Quote:
Originally Posted by btcarfagno
The question is more along the lines of whether or not he was a virulent racist as he has been portrayed for decades. The evidence may be pointing to that not being the case. It seems more likely that he was as racist as the everyday person of his time, which, granted, by today's standards is quite alarming.
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Was he portrayed routinely as virulently racist? By whom? My impression in that regard was formed mostly by Crawford on the "Glory" tapes, I think, and as I've said, that doesn't seem to me now nearly enough to have drawn any kind of conclusion in that regard. My only other deep dive into Cobb was reading the Alexander book back in the day, and I can't remember what he wrote about it. I had always thought of Cobb mostly as quick-tempered, a brawler, with a fierce drive to win at all costs, confirmed both contemporaneously and in later accounts by my research. Other than that, my impression of his racial attitudes would probably have been similar to comments here to the effect that like most people he was a product of his time and environment and it would have been surprising and admirable had he NOT held the attitudes prevalent in those. Now I'm seeing some evidence that the latter might indeed be the case, and I hope that turns out to be true.