re: And while we're at it, three cheers for the Black Death!
Without that, the economic and social underpinnings of the medieval period wouldn't have been as dramatically eroded and we would have had no Renaissance. And probably, many of the white folks wouldn't be around in our present configurations, either, because the gene pool would not have been so ruthlessly and randomly drained.
We can recognize the results of horrors without being grateful for or finding virtue in the horrors themselves.
Regards--
Mary Anne