Following Up on Early Racism in Hollywood

I recently wrote about my thoughts on Birth of a Nation and how I found it impossible to appreciate its technical merits due to the argument it made in favor of a racist society.  Here's another blogger's take and another on the issue which I think provides a nice contrast with my own conclusions.

Both essentially argue that the racist portrayals in older films are a sign of the times and that the modern audience should appreciate them as an artifact of history and not expect their removal in the way some feel cigarettes should be removed.

I appreciate the arguments and struggle with them myself.  I came out at the other end of this argument. I do not want these movies edited, but presuming that viewers today are primarily interested in entertainment or of finding a filmmaker's perspective, I think it's a lot to ask them to put up with the racist content.  Of course, my primary experience has been overt (Birth), though I have also encountered and commented on it in The Cheat and A Natural Born Gambler.

I think the Immortal Ephemera blog post gets it right.  I'm going to comment on it if I see it and it sticks with me.  I'm certainly going to point it out when it stands between me and my enjoyment of a film.  I'm obviously a couple of decades away from Union Depot, China Seas or The Toy Wife in my own project.  I'll be interested to see how I react to race in those and other films as I move through the decades.