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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

Funny, considering Jefferson had around 600 slaves himself.

Jefferson had some of the most elegant words against slavery while perpetuating it himself. Jefferson the words vs Jefferson the man. His massive hypocrisy is one of those irreducible complexities of American history. And I don’t believe it’s pure cynicism. His words had major impact on the idea of America and were part of the reason the South (at least according to the Confederacy’s Vice President in his “Cornerstone” speech) rebelled:

“The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. [...] Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."” —Alexander Stephen’s, VP of the Confederacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech

I am cynical, to quite a extent. Especially when people in power are concerned. Lately so I came to the conclusion that what I see as pure cynicism on there behalf might actually be rooted in honest believes. Not that these believes make any sense or are even remotely logical so. And I think that this self contradictory nature might actually be one of the big driving forces behind these people.

FWIW, Jefferson's beliefs were remarkably complicated, to the point where even his interests in abolishing slavery were tied up in his belief that black people were inferior... and so like, once emancipated, he apparently intended deportation as the next, critical step?

https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slaver...

The modern (western) world has a hard time separating racism and slavery. And bigotry for that matter.

Slavery, the US / American Colonies variety of it, was deeply rooted in racism. Slavery is gone, racism is still there. So I honestly don't see how the western world is doing a bad job at separating the two.

Let's face it, most of the founding fathers were racist slave owners.

They didn’t enslave people because they were racist, they enslaved people because it was effectively free labor. Sure, they chose Africans because they were racist and thought them savages, but that isn’t why the institution of slavery existed.

The institution of slavery didn't exist until they came to the New World. The medieval practice of serfdom was pretty brutal, but serfs were at least considered human.

Slavery was introduced in the New World and not in Europe, because that's where the non-Europeans were. When the native Americans proved poor slaves (among other things, dying in droves from disease and being better able to escape due to knowing the area), they imported slaves from Africa.

The Africans had been practicing slavery all along, but the Europeans had considered it barbaric until then. They still didn't tolerate it within Europe, but only safely out of sight in the New World. The institution of slavery only came into existence after colonizing places inhabited by people of other races.

Slavery played a huge role in antique Rome and Greece. Across the Mediterranean in fact. But that kind of slavery was very different from the cattle slavery practiced in the American colonies, especially the US. It was also much less routed in race, besides the POWs being enslaved.

Race has played a huge role in slavery throughout time, but to your point it depends on when and where that time is. My original point was someone can be racist without believing in slavery (and the other way around), and they can not like a particular culture/class without being racist. These differences are important because once we start making blanket statements about what people really think it only encourages that tribalism they're trying to fix in the first place.

There are nuanced differences.

Slavery (as seen then) implies that the person you are enslaving as subhuman (remember the 3/5s compromise?). Most slave owners treated their slaves as investments like a farmer would treat a tractor today. In fact, for the really terrible work many slave owners would hire Irish immigrants to do the jobs they didn't want their slaves doing out of fear of the risk of harm to the person doing the job. They were tools, not humans.

Racism, which we have now (though probably to a much lesser degree than what some people would want you to believe) acknowledges that the other is human but is inferior due to skin color or ethnicity.

Bigotry is more cultural. The other is human, and should have all the rights thereof, but the bigot doesn't like the culture of the other person. This is called racism by contemporary standards, which is very wrong.

The 3/5 compromise is even worse than mere sub-human-ness. They were already not entitled to any human rights. Their owners also wanted them counted as human solely for the purpose of adding to their power in the Congress and Electoral College. So not only were they subhuman, but the goal was to make it even harder for people to grant them rights.

The opposition was to count them for 0. The "compromise" was to account them for "only" 3/5 -- not at "3/5 of a human" but "slave owners get that much thumb on the scale of all future votes".

That still wasn't sufficient to mollify them, and they ended up seceding, making it quite clear that their reason was to continue to own people.

He's neither the first person nor the last person to fail to live up to their own ideals. Jefferson was overly worried about the logistics, and he was definitely racist, but he also did believe that slavery was a moral abomination that should be abolished.

He didn't even free his own children while he was living.

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