Why mid-20th century racist historical figures feel so much more disappointing
It's happened to most (if not all) of us at some point. We learn about some daring hero or unwavering activist from history. We admire them and aspire to be like them as if they were fictional characters. But then disappointment strikes, for we discover that they actually held racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, xenophobic, etc. views. Although it stings, we often can to a degree understand (not excuse) their abhorrent, unacceptable, outdated views, because they lived over 100 years in the past, after all.
But it hits differently when the historical figure in question lived during the mid 20th century, like Ethel Kennedy, Sylvia Plath, or Brigitte Bardot. It just feels especially jarring when they lived that recently, being born less than a century ago.
Ethel treated her Black and Hispanic maids like shit, verbally (and physically) abusing them if they didn't speak perfect English and yelling racial slurs at them, on top of being a neglectful, abusive mother. Sylvia Plath was casually xenophobic and racist, her writings revealing that she was very anti-Black, anti-Semitic, anti-Asian, and pretty much anti anything that isn't white and Christian. Brigitte Bardot spewed anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and homophobic slurs until her death in 2025, despite numerous arrests for hate speech (on top of being a horrible mother)! I use these three as main examples here because they were most immediately disappointing (and archetypal) for me.
What makes their bigotry so uniquely difficult to swallow is that they were born into a rapidly modernizing world. Unlike an immovable racist like Martha Washington, born and raised on a sheltered Virginian plantation in the 18th century with equally racist, closed-minded relatives and neighbors all around her (save for her wonderful husband :)), Ethel, Sylvia, and Brigitte were urbanites born in the late 1920s/30s. They lived in the aftermath of the horrors of the Holocaust, during the Civil Rights Movement, amid the passage of various international human rights laws, when places were desegregating in front of them. Yet amid all of that rapid change and progress, they still retained their old-world prejudices for as long as they breathed. It's so much worse that they were surrounded by progressive campaigns printed in newspapers, broadcast on radio and television, and even happening in their own backyard. Ethel's husband, Bobby, was literally a leading civil rights activist and champion for the marginalized. Sylvia lived in New England and Britain during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Brigitte Bardot was a leading icon in the sexual revolution and even earlier in her life supported civil rights herself! Yet ultimately they did not budge one inch in the right direction. One really cannot just dismiss them as a "product of their time" like many other historical figures who lived long before.
I'm not saying that the "progressives" of their generation were all natural-born saints. Hell, Bobby Kennedy was originally known for his "ruthlessness" and ardent support for McCarthyism. But the key difference is that they were able (and above all willing) to learn, change, and broaden their perspectives. Seeing starving African American children in the Mississippi Delta (on top of his brother's tragic murder) transformed him a much more thoughtful, empathetic person, and he channeled that into his platform to fight for the rights of the downtrodden. Unlike these figures, whose inertia was so grand that it feels surreal that two of them lived into the mid 2020s.
If George Washington, Mary Wollstonecraft, Percy Shelley, Louisa Adams, Prudence Crandall, Laura Smith Haviland, the Grimké sisters, among others, could do it almost 200 years before any of these figures, they literally have zero excuse to be the shitty human beings they were. Not to mention that while they kept the world weighed down by sitting or lying down, many others from their own generation (often their own, immediate family members) were standing up and running against injustice. They are actually a massive insult to figures like Washington, Wollstonecraft, and Shelley, who had everything to lose: their wealth, their privilege, their homes, their freedom, their lives. Yet spoke their minds nonetheless to dismantle the oppressive system.
Ethel, Sylvia, Brigitte, and other bigoted assholes from their generation (and after) had relatively minimal to lose supporting progressive causes, yet chose to hoard everything for themselves while also hurting others.
Edit: I’ve heard people defending Ethel say that she was traumatized by the sudden murder of her husband and essentially did a 180 in terms of character. Quite frankly I beg to differ. For one, the entire Kennedy family was traumatized!!! Tragedy upon tragedy upon loss seemed to hex the family. Yet Jackie and Eunice and Bobby and others did not spew epithets or act cruelly to those around them. In fact, as mentioned before, Bobby used his trauma and grief to help others! As did Eunice with her founding the Special Olympics. Jackie wouldn’t let her children near Hickory Hill because of the feral environment there. And besides, Ethel’s former secretary Noelle Fell stated that the woman never really liked Black or Hispanic people, and recalled her saying things like those people were “stupid.” Lovely lady indeed!
