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Good points.

> She was the subject of intense FBI scrutiny for her “leftist” writing and blacklisted by the “House Un-American Committee” so she fled to Mexico. She also dared to marry an Asian man as a white woman which was not just frowned upon at the time but illegal.

That's awful. :(

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the original comment is itself perhaps over-confident in its accusation. as far as i can tell, the known facts about what materials steinbeck received of babb's are hazy. certainly seems suspicious though.

It's still illegal for a white woman to marry an Asian man if she's already married to a white man. Still awful. I'm just making a point that these social norms are pretty relative and if you don't have any underlying system of morals to judge them by, you'll probably just end up reinforcing whatever morals your own society already has, with no regard to their awfulness.

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