Yeah, Jefferson was a racist. But keep in mind vis a vis Sally Hemmings that she was his dead wife's half-sister, in short, half white. So, only half a hypocrite. Clearly the more serious charge, which we already knew, was Jefferson's effective support of slavery, despite some waffling and contradictory mumblings. After all, he OWNED Sally Hemmings. Barkley Rosser On Mon, 2 Nov 1998 16:34:13 -0500 Carl Remick <cremick at rlmnet.com> wrote:
> Re Paul's: "But the yahoo-minded attack on Jefferson still deserves to
> be refuted as well. And yes, Jefferson WAS a complicated person."
>
> Let's put the information back into the information age, so to speak.
> Jefferson's following assessment of blacks *is* complicated in its
> presentation ... but the basic message couldn't be simpler:
>
> An Excerpt of Query XIV
> from the
> Notes on the State of Virginia (1781)
> by Thomas Jefferson
>
> It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks
> into the state, and thus save the expence of supplying, by importation
> of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices
> entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of
> the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real
> distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will
> divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably
> never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. -- To
> these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are
> physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of
> colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane
> between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it
> proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from
> that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is
> as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this
> difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or
> less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red
> and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less
> suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony,
> which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which
> covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a
> more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the
> whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the
> preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own
> species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy
> attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic
> animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of colour, figure, and
> hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of
> race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the
> kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very
> strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration
> renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the
> whites. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary
> apparatus, which a late ingenious experimentalist has discovered to be
> the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from
> extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the
> outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with more of it. They
> seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day,
> will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or
> later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning.
> They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps
> proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger
> till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more
> coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their
> female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a
> tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are
> transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful
> whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt,
> and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to
> participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed
> their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and
> unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not
> reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their
> faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in
> memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as think
> one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the
> investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull,
> tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa
> for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage
> with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a
> judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for
> the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the
> sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to,
> and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage,
> to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so
> situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of
> their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and
> from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some
> have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the
> arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had
> before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians,
> with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes
> not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a
> plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their
> minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of
> the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment
> strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I
> find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain
> narration; never see even an elementary trait, of painting or sculpture.
> In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate
> ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a
> small catch. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more
> extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved.
> Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. --
> Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the
> peculiar r&oe;strum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles
> the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a
> Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions
> published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes
> of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem.
> Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his
> letters do more honour to the heart than the head. They breathe the
> purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and shew how
> great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious
> zeal. He is often happy in the turn ot his compliments, and his stile is
> easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of
> words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly
> from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its
> vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is
> the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have
> led him to a process of sober reasoning: yet we find him always
> substituting sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we
> admit him to the first place among those of his own colour who have
> presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we compare him
> with the writers of the race among whom he lived, and particularly with
> the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are
> compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column. This criticism
> supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have
> received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy
> investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the
> first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by
> every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of
> their condition of life. . . .
>
> To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where
> the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical
> glasses, to analysis by fire, or by solvents. How much more then where
> it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the
> research of all the senses; where the conditions of its existence are
> various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are
> present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a
> circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a
> whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their
> Creator may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said,
> that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the
> races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as
> subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only,
> that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by
> time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments
> both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that
> different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species,
> may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural
> history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals
> with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the
> department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? This
> unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful
> obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates,
> while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious
> also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by
> the question 'What further is to be done with them?' join themselves in
> opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the
> Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free,
> might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a
> second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed
> beyond the reach of mixture.
>
> [End of excerpt]
>
> Carl Remick
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu