present

I am thinking about our recent conversation sparked by Bernadette's presentation about the meaning of Crone's scrapbooks and the possibility that he may have wanted to illustrate work that he genuinely felt was good, even though we now see that same work as racist and inherently harmful.  I wonder why exactly I feel compelled to emphasize his probably good intentions.  I realize as I reflect that I feel the importance of doing so because we can so easily imagine another person, especially if they are from the past, as behaving in a racist manner.  At the same time, we feel comfortable in our own good intentions and forget to notice our own racism. 

Here is a video about how the clothes we donate to charity are used to colonize Zambia today.  It traces the route from our cast-off clothes to the destabilization of Zambia's textile industries, along the way showing how colonialism led to Zambia's dependence on the IMF and that dependence is preventing economic growth there.


http://youtu.be/CeCIlgUeYlM