Talk:Samuel Eliot Morison

Failure to discuss what Morison said that was offensive

I have looked through the archive and have browsed the varied posts there about Morison and racism and what is and isn't appropriate for a biography, etc., etc.

I have no interest in that fight.

What I am interested in, however, is what Morison wrote that is so offensive. Sure, the section on "Slavery" goes on about how African American scholars objected to certain views and statements from Morison's work, but it never in any way describes what those views or statements were. The reader is left feeling as though he has only seen half of the story and cannot give a critical eye to that section because the criticism is all that is present. This needs to change.

Philologick (talk) 03:38, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

SE Morison on Robert Calef, the Mathers, and some shameful aspects of the Mather history at Harvard

Just a note to those interested in this fellow that he has recently been discussed on the Talk page of the Robert Calef wiki article. I have been disappointed to find SE Morison's contributions to this particular discussion in the 1930s naive and/or ignorant and easily disproven when applying what Morison himself might call "proper historic method." But I cannot comment on Morison's work as a scholar other than this one issue, where superstitious theological yearnings managed to fatally undermine rational jurisprudence, and which (unlike say GL Burr) does not seem to have been a primary interest of Morison.

Dago Navy

This is a biographic voice. Morison published a book containing a racial slur. I am surprised that someone from Wiki would delete that info flagging it as "unnecessary" in a paragraph about Morison titled "criticism".

If Morison had written about "n-world navy" would you dare to say (to think...) the same?

By today's standards Morison's books could be flawed because of his racial bias. In fact,the Royal Navy did not have single and monolithic opinion about the Royal Italian Navy as wrongly suggested by Morison, just read what Cunningham wrote about the need of a huge escort for Operation Pedestal in the Mediterranean. More, this is what Cunningham wrote after US landings in north Africa: "“As long as the Italian fleet is in being and in a position to interfere a considerable force of capital ships and therefore cruisers is required...the Italian fleet will be a constant nuisance and menace to through convoys in the 26 Mediterranean and it must be our object to render it ineffective as soon as possible”. 2A01:B600:740A:1:D8E6:41A:E6B8:9515 (talk) 12:46, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

While I do not doubt that Morison shared many of the prejudices common among his peers, it is not for us to dig them out and comment on them in this article. We go by what reliable sources say. Morison is in effect quoting some Royal Navy officers. To say in WP that he was prejudiced because of that reportage would be original research. We are not here to right great wrongs, but to provide a neutral summary of what reliable sources say about a topic. If reliable sources discuss Morison's prejudices, we can discuss what is appropriate for inclusion in the article. Donald Albury 17:29, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

I'd agree with Donald here. Secondary sourcing is needed to establish notability of this aspect of Morison's work. Some historians have written about problems with his history that have included lazy slurs on various nationalities (for instance, an Australian historian has demolished a claim Morison made that a US defeat in the Solomons was due to an Australian patrol aircraft's crew taking a tea break when they returned to base instead of promptly reporting sighting a Japanese force - the article covers this). Nick-D (talk) 09:21, 9 December 2024 (UTC)