Talk:Norbert Rillieux
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I stumbled across this article, and I think it fascinating. I am a bit concerned about the it-was-probably-racism thing at the end of the piece. I don't doubt it, but I think some evidence might be helpful? Something of the same sort may be appropriate in the remark about Rillieux's yellow-fever solution for New Orleans; the villain of the piece is described as a former employee of Rillieux, and some idea of how they parted company and how that engendered ill-feeling and so on, would be useful? --djenner03:49, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
- When i did the research on Rilleux some sites say it was because of racism, but none of them said anything else that would imply its not racism. --hengsheng120 05:34, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
- I don't really see the problem. Had Rillieux (careful with the spelling) not experienced increased racism after 1803, when Americans took over New Orleans, he would have been truly bucking the trend. As a French and Spanish colony, New Orleans did not have the kind of black-and-white racism that we think of today, but rather a more complex system of quadroons, octoroons, free blacks, etc. And by the time New Orleans came out on the losing side of the Civil War, everyone who wasn't basically 100% white was simply deemed black, just as Americans think of race today. But don't take my word for it, visit http://lsm.crt.state.la.us/cabildo/cab9.htm:
"Like many free blacks, Rillieux experienced increasing racial discrimination prior to the Civil War, and he left Louisiana to spend the rest of his life in Paris."
Sixinfo 17:46, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
