ABSTRACT
Presentism is the sin of holding persons native to an earlier time accountable to the standards of a present time. Those blamed in the first place are usually dead, or otherwise indisposed. They cannot defend themselves. Yet they are accused. There are many examples. One could say, for example, that by today’s standards Charlotte Perkins Gilman was at best a feminist essentialist, at worst a racist. Or it is possible to blame Anna Julia Cooper, one of her generation’s most brilliantly timeless thinkers, for her failure to touch upon sex. And even W. E. B. Du Bois, than whom none among those in his several time zones was more prescient, could be accused of insufficiency with regard to women. He was a feminist in his way, but by present standards he was not a good enough one.
