What do they teach about racism in American high schools? In “Lies My Teacher Told Me” (1995) James W. Loewen looked at 12 history books commonly used in American high schools. One of the things he looked at is what they teach about racism. Very little, as it turns out.
Most history books do not even have the word “racism” or “racial prejudice” in their index. None of the 12 point out out how racism grew out of the practice of keeping black slaves. Not one. The closest any of them get to the cause of racism is this:
[African Americans] looked different from members of white ethnic groups. The color of their skin made assimilation difficult. For this reason they remained outsiders.
Nothing more! And this was in the 1990s, not the 1950s! As if racism is completely natural, as if white Americans do not now or ever had screwed up ideas and feelings about black people!!!
It used to be worse: before 1970 they took the white Southern view of the Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed – like what you see in the Hollywood film “Gone With the Wind” (1939)!!! You know, like everyone in the South – black, white and presumably Native American – was happy and the North went and destroyed it all, that it had little to do with freeing the slaves, that the North ruled the South after the war just to get rich.
Now they teach that being a slave is terrible – well, 10 out of 12 books do – that the war was about freeing the slaves and that the North tried its best during the 12 years of Reconstruction after the war to rule the South.
But even so they all underplay the racism of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and any other white person they choose to make into a hero. None point out that there must be something sick and very wrong with white Americans for wanting to own black slaves.
All 12 history books underplay white American racism after 1877, both North and South. They all leave out stuff like:
- What blacks themselves said, like Ida B. Wells or Richard Wright, about how it was to be black in America then
- Sundown towns: thousands of towns in the North and Midwest where blacks had to leave by sundown
- The Tulsa race riot in 1921
- Ota Benga, an African who was shown behind bars in the Bronx Zoo in 1906.
- That major league baseball forced out blacks in 1889
- Violence against blacks who became successful
Only two books said blacks faced discrimination in the North! Even Loewen himself never uses the term Jim Crow!
The history books do point out examples of racism during this period, but the overall picture is one of white indifference, not white hatred. High school students are left to assume that if blacks fell behind the Jews and Italians who came to the country after the slaves were freed, it must be their own fault. Because, you know, racism is not a big deal.
See also:
Abagond 
The color of their skin made assimilation difficult. For this reason they remained outsiders.
Well, you know how us white folks get upset when our matched sets aren’t color coordinated. 😀
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The way text books are chosen, depends on very few people. Ones which have an agenda usually of promoting the status quo or the American myths. The authors of the text books write accordingly. The only way any of this can change is if people run for school boards and pressure their legislators to have a diverse education commission.
You notice I didn’t say Black people. Many of them don’t want to deal with slavery or Jim Crow or racism. They would rather our history jumped over slavery, from Africa to the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the 20th century, 384 years just disappear in their minds.
I guess I bought the myths as a child, like Washington cutting down the Cherry tree, but still I lived in the reality of Jim Crow. It was no mystery that the early founders owned slaves, it just was a matter of fact. I guess when you live in a place where many white people’s grand or great grandparents owned slaves, its not something you see as a dichotomy.
Even thought the constitution did defined the Black man, if you took the words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence at face value and defined yourself as their equal, it isn’t necessary to put motive behind those words.
Thomas Jefferson as a slave owner, doesn’t make him someone I would care for, but Thomas Jefferson the intellect would be someone I would want to pick their brain. I find he gives the best argument for having a public school system.
On another note, I was surprised to find out that the University of North Carolina had archived some Slave Narratives.They have a project called Documenting the American South.
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Well, to give Tom his due, he WAS seeking a way to eliminate slavery. His proposal in that direction got toasted by the Continental Congress.
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Most history books leave out the history of civil rights in this country, truncating it to the 1960’s. The leave out the Indian Wars, Japanese interment and the legal battles waged around the issue of whiteness as a determinant for American citizenship. They also deemphasize Northern and Western racism. Some of the most vicious race riots took place in New York and Illinois and the results of the violent exclusionary practices of the west are evident in the lack of POC in places like Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, ect. No one talks about how racist Nevada was even though black entertainers were a great source of their wealth. Philadelphia is the only city in America with a black history requirement in their high school curriculum. The white minority was deeplt opposed to the mandate, stating they did not want their children to learn “their” history. I think their racist rejection of American history sums up why books like these are seen as canonical American history.
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It would be wonderful if books by the late Ronald Takaki, Joseph Faegin and Howard Zinn were part of the K-12 curriculum
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Hathor: Thanks for the link!
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Thomas Jefferson owned 175 slaves when he wrote “all men are created equal”. He went on to buy more slaves after that. He freed 8 of them. He did NOT free Sally Hemings, the mother of some of his children.
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Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that, Abagond. Given his debt situation, he was legally impeded from freeing most of his slaves: he couldn’t legally eliminate his own property while in debt. Furthermore, no one at the time except a very small group of radical lunatics thought that slavery could simply be eliminated at the snap of one’s fingers. What would one do with the ex slaves? This, it was thought, was a social problem which needed to be solved in a social manner. Jefferson worked towards that all his life.
To give Jefferson his due is not to feed the myth that he was this great humanitarian or whatever. He was fairly well conflicted on his views and practices regarding slavery and race and he certainly didn’t have much of a practical solution when it came to abolition. But the view that he was this callous hypocrite who just loved slavery is as shallow as the view of Jefferson as a great humanitarian.
Give the man his due: he pushed for abolition all his life and didn’t stray from that point. He’s hardly a good example of the typical southern slaveholder.
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Jefferson owned 175 slaves in 1776 when he wrote “all men are created equal”. By 1822 he owned 92 more: 267. And you say calling him a hypocrite is “shallow”?
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Technically did Jefferson’s wife’s male relative have to free Sally Hemings. She was his wife’s half sister, but did she or her father owned Hemings when she married Jefferson.
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Also, T Jefferson is held up as in honour in the white community when in reality, he
violated Sally Hemmings, his wife’s half sister when she
was only 14! Most Blacks would not consider him a person of honour!
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“Violated”? You have proof of that? Because that’s certainly not how Hemming family history has it, nor how popular rumor at the time had it. Everything I’ve ever heard or seen indicates that the sex was consensual. Sally stayed with Tommy in France for over two years when she could have legally up and left him, exactly as her brother did. Kind of odd behavior for her to come back to Virginia with her rapist, don’t you think?
As for the age issue, all we know is that Hemmings’ first proven child, reputedly by by Jefferson, was born when Sally was around 22.
So where are you getting the “14” thing from, Grenda? I’m not aware of any document, anywhere, that allows us to say for certainty when Sally and Tommy started having sex. Her son Madison’s memoirs claims that it would have been around 16 years of age while she was in Paris, and that she had a child by Jefferson when she was 17-18 or so and that this child died. That’s the only infromation we have on this topic, AFAIK.
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Hathor brings up a very good point, by the way.
A lot of people today imagine that manumission back in 1800 was simply a matter of writing up some papers and – BAM! – one was free: in one end of the system goes an abject slave and out the other comes a free citizen confirmed in all his rights.
It simply wasn’t that way.
As Hathor points out, slaves were PROPERTY and property is bound by law. Jefferson couldn’t free, for example, his wife’s property and even after her death, it would have taken awhile for her property to be legally confirmed as his. Also, as slaves were property, a chronic debtor like Jefferson was legally bound to keep them so as to not reduce the value of his estate (and thus potentially impede his chance of paying his debts).
Virginia, meanwhile, was doing everything in its considerable legal power to prevent slave manumissions. A newly freed slave, for example, had to leave the Commonwealth for good before one year was out.
Given all this, it was quite common for other, non-official, forms of manumission to be performed: the practice of giving slaves “their time”, for instance, allowing them to continue living on the land near their families but allowing them to effectively be free.
Things did not work back then the way the do now. Laws were different. All sorts of ruses were tried to get around slave laws. In the light of the above, it becomes understandable why, when one of Sally’s daughters by Jefferson “ran away”, the overseer gave her 50 USD to hire a coach. If Jefferson was in debt, allowing slaves to “run away” might be the only way he could legally free them.
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The way Thad is defending Thomas Jefferson on this thread is JUST what the history books in American high schools do – though by this point he has gone deeper into it than they have space for.
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Eshowoman said:
“Philadelphia is the only city in America with a black history requirement in their high school curriculum. The white minority was deeplt opposed to the mandate, stating they did not want their children to learn “their” history. I think their racist rejection of American history sums up why books like these are seen as canonical American history.”
How utterly sad that people WANT to be ignorant.
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What is that African saying…
“As long as the hunter tells his-story, the lion’ will never hear his|”
It sums it all up really
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Well you know what they say “the winners right the history books” and everyone wants to be seen as a hero and incapable of bad. Since I was born and raised in the Uk I dont’t know much about American History but same thing happens here with white washing and skipping things out when it comes to slavery.
First off some schools don’t have black history in the curriculum my high school did the my teacher who was a white woman went on and on about how the UK abolished the slave trade waaaay before the Americans did and helped the Americans abolished slavery because it was wrong. Leaving out the facts that many Brits felt that it was unfair that they couldn’t benefit and get rich of the backs of enslaved Africans anymore but the Yanks could. I mean a lot the things taught were about how bad the Americans were compared to the Brits sort of like this.
“Yeah we did bad, but we weren’t as bad as them I mean look at them! They had Jim Crow, I mean Olaudah Equiano was allowed to be married to a Englishwoman.”
Thing is we didn’t even get to read about Olaudah Equiano but we did hear about Marcus Garvey, Malcom X and MLK again giant leap into the civil rights area.
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its weird that i come across this…last semester i found i learned more about slavery and civil war stuff (up to the end of reconstruction) in college than all of high school combined. i learned through my history class last semester about how lincoln freed the slaves only because he was backed into that corner and that family members of his had slaves. he was definitely not a great person that whites make him appear to be. our teacher focused more on the social aspects of history rather than the military aspects (thankfully). he wanted to be as accurate as he could that he would even use the word “mulatto” when talking about mulatto people in history such as william wells brown which always made me giggle because you just don’t hear it (and I don’t find it offensive either).
someone actually said a few days ago in political science that you don’t seem to learn anything of historical value until college, as high school is mainly just about what battles we fought and who won.
in fact our poli sci teacher said that the only point of history and government classes in middle and high school is to teach us to be patriotic and to like the capitalist system we have for our government.
i am hoping to be a history teacher but i do hate the fact that that i won’t be allowed to teach the social aspects of history (actually i would be lucky as a black women to be able to even get a job teaching american history).
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does anyone find it odd that i learned about the japanese internment camps because of an episode of 7th heaven, years ago?
i was so confused that i remember when i was 14 i asked my english teacher if it was the same as the nazi concentration camps (because we happened to be working on that at the moment) and she had to explain it to me and the whole class that they weren’t the same thing….
i can’t even recall if my history class ever talked about it, if it did, it was very brief.
although i do remember learning through american history in high school that henry ford was an anti-semitic racist.
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Exact saying:
Until the lion has his or her own storyteller, the hunter will always have the best part of the story.
Ewe-mina (Benin, Ghana, and Togo) Proverb
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Ta-Nehisi Coates posted an article about Texas’ textbook committees attempting to change history textbooks even more. This is a blurb from the article Ta-Nehisi posted:
Since Texas buys the most textbooks, they have a greater say in what gets written & how. These textbooks are used nationally.
Most of my teachers were uncomfortable with discussing slavery and Jim Crow in depth. They felt the same about discussing native american history.
Wow, slaveholders having “consentual” sex with their property. People mostly like the tale of Jefferson & Hemings as romantic forever lovers so they can say–“see slavery wasn’t that bad!”
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@temple
I read an article about how texas wanted to teach more conservative ideas and leave out liberal things….
that article I read reinforced why I despise texas and wish to sell texas back to Mexico (I also hate texas for many other reasons too)…
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My apologies to any Texans reading, but Texans have been some of the most racist people I have ever met. I don’t think I’ve met one that doesn’t have at least some sort of hang-up regarding race. If they have a great influence on what is being written in American history textbooks, no wonder I’ve been hearing about “Lies My Teacher Told Me” since I was in middle school (I still haven’t read it yet, should probably do that).
that article I read reinforced why I despise texas and wish to sell texas back to Mexico
Lol.
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oh my god abagond you hit the nail right on the head! Im in the 11th grade and i go to a prodiminately white school. Were learning about black people since its blk history month. My class is also learning about the hardships that black people faced back then during Jim Crow and all that. when im reading my textbook tell me why the word “negro” is still there to define black people (you dont have to lol) but yeah i felt that way too though. Great article man, your precepts on racism really made me think
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Oops! Left off the quote from Ta-Nehisi’s post in my previous comment. Here it is.
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Damn! Typing the quote.
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Reading this post, I’m reminded of the hysterical reaction from some quarters when Michelle Obama showed that she had not always been unequivocally proud of her country.
It was hard to believe that some white folks had no concept of why a black person might have mixed feelings about the greatness of the USA.
But by looking at this educational perspective, perhaps it is not surprising.
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The only way to learn about American History is outside of school.
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@Eurasian Sensation
Exactly I didn’t understand that either it’s like what Chris Rock said in a stand up show
“If you’re black you have to look at America as the Uncle that paid your way through college, but molested you.”
PLus if you are not proud of something or someone doesn’t mean you hate them, who has done something that their parents/friends/spouse/siblings wasn’t proud of? And did they cut all ties with you because of that?
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@ Aiyo:
I’ve seen that Chris Rock routine. That is one of my favourite lines, it’s brilliant.
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For Thad who refuted my comments about Sally. She did go back to Virginia with him. Look her up at the age 14. That is when she went to France to meet him. His wife was already dead and she was pregnant soon after.
Have you ever heard of “Stockholm Syndrome”?
Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart and countless others were raped by men but were BRAINWASHED into staying with them.
Also she was Black and pregnant at 16. What type of life would she have had if she stayed in France? How could she have supported herself???She didn’t even speak French
And I did hear that she would only return if he would free her children..Who knows what other threats he made to her?
She was very young. He was an old man. She did not have a CHOICE!!..She was a slave!! She did not choose to be a slave and probably had to sleep with him because she had no CHOICE!!! It was RAPE
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Sally Heming’s brother, who was a great French cook, also came back with Jefferson from Paris. Was he having a love affair with Jefferson too?
I think Sally Hemings did know French, but even so running off would likely end in prostitution or worse. It is not like she had friends or family in Paris who could take her in or watch out for her. I doubt Jefferson gave her enough money to be able to run off.
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I am not trying to define Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, but 14 years old was not necessarily considered a child in the 18th century. In certain parts of the US now, 14 is the age of consent among peers. Many young women in rural areas married at 14 even in the 20th century.The country singer Loretta Lynn comes to mind.
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The way Thad is defending Thomas Jefferson on this thread is JUST what the history books in American high schools do – though by this point he has gone deeper into it than they have space for.
Oh, come one, Abagond. First of all, I’m not defending Jefferson. I don’t think the man is or was a saint. I DO think he was very much a product of his times and that those times need to be understood in order to understand him. Understanding something doesn’t mean enjoying it or condoning it.
I DO think it ridiculous, however, to presume that Jefferson should have followed ethical and moral guidlines that came into existence after his death. If you compare his position to that of his peers, the man must be seen as progrssive. It’s only when you compare his position to OUR moral stances and attitudes today that you can condemn him as absolutely evil, which is what many people here seem to be doing.
Secondly, American history books do not touch on this topic AT ALL, so I’m hardly repeating what they say.
Finally, and most importantly, history is generally embarassing to political positions for all concerned. A white racist will be embarassed by Jefferson’s miscegenation, which he’ll understand as having somehow degraded the country. A black nationalist, looking at the same history, is going to be embarassed by the complexity of sexual/affective relationships under slavery.
BOTH people are then going to attempt to warp sadi history into a convenient myth. The current myth taught in schools is the white racist’s myth. From the viewpoint of history, I don’t think substituting the “Jefferson was a rapist and brutal slaveholder” myth makes much ultimate difference. Jefferson was a slaveholder, yes, with all that entails. Was he especially brutal? No. He was also an abolitionist, which put him head and shoulders above his peers at the time. Did he rape Sally Hemmings? There’s no evidence at all that he did, circumstantial or otherwise. Was the Hemmings/Jefferson match what we would today call an egalitarian love match? Hell no! Then again, such things simply didn’t exist back then for anyone.
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Temple sez:
Most of my teachers were uncomfortable with discussing slavery and Jim Crow in depth. They felt the same about discussing native american history.
Well, speaking as a teacher, why shouldn’t they be?
Americans want myth, not history. Look at my attempt to present honest history here: I immediately have been cast as a man who is defending Jefferson. If I gave the info I gfive above to a class of American 17 year olds, half black and half white, they black kids are going to go home and say that I’m defending slavery and the rape of black women. The white kids are going to go home and say I’m telling lies about the country’s founding fathers.
The upshot will be this: I will be called into the principal’s office tomorrow morning and told to stick STRICTLY to the textbook. Being that the textbook doesn’t even mention Jefferson and Hemmings…. well, where are kids going to learn any of this?
Seriously folks: history in the United States sucks because YOU – the American public – do not want history. You want what you call TRUTH and you are convinced that, when it comes to history, you already know what’s true.
You don’t want teachers telling you what you don’t know and you certainly don’t want debate with them: what you want is teachers to make you feel comfortable by repeating your myths.
Given this, it’s no wonder that anything even slightly controversial is being editted from American history textbooks.
This isn’t a great white conspiracy folks: it’s simple bureaucratic BS. What teacher or school district in their right mind is going to want to deal with slavery and racism when practically anything he can say about them from a historical and scientific viewpoint is going to piss parents off?
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A segment of Scientific America Frontiers discusses slaves life at Monticello and how Jefferson devised ways to keep slaves hidden from quest.
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1301/segments/1301-3.htm
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Grenda sez:
For Thad who refuted my comments about Sally. She did go back to Virginia with him. Look her up at the age 14. That is when she went to France to meet him. His wife was already dead and she was pregnant soon after.
We have no record of when Hemmings was born. Both her son and eyewitnesses at the time of her trip to Paris placed her age at around 16. We also have no record of when she had her first kid by Jefferson, aside from her son’s affirmation that she had one that died in 1890. Finally, even YOU admit that her pregnancy occurred when she was supposedly 16, so your presumption that she was having sex with Jefferson at 14 is just that: a presumption.
Also, as Hathor points out, 16 was not considered a child back in 1789. Women married by then, often earlier. Hemmings was quite clearly considered by her soceity to be a sexually mature woman and would have been considered as such if she had been white as well.
Hemmings’ son says that Sally had a choice to stay in Paris and that she did indeed know French at the time. She came back to Virginia ONLY on the condition that Jefferson manumit her children. And she held him to that. This doesn’t sound like some mentally ill person to me: it sounds like an intelligent woman who’s sifting out the best of a bad lot of choices.
I think that it is tremedously patronizing to presume that a woman in Hemming’s situation needs must be mentally ill in order to do what she did. Women’s situation in general during this period precluded anything which we would recognize, today, as a “free choice”. Slave women’s situation was that much worse.
Hemmings played what few cards she had and played them very well, IMHO, as her children ended up free and also pretty well situated in the world at large – something not many black women in Virginia at the time could say. I have a very hard time casting Hemmings as some poor, battered little girl who couldn’t see beyond the tip of her nose because she had been tortured into submission by an evil captor.
Abagond sez:
Sally Heming’s brother, who was a great French cook, also came back with Jefferson from Paris. Was he having a love affair with Jefferson too?
Didn’t James run off shortly thereafter?
I think Sally Hemings did know French, but even so running off would likely end in prostitution or worse. It is not like she had friends or family in Paris who could take her in or watch out for her. I doubt Jefferson gave her enough money to be able to run off.
It’s not likely that she would have had this aid ANYWHERE, in Virginia, Paris, or Timbuktu. That sort of isolation, however, did not prevent thousands of slaves from running away from bad and abusive masters.
Sally had a lot of bad options in her life and she probably chose the one that was the most predictable and comfortable for her. She was the concubine of an abolitionist slave holder who set her children free and maintained her in a relatively comfortable life until her death. She was probably not going to get a better life as a free woman in Paris or Ohio.
Let’s take our twenty-first century morals and values and temporarily suspend them, Abagond: what kind of life do you REALISTICALLY see as being possible and better for Hemmings? I think she could’ve easily gotten freedom if she tried. I think she didn’t because it would have meant a much more uncomfortable life, exile from her family and birthplace and a very, very uncertain future in a land where she’d always be seen as an outsider. Given that, it’s pretty easy to understand why she made the choices she did. One doesn’t need to postulate a sexual grand guignol of whips, chains and brands in order to account for them.
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Hathor sez:
…how Jefferson devised ways to keep slaves hidden from quest.
Hidden from “guests” I presume you mean. Yes, this was quite common in big houses. Slaves had their own passages, staircases and etc. so that they were out of guest’s view as much as possible.
Thanks for that link, btw. That is the good history that I’m talking about, the type that tries to recover what life was like back then and why people did what they did using their own contemporary values and knoledge of the world.
I find particularly interesting the part where the scientist believes that changes in the plantation’s economic regime led to a situation where “There was less coercion, more trust, more rewards — rewards that included the chance to live in your own family house. Slaves… quickly grasped the opportunity to pry a better life from their masters.”
This ties right into to our discussion of Hemming’s probable life and motives, above.
But Hathor, seriously: if I were to presnt that to a class of American teens, the whites would whine that I was denigrating Jefferson and the blacks would whine that I was trying to make slavery look good.
So why would I, an American high school teacher, ever present that episode to my students? All it could do would be to stir up trouble for me.
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Personally, and probaly becuse of my existence (ie ontology). I cannot use academic debates like it is different times ie, age 14 or 16 and again these were different times.
One things I have observed is that Europeans do not use this type of reasoning when they are talking about their ‘enemies’ likes of Hitler, Mao etc.
There seems to be an unlevel playing ground when it comes to how history is viewed. This should also not be forgotten either.
And I suspect this is the reason why that it is important that Black people write their own history, and not just write it but do so from a Black/African centred perspective. Since at the end of the day its all about different perspectives and the victim and the oppressor will not share the same reality as the old african proverb goes.
Personally I do not think an African centred perspective can be forgiving or even allow concessions to Jefferson and those like him, whereas I can see that other perspectives may be open to such possibilities.
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Thad:
From an email I wrote just this morning about Steven Barnes, the science fiction writer, giving slave owners a pass:
“They [slave owners] knew full well that what they were doing was wrong. That is why slavery is as rare as it is in the history of the Christian West. In fact the racism that we live with today was created to ease their moral discomfort. If they thought slavery was perfectly fine there would be no reason for the racism and stereotypes about blacks. The excuse of “You have to consider the times” would excuse any social order no matter how evil.”
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“Since at the end of the day its all about different perspectives and the victim and the oppressor will not share the same reality as the old african proverb goes.” J
I agree.
People are fully aware that there was nothing good about the institution of slavery. What makes that obvious is the refusal to speak of that part of U.S. history except as a footnote or minor blip in an otherwise heroic “white” narrative. If there were acts that showed slaveholders to have been humane towards their slaves then those stories should be told. The ENTIRE story should be taught. What’s being taught now is fiction not history.
Another thing, I’ve read more than a few accounts that Europeans knew that slavery was immoral–that’s why the abolitionist movement came about. In general the question isn’t if an act is immoral, but whether & when good people will speak up against the immoral act & those committing it (I’m not just talking about slavery here).
Native Americans were the first people here. I want more of their story taught too.
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Abagond,
That up there from your email to Barnes. EXACTLY!
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This is interesting. I always thought there’s a lot about racism in the books, the whole history and civil rights movement. I though racism was recognized as something that was bad- key word “was”. I thought the only problem is the belief racism is a thing of the past.
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J,
First just let me say that Rape is not changed by age of a person.
I brought up age, because it was somewhat implied that Hemings was a mere child. Adolescence is a social construct of the 20th century.
If you still don’t think it has nothing to with the times. Look at the age when a girl became a woman in the African Narrative. Many African societies considered once puberty began, a girl a woman. A few still do in the 21th century.
As a slave Sally Hemings probably had much responsibility at a very young age and had the capability to have agency over the decisions she could make. Note that I said “could.”
Even though slavery sought to deny the slave his humanity, the slave didn’t lose his humanity. This is why they could decide that they wanted freedom and risk their lives for it. On the other hand, they also made the decision to stay, weighing the risk. Some made the ultimate decision to commit suicide.
When Thad mentioned the TV series speaking of how the slaves tried to better their lives where they could, don’t take those scientist word, read the slave narrative of John Quincy Adams.(Yes, he has the same name of a president)
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Thad,
You have no proof that this relationship was consensual. I have read practically every slave narrative from American and England, gone through the WPA interviews of former slaves and no one reports a consensual relationship with a white man. Plenty of rape and sexual coercion, though.We have a few records of men who freed their slaves upon their deaths, but most of them were successfully contested and the woman and her children were sold back into slavery. Despite this data you contend that a 13 year old female slave (she was 14 when she gave birth) who mother and grandmother were the product of same cycle of sexual degradation had the power to stop the Ambassador of the United States?
“Sally Heming’s brother, who was a great French cook, also came back with Jefferson from Paris. Was he having a love affair with Jefferson too?”
Her brother returned because Jefferson promised to pay and free him if he taught another slave french cuisine. The years kept dragging on and he ran away instead of waiting for for the “abolitionist” side of Jefferson to come out.
Thad,
you come on a site filled with black women to tell us all our views about race and sex are hysterical, neurotic nonsense. What are you trying to prove. Are you representative of the attitudes of white men who want to date black women? I cannot speak for anyone else but this definitely does not win me over.
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To Hathor,
All I same saying is that, personally I do not utilise that ‘those were the times’ to justify anything. Nor do Europeans people when you look at their history.
Mutatis mutandis
This is an argument Europeans often utilse vis-a-vis Blacks to explain their genocidal treatment of Blacks, ‘that was then’
It’s a different story when figures like Stalin, Hitler and if you want even Islam comes on the scene and Europeans are describing their enemies
If we wish we can say every specific act in history is located in a specific act/time etc ie all relative .
I am sure you would find such an argument faceitious, in the same way from an African centred perspective I am compelled to view Jefferson and his ilk.
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J sez:
One things I have observed is that Europeans do not use this type of reasoning when they are talking about their ‘enemies’ likes of Hitler, Mao etc.
I think that you’re mixing agents into one homogenous batch. The kind of person who unilaterally hates Mao end Hitler and thinks it’s a sin to relativize their role in history is ALSO likely to think that any talk of Jefferson fathering black children off a slave is pure anti-Americanism.
Inversely, the kind of person who can accept that Jefferson did what he did can also accept that Mao and Hitler made perfect sense in their given contexts.
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No Thad
I am telling you how White Supremacy as a global system works
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Thad’s defence of Jefferson is in some ways like how those who commit genocide deny what they are doing:
1. “We are helping these people” – Jefferson fought to end slavery!
2. Make it about the accusers – blacks just want to demonize Jefferson instead of understanding history.
3. Blame history – slavery was common then, so get off of it already. Jefferson was just a man of his times.
More about denying genocides here:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/how-to-deny-a-genocide/
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Abagond,
Firts of all, understanding how and why things worked out the way they did is hardly “giving people a pass”. Secondly, you’re being utopian if you think that, deep down, slave holders knew what they were doing was wrong. Jefferson, maybe, yes. Actually, definitely. It seems to me that Jefferson’s dilema was how to get out of slavery, not wether or not it was wrong.
But I see no proof at all that most slaveholders thought what they were doing was wrong, nor proof that racists today think that they are wrong. Furthermore, enforced servitude is NOT rare in the Christian west: it was very much the norm well into the 18th century. Christianity does not have some mystical link to freedom and individuality – very much the opposite, in fact.
Temple sez:
Another thing, I’ve read more than a few accounts that Europeans knew that slavery was immoral–that’s why the abolitionist movement came about.
There was a war over this point in the U.S. and some say it hasn’t been concluded, even today. The idea that slavery was wrong was far from consensual. Also, European views and American (in the widest sense) views on slavery had become quite different by the mid-19th century. There certainly wasn’t a homogenous “white” view on this topic.
Eshowoman sez:
You have no proof that this relationship was consensual.
First of all, Esho, my point isn’t that the relationship was consensual: very, very few relationships, regardless of color, were what we would call “consensual” back in those days. Women didn’t have an overabundance of choices with regards to their lives in 1789.
Secondly, I’m a social scientist. History is a science. Science is a positivist game, Esh. If you wish to prove that Jefferson raped Hemmings, you need to supply PROOF of that. It is illogical to ask someone to provide proof that he DIDN’T rape her: there is no way in hell one can prove a negative.
Now, a lot of Hemmings descendents wrote about this relationship and it figures very prominently in the oral history of the families descended from her and Jefferson. NOWHERE in these family histories is rape mentioned or even inferred. Neither was in mentioned or inferred in contemporary reports regarding their relationship.
So bring us some proof of your hypothesis. I’m all ears and would be VERY interested in anything you can turn up.
I have read practically every slave narrative from American and England, gone through the WPA interviews of former slaves and no one reports a consensual relationship with a white man.
Sorry, you are either exagerating, mistating facts, or you have a very, very narrow definition of “consensual relationship”. I, too, have read the slave narratives in the library of congress. They most definitely do not report rape as a norm.
I think the problem here, Esho, is that you are constructing a very wide and vague definition of “consensual”. By “consensual”, you seem to mean a relationship in which power concerns – both individual and social structural – were more or less equal. In that sense, yes, slave/master relationships can be defined as “non-consensual” – then again the vast majority of homochromatic male/female relationship of the times can ALSO be defined as “non-consensual”.
My definition of non-consensual is a bit more narrow and my definition of “consensual” takes in relationships such as certain forms of prostitution and concubinage. I do not believe that “choice” means that absolutely everything must be equal between partners because if that’s the case, one needs must affirm that almost all human sexual relationships are non-consensual.
I think Sally Hemmings knew what she was doing and played a very low hand to the best of her ability and won significant gains for herself and her family by doing so. Did she “love” Jefferson? I don’t know. But the idea that people enter into marriage primarily for love wasn’t really in anyone’s brain back in 1789.
Despite this data you contend that a 13 year old female slave (she was 14 when she gave birth)…
What’s your source on Hemming’s birth date, then? Everything I’ve seen indicates that IF her son Madison is correct, she gave bitrh in 1789 when she was 17 – well within the norms of the time. And note that Madison’s word is all we have on this: there are no records in Jefferson’s generally meticulously kept plantation records to indicate that Hemmings gave birth in 1789. There is some circumstantial evidence that Jefferson fudged the records here, but that in and of itself indicates that he didn’t see Hemming’s and his child as just any old slave.
The years kept dragging on and he ran away instead of waiting for for the “abolitionist” side of Jefferson to come out.
In what year did James run away?
you come on a site filled with black women to tell us all our views about race and sex are hysterical, neurotic nonsense.
Excuse me, where did I ever say or even imply that your views on race or sex are “hysterical, neurotic nonsense”? I disagree with your views. If you can’t handle that and take it personally, that’s your problem, not mine.
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With regard to:
“It seems to me that Jefferson’s dilema was how to get out of slavery, not whether or not it was wrong.
And if you study the history of slavery. you will find that many of these politicians (ie Wilberforce) falls into the
aforesaid camp, and also felt that Blacks were inherently
inferior ie there abolition of slavery had nothing to do with the equality of races.
It is this ‘psychopathic’ behaviour (ie no feelings, conscience etc) that goes to the root of the problem, and hence ultimately must raise the sincerity of Whites vis-a-vis Blacks
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Abagond,
I think you are being a bit harsh on Thad here.
I find what he says about Jefferson, rather than trying to excuse Jefferson’s sins, to be illuminating because it gives an insight into how even those with some intentions to do good are frequently compromised by the prevailing status quo, and their own weaknesses.
“Jefferson was just a man of his times.”
Yes, Jefferson was hypocritical – clearly he was a complex character. He had some convictions about abolition, but perhaps he struggled to balance that with his own self-interest, and the lure of just going along with what everyone around him was doing.
I’m not really interested in readings of history that frame people as either good or evil. I’m more interested in how average people allow evil to continue – I think that tells us a lot more about how history happened.
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Thad, I disagree with this though:
“But I see no proof at all that most slaveholders thought what they were doing was wrong”
I find it unfathomable that they wouldn’t have recognised it as being wrong on some level. But clearly it would harm their interests to entertain these thoughts. They were conditioned to see blacks as sub-human, and it was convenient for them to perpetuate this way of thinking. And no doubt they just figured it was just the way of the world, why question it?
I think most people know that egg production using battery hens is vile and inhumane. Yet most people buy battery eggs anyway. Because they’re cheaper, and the most commonly available choice. It’s human nature to quash moral questioning when it interferes with your own interests.
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With regard to:
I’m not really interested in readings of history that FRAME people as either good or evil. I’m more interested in how average people allow evil to continue?
Please can you tell me which history, whether it be African centred, Arabic centred, Jewish centred and so on that inherently claims to FRAME as opposed to telling its own truths from its own perspectives??
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There are no reports of a consensual sexual relationship between a white man and a slave
See…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Healy
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Eurasian sensation sez:
I find it unfathomable that they wouldn’t have recognised it as being wrong on some level.
I would LIKE to find it unfathomable, but I guess my view of human nature is a bit more cynical that yours. In any case, I don’t see much evidence that slave holders were secretly chewing their guts out in guilt over what they were doing. They had plenty of rationalizations and rationalizations serve precisely that purpose, don’t they?
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J sez:
Please can you tell me which history, whether it be African centred, Arabic centred, Jewish centred and so on that inherently claims to FRAME as opposed to telling its own truths from its own perspectives??
The problem is when one makes the claim that one’s personal history is in fact universal. In fact, what one needs to do, if one is ethical, is make QUITE clear what the point of view one is using when one does history.
My personal PoV is to get as close as possible to that of the actors in question in order to explain WHY they did what they did to the people of today. I am personally massively disinterested in “great narrative” views of history which attempt to make history into a political tool for this or that imagined group of humans.
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That is fair enough Thad!!
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By the way, I notice that in spite of the outrage regarding my supposed defence of Jefferson, no one has been courageous enough to try to explain to me WHY, given mythological views of history, any paid teacher in their right mind would try to deal with these issues?
Gregos e troianos, pô!
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J,
I tend to find that most people prefer to see things in binary form. In other words, good/evil, racist/not racist, black/white, liberal/conservative. We all fall into that trap at times; it’s an easy way to look at the world, but not always useful for getting to the reality of what actually goes on. Of course, some stuff is just straight up evil, but human behaviour is usually more nuanced.
For instance, when I watch the news and hear stories of soldiers in Sudan or Burma killing and oppressing their own civilians, I find it hard to believe that they are all simply evil as individuals. Yet collectively they are doing something that seems clearly to be morally evil.
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I should apologise here, since my comment was based upon what you said about Abagond being a bit tough on Thad. However, you qualified your position in your next post – when I was typing the aforesaid response.
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With regard to:
By the way, I notice that in spite of the outrage regarding my supposed defence of Jefferson, no one has been courageous enough to try to explain to me WHY, given mythological views of history, any paid teacher in their right mind would try to deal with these issues?
On the issue of ‘history being mythological’.
Personally I think there are two truths here.
1. History is mythological
However,
2. On or at the societal level it is real, very real.
It is very important not to conflate the two.
I see this played out a lot on this board
and also
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Sounds like a next installment (as I accidently hit the keyboard before finishing what I had to say) he he eh
Individuals having
1. A view how the world should be
and contradictly
2. The world is not played out this way, formed in this manner, and, behaves in a totally different manner
Once again the two should not be confused or conflated when discussing
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Eurasian Sensation,
I can tell you that living in America south in the 50’s that racist people can have no idea what we think of as immoral or evil, as wrong. It was a way of life and they thought of it as, that’s the way it should be. Very few wrangled with any moral question. Anything that was contrary to their beliefs was communist plot or ideology.
Even though the area was considered in the Bible belt, whites had constructed a Biblical justification for slavery and Jim Crow. Actually there isn’t much in the Bible that out right condemns slavery.
During the protest, marches, and integration of schools some whites didn’t have any problem attacking small children verbally or physically. No empathy for them at all. They considered themselves moral, upright, and church going folk.
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The key part though is where Eurasian Sensation said
“I find it unfathomable that they wouldn’t have recognised it as being wrong ‘ON SOME LEVEL'”
Personally I think these people know exactly what they are doing.
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Thad you are really amazing. I said “I have read practically every slave narrative from American and England, gone through the WPA interviews of former slaves and no one reports a consensual relationship with a white man.”
I did not say “There are no reports of a consensual sexual relationship between a white man and a slave”
I am done with you. Please do not respond to any of my posts and I will do the same for you. Enjoy your day!
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Back in Jefferson’s day, people were religious. They readand KNEW the Bible. And in the Bible, one of the Ten Commandments were; Thou shall not commit adultery or fornication.
Even if people thought slaves were subhuman, closer to animals, bestiality was punishable by death.
The problem was that people like Jefferson, the Nazis,etc developed this common habit” Everyone is blatantly ignoring this moral rule so I can too, if everyone is doing something, I’m less guilty”
What these people fail to realise is that in the Bible what made God angry to the point of actively destroying cities and communities in ancient times was the fact the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY were sinning which made the individual guaranteed for divine judgement.
So there is no strength in numbers. God views these people as part of a virus that has become too big and therefore must be removed in order to maintain his standards
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Eshowoman:
I don’t blame you, best to ignore. If you notice there’s a pattern. His posts are a very long winded way of defending white men that basically were violating young underage innocent black girls. There’s a word for that! I don’t care what kind of pop psychology or rationalizing or spin you put on it.
Said poster may have studied human behaviour at length but it in no way excuses what those scumbags got away with.
What sticks in my craw is the utter defense of these lowlife white men! Thomas Jefferson was the president, that kind of power allowed that dirty geezer to rape with impunity. He had slaves to abuse at will, who the heck could have challenged him?
That’s privilege for you!
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As for good ‘ole’ Tommy, Abie, Georgie, and the rest of that lot, I’ve been reading things in non-mainstream publications for years about their peculiarities. I remember the controversy of Fawn Brodie’s book about Jefferson which spoke of his relationship with Sally Hemmings. Other biographers swore up and down that this writer was ‘blaspheming’ Jefferson’s memory. It turns out she was right that Jefferson did in fact sire several children by Sally Hemmings as DNA tests proved, or as it was stated at the time, at least ‘one’ of the children was his. Some how I can’t imagine Jefferson taking some ‘lesser’ man’s cast off mistress, so for me, all the kids were his. He of course denied denied denied! A real life example of a hypocritical scumbag if there ever was one. He was a precursor of the succeeding generations of politicians who led double lives and were miscreants like himself. They should name a syndrome after him to apply to other politicians of his ilk, “The Jefferson Scumbag Syndrome” to all and sundry politicians who followed his lead in their private lives. Tommy Edwards(or whatever his first name is) anyone?
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Thad said:
“To give Jefferson his due is not to feed the myth that he was this great humanitarian or whatever. He was fairly well conflicted on his views and practices regarding slavery and race and he certainly didn’t have much of a practical solution when it came to abolition.”
Abagond said:
“The way Thad is defending Thomas Jefferson on this thread is JUST what the history books in American high schools do – though by this point he has gone deeper into it than they have space for.”
Thad said:
“American history books do not touch on this topic AT ALL, so I’m hardly repeating what they say.”
Here is one of the 12 history books that Loewen looked at, “American Adventures” (1987) by Peck, Jantzen and Rosen:
“The idea of slavery bothered Thomas Jefferson all his life. As an adult, he himself owned may slaves. He depended on their labor for raising tobacco on his plantation. Yet he understood that slavery was wrong, terribly wrong. It was the opposite of the thing he value most in life – freedom.”
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The idea of slavery bothered Thomas Jefferson all his life. As an adult, he himself owned may slaves. He depended on their labor for raising tobacco on his plantation. Yet he understood that slavery was wrong, terribly wrong. It was the opposite of the thing he value most in life – freedom.”
*****************
At the end of the day, actions speak louder than words and Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite. At least that should be acknowledged in the history books, if nothing else.
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Thaddeus said:
“Everything I’ve ever heard or seen indicates that the sex was consensual. “
Thad, you need to get real. Even No Slappz has the decency not to say something like that.
Jefferson was about 30 years older than Sally Hemings. If a man in his forties was doing that stuff to my teenaged daughter I would never dream of calling it “consensual”. Not in a million years. Anyone with half a brain would call it, at the very least, “taking advantage of her”. The polite word for what he is is “scumbag”. Yes, I know, Thomas Jefferson was a complex, conflicted historical figure, but, you know what? At that point I would not care about his tortured soul. I would want to rip his head off.
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Abagond, does Peck et al deal with the Hemmings issue? Do they go further into the contradiction than that?
Which of those statements that they make do you find to be an untruth, exactly? The problem there isn’t that they are lying, or that those statements “defend” Jefferson (for they are all factual as far as I can tell): the problem from the historian’s point of view is that they are sort of left hanging in space. I mean WHY, if Jefferson was against slavery, did he hold slaves? There is no analysis of that contradiction. No synthesis of the facts presented.
THAT is the problem, not their supposed “defence” of the man.
Now, in my posts above, I’ve given a series of reasons why Jefferson and Hemmings may have acted the way they did, involving economic, legal and even moral factors and backed up by what proof we have available as to what life at Monticello was like.
So far, the only hypothesis the other side of the debate has come up with is “Jefferson liked to rape little girls and we know this is the case because that’s how white men are”.
I find that to be a parody of history, Abagond.
The thing about evil is that good people do it for what seems to them to be all the right reasons. Evil, as Hanna Arendt so famously pointed out, is banalized. What the “roast Jefferson” crowd seems to be saying here is that they can’t conceive of evil unless it has fangs, drools and flaps its wings. Jefferson had sex with Sally Hemming? “It HAD to be rape. She HAD to be 14 – no, 13 (why not 12 or even 10?) – years old. She HAD to be a victim of “Stockholm Syndrome” in order to put up with it. And we’re gonna stick to this unto death, even if we don’t have a scrap of evidence, because it fits the way we want the world to be.”
What these people can’t conceive of is a sexual relationship based on need and opportunity, which is framed by unequal power positions, but which is not rape. Nonetheless, the world is full of such relationships. Come walking with me on Copacabana some time and I’ll show you a dozen or so in the space of a few hours. And such relationships in the late 18th century were the NORM for women, of all colors, not the exception. So believing that Sally Hemming needed to be mentally ill to accept a sexual relationship that wasn’t based on equality and mutual love is pretty damned ridiculous: she wasn’t likely to get that sort of relationship ANYWHERE. It wasn’t even on her horizon of possibilities.
Given that, a concubine relationship which would make Hemmings’ life easier and open up the possibility of freedom for her children? Hell, it’s pretty easy to see why she’d consent to that, even if it WASN’T egalitarian. There WERE no egalitarian choices open to her.
The typical white American sees Jefferson as a saint. The main view here seems to be simply to flip that around and call him a devil. What both views are predicated on is an erroneous notion that if a relationship isn’t based on love and equality, it needs must be rape (or something close enough to be no never mind). What is lost, completely, in this dichotic view of Jefferson is what he was and did and WHY. White Americans want him to be a puritan angel, so they’ll never admit to him having sex with anyone but his wife, let alone a quadroon slave. Black Americans realize that he probably DID have sex with Hemmings and say “Oh, exploitable! Here, in a nutshell, is a reeking symbol of white superiority: Thomas Jefferson, slave rapist”. Both sides are totally uninterested in what really occurred. Both sides simply want a convenient myth to support their worldviews. If we can prove Jefferson had sex with Hemmings, then he’s evil and blacks will feel vindicated. If we can prove the opposite, then he’s Jesus incarnate and patriotic whites will feel vindicated.
That’s history, is it? That’s what the kids of America should learn? That’s not history, Abagond, that’s competitive myth-making. It’s b%¨&*t. And flipping a cow turd on its head doesn’t make it any less a cow turd.
As someone who actually occasionally teaches history, I try to get my students to think, read what’s out there (and read it THOROUGHLY), collect evidence, dig into things, ponder and come up with their own syntheses that are BASED ON EVIDENCE. Better evidence than any other hypotheses. That’s what history is: a science. It’s based on proof, not whatever one wishes or likes or dislikes. It is analysis and the construction of the most logical, probable story based on what proof is available.
Neither the Jefferson as rapist or Jefferson as lily white pure founding father stories are logical or rational or can account for available evidence: they are MYTHS based upon peoples’ emotional needs.
If you want to argue that Jefferson was a rapist, fine: BUT GIVE ME PROOF. Something someone said, did, or witnessed. Something written down somewhere, or turned up in archeological evidence.
Peck et al isn’t history because they present no useful or believeable synthesis of the facts they state. Jefferson did hate slavery. He did own slaves. He did depend on them for their labor. He even probably valued freedom above all things in his life – at least in the abstract. So what? What does all that mean, when taken together? What these guys miss – where they take a strategic powder – is in telling us how this incredible contradiction could coalesce as one piece. This is where their book falls down as history.
But least Peck and crew have presented us with some facts that can be verified or falsified. Some folks above are seriously suggesting that if one can’t prove that Jefferson DIDN’T rape Hemmings, then he must indeed be a rapist. That is neither factual or logical.
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Thad, you need to get real. Even No Slappz has the decency not to say something like that.
I think you’re reacting that way because you think “consensual” is a synonym for “equal” or “loving” or “respectful” or whatever else that’s nice and Christian and pro-people. There is plenty of consensual sex that goes on in the world, Abagond, that fits none of those categories. The prostitutes I interview don’t have sex with their clients because they are equal to them in power. The unhappy housewives I interview aren’t having sex with their husbands because they are head over heels in love with them. Nevertheless, these women aren’t being raped and are indeed having consensual sex.
“Consensual” doesn’t necessarily mean “egalitarian and nice”, Abgond.
Jefferson was about 30 years older than Sally Hemings. If a man in his forties was doing that stuff to my teenaged daughter I would never dream of calling it “consensual”.
Yeah, Abagond, because we live in an entirely different time with an entirely different set of values regarding sex and love. A 16-42 split was COMMON back in 1789. This is quite easily provable. Hell, man, you sound like the racist whites I know who say Islam is the Devil’s religion because the Koran said Muhamed had a teenage wife. You are projecting your values back on the times.
Many 40 year old men – black and white – married or had sex with 16 year old women in the 18th century, Abagond. I’m not making this up. Would you like a list? It was commonplace. NO ONE criticized Jefferson for having sex with a 16 year old back then: every bit of criticism his enemies came up with – and some of it is incredibly gross – had to do with the fact that Jefferson as supposedly demeaning himself by sleeping with a black woman. Jefferson got dragged through the mud on the Hemmings issue. She was the Monica Lewinsky of the day. And somehow, in all that sh%storm of politicking, not a single person mentioned her age.
Know why?
Because in the early 1800s, nobody cared a whit if a 40 – or even a 60 – year old man was boffing a teenager. THAT wasn’t the problem.
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Jade sez:
At the end of the day, actions speak louder than words and Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite.
Now THAT I agree with. 100%. The man certainly didn’t live up to his ideals in his economic and private life.
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Oh, this is amazing. Someone is actually putting in hard time to defend Thomas Jefferson and his actions. I could probably take a guess as to why someone would do that, but that would be ad hominem. But this is why I always question what I read. Everyone has a motive.
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LOL. Macon D needs to give him a prize.
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Thad:
So wait: in the late 1700s it was all right for Thomas Jefferson and other rich middle-aged white American men to own black slaves AND have sex with teenaged black girls because, HEY, everyone in their circle was doing it – it was the times! – so it’s all good. And if I disagree then I am being:
a) utopian
b) demonizing Jefferson to make myself feel good
c) imposing my ideas of right and wrong onto the past
d) all of the above
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Wow.
Abagond, you’re a damned smart man. Do you SERIOUSLY think I’m defending Jefferson when I say we should practice good history and not make crap up as the whim takes us?
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Thad:
So wait: in the late 1700s it was all right for Thomas Jefferson and other rich middle-aged white American men to own black slaves AND have sex with teenaged black girls because, HEY, everyone in their circles was doing it – it was the times! – so it’s all good. And if I disagree then I am being:
a) utopian
b) demonizing Jefferson to make myself feel good
c) imposing my ideas of right and wrong onto the past
d) all of the above
Let’s take this a bit at a time, Abagond.
First of all, history does not concern itself with what is right or wrong, but with describing what most probably occurred and WHY it did. That’s what I’m doing here and it’s not a defense of Jefferson.
Secondly, if you want to condemn people, rare up and condemn away – but at least condemn them for something their contemporaries could have had a possible NOTION was wrong.
Slavery was condemned by Jefferson himself and yet he was a slave holder. That’s a pretty huge morals problem there, Abagond. Plenty of abolitionists existed in Jefferson’s time and, as a U.S. president, he could have reasonably been expected to do something about slavery and – AFAIK – he didn’t. At the very least, the man can be condemned for being a hypocrite given values which existed at during his time – values which he himself supposedly expressed.
But you’re going to condemn him for living in concubinage with a woman much younger than he, one who was 16 or so when they started…, Abagond WHERE in the late 18th century world – and I’m talking anywhere, among any colored people – was that considered a breach of morals or ethics? Hell, you claim to be a Christian, right? The BIBLE is full of this sort of thing.
Maybe we should toss the Bible out, too, then? After all, it has all those old patriarchs were boning 16 and 17 year olds and they should have known that we up here in the early 21st were going to condemn them for it, right?
What would have offended Jefferson’s peers was the fact that he was having carnal relations with someone he wasn’t married to and that said someone wasn’t white.
I submit to you that there was no culture on planet Earth in 1789 – certainly none that I know of – that would have condemned Jefferson because Hemmings was 16 and he was 46 when they started doing the nasty.
I don’t think you’re being utopian for condemning the age difference: I think you’re being ethnocentri (though perhaps “chronocentric” would be a better word since it’s ALL the ethnicities on Earth at the time which would have thought you crazy for objecting to the age difference).
But all this brings up another point, Abagond. Even in today’s supposedly “developed” U.S., there are people who have relationships with 30-year differences. What, precisely, do you find so horrifying in all of this?
If my 16 year old daughter were to be dating a 46 year old man, I’d be far less concerned in may respects than if she were dating another 16 year old, given what I know about 16 year old and 46 year old male sex drives and notions of responsability. I mean, what’s so upsetting about that, precisely? And please don’t tell me “It’s because she’s a minor”. If that’s the problem, then she shouldn’t be dating anyone at all until she’s 18, should she?
Serious question, man: why does a 16-46 split bother you so much?
(And PLEASE do not infer that I’m looking to date 16 year olds. I’m very happily married to my 36 year old spouse and I’d have a hard time thinking of dating anyone younger than that if we broke up because I find the younger generations to be too conservative, boring and frankly scatterbrained for my tastes. My objections to a 16-46 split come all from the old man’s side :D)
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Anyone with half a brain would call it, at the very least, “taking advantage of her”.
Let’s set aside the race issue for a bit, because I agree that Jefferson most definitely “took advantage” of a gross power relationship when he had sex with Hemmings.
What I don’t get is the age thing: how, precisely, does a 30 year age difference in a sexual/affective relationship mean the older partner is “taking advantage” of the younger?
That’s what I’m scratching my head about.
I mean, I could see it happen, but I don’t see how it would necessarily happen any more than if it were a relationship between two people of the same age.
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A man 30 years older would know better. It would have been purely sex. What does a 46 year old have in common with a young teenager? With a kid her age, a relationship would have been two ppl who were on equal footing. Jefferson situation is like Roman Polanskis. The fact he was alot older made it despicable as he should have known better .
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A man 30 years older would know better. It would have been purely sex.
Why the presumption that it would be purely sex – I mean, as opposed to say two 16 year olds? Speaking as a man in his forties, I certainly am not as enthusiastic about sex now as when I was 16. Every male libido I know has gone DOWN, not up, as the man gets older. But let’s presume that it IS purely sex, whatever the age. So? Why is that bad, if that’s what both people want?
What does a 46 year old have in common with a young teenager?
My feelings precisely, but who are you or I to make this judgement? Isn’t it really the call of the two people involved whether or not they feel that they have something in common?
With a kid her age, a relationship would have been two ppl who were on equal footing.
Oh, come on. Gender alone puts them on a non-equal footing.
But where, I ask, comes this belief that equality needs must be a prerequisite of a good or successful relationship? Equal rights? Yes, certainly. I’m a creature enough of my times to believe that that is necessary. But that’s not what you’re talking about, is it, angel? You seem to be implying that people need to be of equal KINDS in order to have a good relationship.
Where’s your proof for that?
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For society, a 30 year gap would have been scandulous. There’s the situation of Jacob Astor and his wife Madeleine on the Titanic.
Society was scandalised as he was a divorcee but also the AGE GAP was a subject of much gossip.
If Jefferson respected Sally, why didn’t he marry her in France or secretly in another country?
If someone loves you and respects you, they will marry you.
He had no respect for her. He should have married her(even in secret) He was religious. He knew that fornication was wrong but he subjected her to it for a lifetime when in France he had an opportunity to do right.
Will God excuse him?
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Abagond,
I think the most important thing for Black people is to know are the words of the founders. Those that would seek our destruction in this country are using and misusing the founders words to rally the haters into a coherent group. We cannot be ignorant and let stand their rhetoric. We cannot disassociate ourselves from words of liberty, equality and justice; just because some of the founders were slave holders or of little moral character. If we do believe that the principles of this government should succeed, we should fight fire with fire and words with words.
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Surely the most important thing for Black people to know is the ACTS of the founders and what did it mean for Black people back then and the implications for the present.
This is what history really should be about
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With regard to this sole point:
I don’t think you’re being utopian for condemning the age difference: I think you’re being ethnocentri (though perhaps “chronocentric” would be a better word since it’s ALL the ethnicities on Earth at the time which would have thought you crazy for objecting to the age difference).
How did you come to this conclusion??
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I’ve never read/heard anything of this kind happening until now. I can’t believe this part of history was left out. It’s so important. *runs off to google*
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Grenda says:
For society, a 30 year gap would have been scandulous. There’s the situation of Jacob Astor and his wife Madeleine on the Titanic.
Grenda, you’re aware that the Titanic sailed some 120 years AFTER the period we’re talking about? By then morés had begun to change, especially among the elite.
If Jefferson respected Sally, why didn’t he marry her in France or secretly in another country?
Good question. I think the answer has to do with the fact that that would have been the end of his political career, right then and there. And I’m not sure Jefferson “respected” Sally if by “respect” you mean thought of her as an equal. Then again,hardly any men in 1789 thought of their female wives, lovers, or companions as equals.
If someone loves you and respects you, they will marry you.
Because marriage, as we all know, is the highest and most holy form of human sexual and affective interaction, is that it?
He was religious. He knew that fornication was wrong but he subjected her to it for a lifetime when in France he had an opportunity to do right.
Now that critique has more merit than the complaint about age. But Jefferson was also something of a religious maverick. Hisn contemporaries probably considered what he was doing to be fornication and Jefferson had to be aware of that. Like Ben Franklin, though, another founding father who was a renowned womanizer, I very much doubt that he personally worried about fornication as a sin.
Will God excuse him?
We’d better hope he does because plenty of us do things that are just as evil in the Arendtian sense of the world.
Hathor says:
Those that would seek our destruction in this country are using and misusing the founders words to rally the haters into a coherent group. We cannot be ignorant and let stand their rhetoric. We cannot disassociate ourselves from words of liberty, equality and justice; just because some of the founders were slave holders or of little moral character. If we do believe that the principles of this government should succeed, we should fight fire with fire and words with words.
Now THIS is a sentiment I can get fully behind, 100%, with no doubts in my mind at all.
And I agree with J, too, when he says:
Surely the most important thing for Black people to know is the ACTS of the founders and what did it mean for Black people back then and the implications for the present.
This is what history really should be about
You don’t get history in a nice little package where you can clearly count off the Devils and the Angels, folks. That’s not how it works. That’s myth.
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J asks:
How did you come to this conclusion??
I admit that I’m assuming here, but can you show me a human culture, back in 1789, that believed anything like our notion that 16 year old women are, in fact, minors and shouldn’t be sexually active? Which sternly disapproved of sexual/affective relationships between men and women who were 30 years their junior?
Hell, I’d say that most of the cultures of the world TODAY still don’t believe those two propositions.
So I’m happy to look at anything you turn up with regards to these cultural syndromes back in 1789.
In most human cultures, girls become women and are eligible for marriage from mesntruation on. And it has historically been very, very normal for old men to marry much younger women.
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I feel obliged to defend Thad’s defense of Jefferson. To being with, it is highly debatable whether Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemmings’ children. We know through DNA testing (that evil test which can be used to determine the supposedly non-existent morphological, genotypic and biological trait known as race) someone in the Jefferson line (maybe Thomas, maybe not) fathered one of Sally’s children.
Assuming Thomas Jefferson is the father of at least one of her children, is it really so hard to imagine that relations between masters and slaves were nuanced. It is quite possible that Sally, despite being a slave, could have resisted any rape/seduction attempts by Thomas. There are recorded instances of such resistance. It is also quite possible that the two had warm feelings for each other. It is my contention that most of the sex between white men and black women in the US was/is consensual.
Jefferson was a product of his time and he was a very superior product.
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Thanks!!
I am sure you would know more than me that there are other ‘factors’ back in those times in other societies across the world (ie cross-cultural differences) which would determine sexual liasions (here read marriage), like dowry, ethnic/tribal differences, status of family and so on.
Therefore I do not quite understand the importance attached to the issue of whether the relationship was consensual or not, especially when you discussing the issue against the backdrop of the slavery system??
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I feel obliged to defend Thad’s defense of Jefferson.
Wow, the surprises just won’t stop coming! 😉
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“Wow, is right!
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The point of Sally/Thomas situation was
Just because one has the POWER to do something, it doesn’t mean one SHOULD.
Jefferson also went after a married white woman as well but she refused his advances.
If he hadn’t honourable intentions for a white married woman, why would he have any for his black slave?
An opposer basically called Sally a prostitute( ignoring that fact that she had no control over her own body) while praising this white married lady.
The right thing would have been to let her grow up untouched, support her financially in France and marry someone in France close to her own age where she would have had dignity and respect.
A concubine is a concubine, and for a woman in that day and age to be sexually active outside marriage would have been a source of shame for lfe.
When Black people “passed”, they often had to erase and cut ties completely with their family lest they be traced and have dire consequences come upon them
Imagine never seeing your children or close family member ever again because they decided to “pass”. They most likely would have had to change their name and make up a story about being an orphan.
At least if Sally had stayed in France, she would been married and would have had an INTACT family unit..Something as precious as a rare treasure that a Black person could only dream of back then
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I must admit I do see Jefferson as a scumbag (well, a scumbag who was also a child of his own time), but I agree with Thad when it comes to Hemmings’ age: it wasn’t an issue back then. We shouldn’t project our moral values and beliefs on past IF we want to understand what was going on.
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Why are we debating about the of age of Sally Hemmings? Thomas Jefferson was an old coot. The focus should be about him. He was a hypocrite.
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Thank you leigh!
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I don’t know. There are many complaints about the age difference, and for some reason I don’t understand, people see it as a big deal. And there are much bigger deals to discus about Jefferson.
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Sally Hemming was born a slave and died a slave. Any option to say NO to “Massa” Jefferson the Hypocrite was removed. Her age is ultimately irrelevant.
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@Mira:
I agree there are much bigger deals to discuss regarding Thomas Jefferson. No matter how he upholded his rhetoric of: liberty, equality, freedom, and self-rule, he didn’t practice what he preached. Hypocrite in every sense of the word.
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@Jade:
Co-sign! It’s not her age or the sign of the times, but that this man was considered an icon. He doesn’t deserve it.
Here are some quotes by Thomas Jefferson:
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Another poster mentioned earlier that action speaks louder than words…Thomas Jefferson’s action speaks volumes.
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Given the disparity between his public writings and pronouncements, and his private life, this man was a hypocrite of the first order. That he is upheld in American mythology as a great man, baffles the mind as do some of these other politicians in American history. If he was a private citizen going about his business, no one would be concerned about him except the local gossip mongers. However, he was a public figure who put forth a certain philosophy/set of beliefs which helped shaped the country which is America. People will argue that he is just a man and subject to personal foibles as is everyone. To an extent they are right, however, ‘everyone is not running a country, especially one in it’s infancy, hence, these politicians should in general, be above reproach in many aspects of their private lives. As to their political views, they should stick to their beliefs, good or bad, not say or write one thing in public and do a 180 degree turn in their private life. It makes for good gossip fodder but not if such a person is running, or has a hand in running a country.
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Yeah, what Herneith said. 😉
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Right, there were far worse men in Jefferson’s time than Jefferson, but they are not being sainted in history books.
@ Leigh:
I brought up the age difference not because it was the worst part of the whole affair but because I think Thad tends not to see slaves as people. Also, the way he talks about sex here and elsewhere would leave teenaged girls at the mercy of older men.
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Hathor said:
“Abagond,
I think the most important thing for Black people is to know are the words of the founders. Those that would seek our destruction in this country are using and misusing the founders words to rally the haters into a coherent group. We cannot be ignorant and let stand their rhetoric. We cannot disassociate ourselves from words of liberty, equality and justice; just because some of the founders were slave holders or of little moral character. If we do believe that the principles of this government should succeed, we should fight fire with fire and words with words.”
I agree. Personally I am glad he wrote “all men are created equal”, etc. It gives America something to live up to.
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RR sez:
I feel obliged to defend Thad’s defense of Jefferson.
Don’t do me any favors, RR [roll eyes]. I’m not making any blanket statements at all based on the Hemmings/Jefferson relationship and I think that the evidence is quite solid that ol’ Tommy was Sally’s babby-daddy.
J sez:
Therefore I do not quite understand the importance attached to the issue of whether the relationship was consensual or not, especially when you discussing the issue against the backdrop of the slavery system??
Consensuality is a bit of a non-issue here because very few relationships of any sort were “consensual” if we take as our definition of the word egalitarian relationships with no structural coercion in them.
What bothers me is that this sort of relationship was the norm back in those days for pretty much everyone. It’s only considered to be “rape” or “abuse”, however, when we talk about it in the context of slavery. A false dichotmoy is set up which impedes our understanding of sexual realtions back then because it’s presumed that outside of slavery, things were more-or-less like they are now for men and women.
That’s simply not the truth.
Grenda says:
Just because one has the POWER to do something, it doesn’t mean one SHOULD.
Well, of course. Who’s denying that?
The right thing would have been to let her grow up untouched, support her financially in France and marry someone in France close to her own age where she would have had dignity and respect.
I would agree with this, too, except for the “grow up” part. At 16 in 1789, Sally Hemmings was considered quite well grown and it’s silly to presume otherwise.
Mira sez:
There are many complaints about the age difference, and for some reason I don’t understand, people see it as a big deal. And there are much bigger deals to discus about Jefferson.
Thank you, Mira. My point precisely: we should concentrate on the REAL issue which was slavery and Jefferson’s actions vis-a-vis that. The age issue is simply a red herring.
Any option to say NO to “Massa” Jefferson the Hypocrite was removed.
There are plenty of examples of slaves saying “no” to abuse, Jade. The most common response was to run off, a thing Hemmings had many opportunities to do and didn’t.
Abagond sez:
I brought up the age difference not because it was the worst part of the whole affair but because I think Thad tends not to see slaves as people.
Quite untrue. It is PRECISELY because I see them as people who do indeed have agency, no matter how small, and excercize said agency that I believe what I believe about Sally Hemmings. I firmly believe that my understanding of what she did, how and why is much more consistent with her humanity than the attempts of some people here to strip form her any form of agency at all.
Think about it, Abagond: this 16 year old girl won freedom for all her children. THAT is not a trivial thing and I don’t think that happend because Jefferson did it out of the good of his heart. It happened because Hemmings manuevered and fought for it.
This is the contradiction you are creating. You want to see Jefferson as this completely evil guy. OK, fair enough. And yet that means you must also see Hemmings as completely passive and agencyless, totally at the whim of her evil master. But if this is true, then that could only mean that JEFFERSON took the initiative to free Hemmings’ kids. Why would he do that if he was so evil and Hemmings so passive?
No, I think Hemmings manuevered, fought for and won her kids’ freedom. I think she played a very low hand expertly and I think she should be recognized and respected for that fact.
Now you tell me who sees Hemmings as more real and human in that situation, Abagon: me or the posters who are claiming that she was robotized by “Stockholm Syndrome”?
Also, the way he talks about sex here and elsewhere would leave teenaged girls at the mercy of older men.
Huh? “At trhe mercy”? How so, Abagond? How does a sexual relationship between an older man and a younger woman somehow make turn the woman into a poor, pitiful victim? How does age have that power, Abagond? Explain it to me.
Abagond, seriously: this age thing is obviously an ISSUE with you, just like homosexuality is an ISSUE to some people. It doesn’t appear to have any logic at all: it’s just a knee-jerk reaction. What I’d like to see is some proof – anything at all – that a 30 year age difference somehow makes the younger partner into the olders plaything.
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Well, I can name a few things, Thad. Power, for example. But I do not want to discuss age issue anymore, since I do believe, like I pointed out, it wasn’t important in Jefferson-Hemmings case (because of the time period).
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Agabond you wrote:
“I agree. Personally I am glad he wrote “all men are created equal”, etc. It gives America something to live up to”.
However, when he said that he was not referring to Black people. Was this not the time when Blacks were 3/5 humans and Whites were fully human??
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Personally I think all this minimising and rhetoric etc is the typical Euro-centred position that so many get caught up into (whether Whites or Blacks).
And it again reveals the importance for Black people to see the world from an African centred perspective and allow those who have a Euro-centred or any other perspective to see (and create theories about issues of genocide) from their own perspectives, that Blacks should obviously ignore about issues.
This is the real debate here, and it has shown me how hard it is for people to think outside of the Euro/Western-centred box, which after all is the dominating worldview,
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Thomas Jefferson on the master/slave relationship:
“The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degradiing submissions on the other.”
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Now, onto good old Abe!
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ha ha ha!!
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@ Herneith:
LOL! Yeah, onto Abe Lincoln!
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After the laughter…A return to a serious face……
You can go through a long list of your good old Presidents including JFK…
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Thad:
Jefferson was rich, white, male and held high office. Hemings was black, slave and female. Being a slave means YOU ARE NOT FREE. To talk about “consensual” relationships and agency is wishful thinking on your part.
That he freed her children does not prove she had any power: after all, he did not free her and they were HIS CHILDREN too.
That she did not run away does not prove that she WANTED TO BE A SLAVE, a happy darkie. Running away is a desperate step that would mostly end badly. Plantations were not like hotels. And black people kind of stick out.
I do not think Jefferson was utterly evil, he had some very good qualities, but your picture of him is, I think, a white, apologetic fantasy.
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The black farmers association sued the USDA for discriminaton and they just came to settlement. Racism is still alive in the US…
http://www.avvo.com/news/u-s–reaches-agreement-in-black-farmers–discrimination-case-706.html
http://www.blackfarmers.org/
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black farmers association sued the USDA for discrimination. They just came to a settlement today. Racism is alive and well.
http://www.avvo.com/news/u-s–reaches-agreement-in-black-farmers–discrimination-case-706.html
http://www.blackfarmers.org/
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black farmers association sued the USDA for discrimination and just came to a settlement today. Go look up John Boyd Jr.
go to http://www.blackfarmers.org
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“U.S. Reaches Agreement In Black Farmers’ Discrimination Case
Friday, February 19, 2010 at 01:34 PM
On Thursday, the Obama administration asked Congress to approve a $1.25 billion payout to settle a lawsuit in which thousands of black farmers alleged that the Department of Agriculture discriminated against them in loan programs.
The lawsuit claims that in some cases, farmers lost their property after they were unable to plant key crops due to slow loan application processing, the Washington Post reports.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has predicted that Congress will approve the settlement.
“I’m going to focus all my time and resources on making that happen,” Vilsack told the news source.
He added, “The president is prepared to indicate that it’s a priority not just for his administration, but for the country.”
The farmers had been fighting their claim through three presidencies, but the Obama administration seem committed to settle lawsuits that have stemmed from the history of American civil rights.
In December, the Department of Justice called for a settlement for a group of Native Americans who accused the government of mishandling royalty payments for resources on tribal lands, says the news source.
If Congress approves the settlement reached in the Native American case, each plaintiff would receive a check for $1,000.” (avvo.com)
now how come u don’t hear about stuff like this in the news??? racism is alive and well people…
go look it up on youtube it own’t let me post the link
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@J
This is the real debate here, and it has shown me how hard it is for people to think outside of the Euro/Western-centred box, which after all is the dominating worldview.
True. The real problem is, many of the Afrocentrists can’t escape Eurocentrism- it’s simply the most popular way of thinking. Yes, this goes even for the hard core Afrocentrists (you can see it, for example, in works about Ancient Egypt).
But acknowledging this fact is the first step towards understanding.
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Peanut:
Your comments did not appear right away because they got stuck in the spam filter – probably because of all the links. I deleted a few that seemed to be repeating stuff.
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Y’know, some years ago I was talking with Jonathan Warren about the differences between Brazilian and American views of race and Warren told me something I’ll never forget:
“The root of the problem is that Americans are hung up on sex. They idealize sex. It’s a huge cultural neurosis with them. So it’s no wonder that sex is and always had been essentialized as the battle ground of American race relations.”
This whole argument make me remember Warren’s comments.
As far as I understand things, given the posts above, people believe that sex must be consensual or it is rape. So far, so good.
But then they go off to define “consensual” in such an idealized, utopian fashion that, if one took the definition seriously, one needs must qualify most sex as it historically has occurred as rape.
“Consensual”, as variously defined above, means “marriage” to some people, “true love” to others, “equality” to others and “essential sameness between partners” to yet others. And most people are righteously outraged if someone stands up and makes the simple and provable claim that most human sex has nothing to do with love, marriage, equality, or sameness.
Sex is supposedly bad if there’s a “power” differential. And yet almost all really occurring sexual relationships involve a power differential – some of them quite vast.
So I find this conversation pretty damned interesting. It’s showing me that Americans want to see history and life as compared to a utopian ideal that does not now and never has existed, and that they think life is simply unacceptable if said ideal is not manifest in reailty.
Damn.
No wonder this is the nation that invented Disneyland. 😀 Seriously, I’m in awe! It takes some cast iron balls, as a culture, to insist that the world CAN’T REALLY BE the way it most obviously is.
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Peanut:
Just to be clear, the right place for a completely new topic is under Suggestions.
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This debate has been interesting as it proves how history is slowly being rewritten. People like Jefferson or Chris Columbus who were previously held up as role models are now being exposed for what they really were, people who took advantage of vulnerable innocents. History from a Black person’s view is being proven true.. DNA has shown how many innocent Black men have been thrown in jail, Jefferson’s DNA showed he had sex with Sally after Whites vehemently denied it, that Blacks are just as intelligent as Whites, that Blacks built pyrmids, Ancient African civilizations before colonialism and slavery were fully functional and developed societies…… As time goes on, the one sided history will unravel, people like Columbus, the Belgian king who massacred millions in The Congo for rubber won’t be held up as role models but will be properly villified for the misery they caused for the sake of greed.
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Yes and No!! here…
From an African centred perspective its important Egypt is placed in its appropriate perspective position since if what they say is true then it would crush the basis for ‘White global Supremacy’.
To simply put it, all the past civilizations were created by White-Caucasoid. Where you have civilisation that are not considered as White like the Mayan, they are put down with the suggestion they may be ‘savage because of human sacrifices’ and Chinese being the last of the four earliest civilizations is somewhat in-significant to a degree.
This is the logistics of how Whites went on a civilising mission of the world, and went on to build their respectives empires vis-a-vis people of colour. In some cases so vast that the sun could never set upon it at one time..
Even within the attack on African centred scholars and their works, their is an aspect of it that has nothing to do with ‘academia’ whatsoever.This is something which needs to be borne in mind. I perceive your view of teh African centred view is one that is derived from the Euro-centred position as opposed to the African centred perspective per se that involves researchers like Diop, Obenga, Rashidi, Carruthers and so on
I will leave it there before I go off on one again ha ha ha.
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“That he freed her children does not prove she had any power: after all, he did not free her and they were HIS CHILDREN too. ”
He didn’t free his children during his lifetime. Several of the older ones were allowed to ‘walk off’ the plantation. He didn’t bother having them apprehended. Apparently, they passed into ‘white society’. The two younger ones were freed after his death . She lived with the youngest Eston and Madison. She was considered to have done her time and was allowed to live as free. The two younger boys were freed after Jefferson’s death, upon reaching the age of 21. Madison gave an interview in 1871:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/cron/1873march.html
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J,
It doesn’t matter what black people were thought of in 1776. In matters that we are human and that we believe freedom is our unalienable right. Our ancestor built this country, our blood, sweat and dust is in this earth called America, are we to give this up. Did our ancestors and peers die in the pursuit of our rights as citizens for someone to tell us that there is and Afrocentric and Eurocentric view.
What about the Black folks view in America? Martin Luther King Jr., the four little girls who died in the bombing of the 16th St Baptist Church, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, James Chaney and many I can’t remember that were my contemporaries and those that lost their lives before and since the activism of my generation.
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Abagond sez:
Thad:
Jefferson was rich, white, male and held high office. Hemings was black, slave and female. Being a slave means YOU ARE NOT FREE. To talk about a “consensual” relationships and agency is wishful thinking on your part.
Yes, being a slave means you are not free. Women in general, however, were not free in 1789, being the legal wards of their fathers or husbands. So if sex without freedom is ipso facto non-consensual, then one must conclude that most sex at the time was, in fact, non-consensual.
As I said before, I think you are mistaking “consensual” to to mean “egalitarian”, “respectful”, or “loving”. I’m looking in my Webster’s thesaurus right now, Abagond: it’s none of those things.
That he freed her children does not prove she had any power: after all, he did not free her and they were HIS CHILDREN too.
But isn’t your entire thesis based on the idea that Jefferson was this deeply evil, child-raping man who could care less about his slaves and their rights? If he had been a Brazilian plantation owner, I might buy your logic, Abagond. But what you’re effectively saying is that Jefferson was this heartless evil rapist who, all of sudden, becomes all paternal about his bastards even as he continues to rape their mother.
No apply Occam’s Razor, Abagond. Which is more logically likely: that view or the view that Sally Hemmings GOT him to free their kids, JUST LIKE HER SON MADISON CLAIMS SHE DID?
Or do you think Madison, too, was lying or a deluded victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, just like his mother?
I mean this is the clincher, Abagond: you deny what the black descendant of Hemmings herself have to say about this. Isn’t that treating them – I dunno – a bit inhumanly, as iof their opinions were worth nothing?
That she did not run away does not prove that she WANTED TO BE A SLAVE, a happy darkie.
Whoever said anything about her WANTING to be a slave or a “happy darkie”? What I’m saying is that she played the best hand she could with the cards on the table. I’m sure that, if given her druthers, Hemmings would have rather been free, wealthy and with all her family about her and screw old T.J. That particular option wasn’t anywhere in the cards, though, was it? So she took what options she really HAD and managed to live a relatively comfortable life AND achieve freedom for all her children, decades before Abolition.
Not a bad show for a woman who was supposedly suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. And NONE of this needs must mean that Sally Hemmings was HAPPY being a slave.
Running away is a desperate step that would mostly end badly. Plantations were not like hotels. And black people kind of stick out.
No kidding. However, there are thousands upon thousands of cases were slaves did just that when they were abused and Hemmings had much better chances than most.
Her son said that she bargained to go back to the U.S. with Jefferson if he promised to manumit their kids. All the children were manumitted. Seems to me that she got Jefferson’s measure, made the best deal she could and somehow held him to it. That sort of woman should be RESPECTED, damn it, not turned into some little parody.
I do not think Jefferson was utterly evil, he had some very good qualities, but your picture of him is, I think, a white, apologetic fantasy.
Huh? I think Jefferson was a wishy-washy hypocrite who only finally freed his children by Sally Hemmings because she manuevered him into doing so. YOU seem to think he freed his kids because they melted his ol’ slaveholder’s heart.
And I’m appologizing for Jefferson? 😀 Abagond, take a look at what your saying about those kids manumission. Take a look at what it implies about Jefferson! 😀 😀
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Without stating the obvious here…
Of course it matters what was said in 1776.
However, if it is your goal to place Jefferson as a ‘man of his times etc’. Then I think you just come out and say it, in no uncertain terms , if that is your position??
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He didn’t free his children during his lifetime. Several of the older ones were allowed to ‘walk off’ the plantation. He didn’t bother having them apprehended.
Yeah, Herneith. And remember that a debtor COULDN’T free slaves and that was what Jefferson was for most of his life. And remember that he didn’t just let one of those kids “walk off”: he actually had the overseer pay money so that they could catch transportation.
Doesn’t sound to me like T.J. was trying very hard to keep those kids around, Herneith.
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“The root of the problem is that Americans are hung up on sex. They idealize sex.”
Yeah! Puritanism and a strong sex drive! Makes for powerful eroticism! that’s what I like about American men, they are puritanical and pigs at the same time! Perhaps that is what drove Jefferson and other politicians.
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J,
You missed the point.
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A man breaks into a home, has a gun to man and his kid’s heads. He wants sex from the wife. She agrees. I bet Thad would agree it would be consensual as; there’s a power imbalance, the woman has limited options and is doing her best under a bad situation…
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“Yes, being a slave means you are not free. Women in general, however, were not free in 1789, being the legal wards of their fathers or husbands. So if sex without freedom is ipso facto non-consensual, then one must conclude that most sex at the time was, in fact, non-consensual.”
the difference was though that ww had the freedom to divorce or take legal action against men other than their husbands who forced them into sex. black women never had that option. ever. so its really not a comparison
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Just a little off topic.
From an African centred perspective its important Egypt is placed in its appropriate perspective position since if what they say is true then it would crush the basis for ‘White global Supremacy’.
What is Eurocentric in Afrocentric views of Egypt is the fixation on Egypt, and not on the other great African cultures- and there were great African cultures. The fixation on Egypt as something “the best”, “greatest”, “most important” is, in fact, Eurocentric. Afrocentric scholars that simply assume Egypt is the most important must stop and rethink their assumptions. Who said Egypt was the most important African culture? Europeans/western scholars. To whom it was the most important? To European/western world.
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I dont’ understand why some people have trouble accepting the fact that between a slave and slavemaster consent isn’t an option. You can’t say no or yes, so really there is no such thing as consent.
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He freed three slaves in his will. None of these were his children. He probably let the other children walk off because if he insisted on re-capturing them, it may have caused a ‘scandal’. As for the two youngest, they were entrusted to one of the men Jefferson freed and given their freedom when they reached 21. Jefferson also requested in his will, that they be allowed to remain in the state as freed slaves had to leave or they could be re-enslaved after a specific amount of time. This was granted, I suspect, so as not to ‘sully’ Jefferson’s name if the two youngest were to go elsewhere and start blabbing as to who their dear old dad was. The mythologizing of this man began soon after his death.
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Yeah! Puritanism and a strong sex drive! Makes for powerful eroticism! that’s what I like about American men, they are puritanical and pigs at the same time!
LOL!
Picturing T.J. squealing like a piggy here. 😀
You think he and Hemmings ever did any role reversal…? [ducking and covering…]
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I am referring mostly to the ones of today. Back then personal hygiene wasn’t the best!
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Mira,
There is a fascination on Egypt just as the same way that there is a fascination on the West with the Greeks.
From a Marxist perspective – Why the fascination with civilizations at all??
Although African centred scholars do focus on Egypt it is totally wrong to suggest they do not discuss other civilisations in Africa and/or it is a misleading point of view, if you read scholars like Diop, Obenga etc.
Finally the position that they focus entirely on Egypt is a Euro-centred stereotype in my opinion.
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I dont’ understand why some people have trouble accepting the fact that between a slave and slavemaster consent isn’t an option. You can’t say no or yes, so really there is no such thing as consent.
Well, first of all, I think you vastly misunderstate slaves’ capacity for resistance on this point, which was pretty big by all accounts.
Secondly, we’re not talking simply about sex here but what was pretty obviously a relationship that went on for years where the slave in question, according to her descendents, did indeed have other choices.
Thirdly, up until about 1970 in the U.S. (and 1990 in Brazil) WIVES couldn’t say “no” to sex. It was perfectly legal under American law, to rape one’s wife. So does that logically mean that all married sex before 1960 was also rape, Peanut?
Finally, even if we assume that slaves couldn’t say “no”, does this logically mean that they couldn’t also say “yes” – for whatever reason? In Hemming’s case, the “yes” was quite clearly linked to her children’s freedom. Unequal power situation? No doubt. Bad ethics and morals on the part of Tommy J? Obviously. Rape, as some people here claim? Now that I doubt.
Now, Angel says:
A man breaks into a home, has a gun to man and his kid’s heads. He wants sex from the wife. She agrees. I bet Thad would agree it would be consensual as; there’s a power imbalance, the woman has limited options and is doing her best under a bad situation…
So Angel, show us some proof that Jefferson held a gun to Sally’s head. I mean I’m open to the thesis: where’s the proof?
The problem for me is a presumption that social structural coercion is seen as being the same thing as individual coercion. Now you can take that position and some do. But what I fail to see is how the structural coercion involved in slavery somehow changes a situation into rape whereas the equally violent structural coercion involved in the marriage and gender relations of the time is somehow handwaved away as “God’s blessing on a happy couple”.
Power imbalances were and still are endemic to gender relations, Angel, so if it’s your argument that power imbalances in the context of sex means that a situation is no longer consensual and is ipso facto rape, then I’d like you to explain to me how marriage in 1789 – which was likewise social structurally coercive and founded on deep power imbalances – was NOT rape.
the difference was though that ww had the freedom to divorce or take legal action against men other than their husbands who forced them into sex. black women never had that option. ever. so its really not a comparison.
First of all, it’s ALWAYS a comparison, Peanut. What you seem to want to say is that “it’s not the same thing”, and indeed, it isn’t.
Secondly, women were most certainly NOT “free to divorce”. Divorce laws were state by state and divorces were very dificult if not impossible to achieve in much of American until recently.
Finally, take a good, long look at the number of women who actually won rape trials prior to, say, 1980 or so. It was VERY easy to defeat a challenge like this. A right which you can’t effectively use is no right at all, Peanut.
But yeah, I agree with your main point that things were different for black and white women. What I disagree with is that these experiences were marked by liberal freedom, respect for rights and equal power balances on the one side and absolute, abject domination on the other.
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@J
Most of the Afrocentric scholars, well, those who do talk about Egypt at least, DO focus on it. It’s a fact. Diop is the first one “guilty” for it. Also, no, they don’t focus on other African cultures in the same way. I am not saying that’s bad- like you said, when it comes to Europe, people focus way too much on Ancient Greece and Rome, and not the other cultures. There’s a reason for it (lack of writing sources in other cultures), but you can’t deny the importance many Afrocentric give to Egypt. If nothing else, they do it to “show” Eurocentrics that western scholars were wrong- Africans are able to create a great civilization, just look at Egypt! This is not wrong per se, but it’s Eurocentric way of thinking- why would any Afrocentric scholar care about what Eurocentricts think? Why would they care if Egypt was important for Europe (or, like you said, why would you have a fixation on any civilization at all)?
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Hernieth sez:
He freed three slaves in his will. None of these were his children. He probably let the other children walk off because if he insisted on re-capturing them, it may have caused a ’scandal’.
So let me get this straight: Jefferson has so much absolute and unreigned power over Hemmings that he can rape her at will for years on end and she can’t say “boo” about it because, really, who’s going to take the word of a slave against the President of the U.S.?
And yet at the same time he’s supposedly chaking in his boots because his kids might cause a scandal?
How do you harmonize these two positions, H? Do the slaves have the power to cause Jefferson trouble or don’t they?
Furthermore, when Beverly and Harriet ran away, they got money from the plantation overseer for the trip. Doesn’t sound to me like Jefferson was unaware that they’d go or that he wanted them to stay.
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Jefferson symbolically held a gun to Sally’s head, manipulatively using her children’s freedom as the bait. As people were religious, he degraded her to a life of glorified prostitution, disrespect and low morals by having sex outside marriage when he had the choice to save her by letting her stay in France without getting her pregnant.
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By the way, TWO slaves – Madison and Eston were freed by Jefferson’s will. Both were right at or under the legal age of majority – 21 – when Jefferson died and one of those other nasty little Virginia manumission laws that people forget about is that slaves who were not sefl-supporting (such as minors) could not be freed.
There’s thus no reason to presume that Jefferson wasn’t going to free these two boys when they hit 21 – as he did for Harriet II.
All six of Hemmings’ kids were said to look like Jefferson and were 7/8ths white, by the way, so if he didn’t father three of them, who did?
Eston Hemmings, by the way, ran off to Wisconsin where he and his family passed for white. So who knows… I think I’m going to pay for mDNA tracing and if I find any African elements, I know who I can attribute them to. 😀
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I agree that holding up slave/master relations as consensual is gross, and it seems to be used as an excuse to some to 1) belittle the horrors of slavery (fyi, “benevolent master” is an oxymoron) or 2) to suggest that Black female/White male relations have always been the epitome of love and happiness.
I think people who go with the “X did [insert atrocity] but didn’t do [insert even worse atrocity], so s/he couldn’t be all *that* bad” miss the fact that they keep shifting their moral compasses. If we agree that slavery is an atrocity by itself, how does not beating one’s slaves make someone “better”? Think of a number line: if slavery is at -30 and whipping slaves is at -70; whether you whip your slaves or not, you are still in the negative.
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Jefferson symbolically held a gun to Sally’s head, manipulatively using her children’s freedom as the bait.
Angel, how could he have “used her children for bait” when she didn’t have any when they started boffing? And let’s presume that Madison is right and Sally did have a kid in 1789 who shortly thereafter died. Her next baby by the comes along 6 years later. So you SERIOUSLY think Jefferson is holding these notional babies over her head while raping her constantly, huh?
And Abagon says that I don’t see slaves as people…! You apparently think Hemmings was stupid, as well as agencyless.
As people were religious, he degraded her to a life of glorified prostitution, disrespect and low morals by having sex outside marriage when he had the choice to save her by letting her stay in France without getting her pregnant.
That I’ll agree with. He made a concubine out of her and that was not cool by the morals of the period. That is also not rape, however.
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Jasmin says:
I agree that holding up slave/master relations as consensual is gross, and it seems to be used as an excuse to some to 1) belittle the horrors of slavery (fyi, “benevolent master” is an oxymoron) or 2) to suggest that Black female/White male relations have always been the epitome of love and happiness.
Jasmin, why? That statement only makes sense if you presume that “consensual” somehow means “good”, “nice”, “respectful”, “loving” or any other like word.
Pick up a thesaurus. Open it to “consensual”. You’ll find none of those words listed there as synonyms. You will find “agreement”. Now this is my question: how in the world does “agreement” mean that one is happy with the situation or that the situation is good and benevolent? How does this – in any way, shape or form – suggest that “Black female/White male relations have always been the epitome of love and happiness”.
You think that because someone agrees to something that they are happy and contented about it?
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Thad. Look up Treaty of Paris. Those are the words that Heming’s son coldly used when describing how Jefferson used Sally’s quest to have her children freed in order to get her to go back to France
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“With regard to:
jefflion
@J
Most of the Afrocentric scholars, well, those who do talk about Egypt at least, DO focus on it. It’s a fact. Diop is the first one “guilty” for it.
This is not true, Diop speaks of many things on the topic of Africa.
That I have given you the raison d’etre for the battle regarding Egypt and you come back again to ask the same very question, shows you do not understand or can conceive of what I am saying, from the African centred position…
Finally can you tell me the names of the Afrocentric scholars are you referring to, otherwise we are speaking off things which are NOT tangible??
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Angel, I’m aware of the Treaty of Paris but confused by two things.
First, how did you know that Madison said this “coldly”? where does that emotional coloration come from?
Secondly – and this is by far the most important point – Hemmings didn’t “go back” to France for the Treaty of Paris, the ONLY time she went was when Jefferson was neogtiating the Treaty. She went without children. Her son claims that THIS was when the relationship started.
So how could her going to France have anything to do with “her quest to get her children freed”? She had no children on the only occasion in which she went to France.
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Sorry, i meant back to the USA . Not france. The cold reponse is on the net… He made it clear it was not a love match. She already was pregnant in France. It’s safe to say she knew she would end up having more children in the future so why wouldn’t she barter before she had them?. If i marry a rich guy, if i have a prenup, i’m going to make financial requests for any future children I have. It makes sense she would too
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The cold response is on the net…
Where, precisely? Can you give a link? I ask because there were no tape recorders back then, so the only way this bit of information could be preserved is through some interview with Madison and I would like to see that if it’s on the net.
He made it clear it was not a love match.
Obviously.
It’s safe to say she knew she would end up having more children in the future so why wouldn’t she barter before she had them?
Quite. But it’s that BARGAINING I’m on about, Angel. BARGAINING as in making an agreement. You were claiming before that Jefferson was “holding her [future unborn] children over her head”. That’s an entirely different thing than the “prenup” metaphor you’re now using.
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I don’t presume “consensual” means nice or loving or anything of the sort. I take it to mean an agreement made of one’s own free will, without coercion, whether implicit or explicit. A slave can’t freely agree to anything because of an immutable power differential, so sex between a slave and a master can never be consensual.
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By the way Thad, you won’t find “agreement” as a synonym for “consensual” in any thesaurus, because “agreement” is a noun and “consensual” is an adjective. So you can keep your thesaurus. 🙂
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“So let me get this straight: Jefferson has so much absolute and unreigned power over Hemmings that he can rape her at will for years on end and she can’t say “boo” about it because, really, who’s going to take the word of a slave against the President of the U.S.?”
I am referring to the children who walked away, not Ms. Hemings. Jefferson, if nothing else, was a politician and as such, had the same scruples as other of his day and since. He had many political enemies who may have jumped on the opportunity to use these children to wreak havoc on his career, if they’d gotten their hands on them. There were many such allegations throughout his career in regards to his relationship with Hemings. Hence, getting one’s hand on these children would have been a coup for his enemies. Rumours and innuendo are one thing, live ‘proof’ is another. That is why he may have sent them on their way with cash in hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if he also set them up in their new life. In short, he paid for their silence. I do recall reading about people remarking on the strong resemblance these children had to him. Some visitors even mistook them for his grandchildren until told the contrary! They were often fobbed off as another male relatives children! Had they run off on their own, and attempts made to recapture them, they may have revealed this information to protect themselves from recapture. Conjecture, maybe, but given what I have read of this man’s ‘double life’, not impossible.
Do you have rape on the brain? As for repeated rapes, I never made a comment about it in regards to Ms. Hemings and Jefferson. As for Hemings making the best of a bad lot, what choice did she have? If you recall. her mother and grandmother were ‘concubines’ to white men. Who knows? This may have been the model she was following. Hindsight is fifty-fifty. At this time we can look back and make remarks and assumptions about what went on between the two. We can use the “it was the times!” refrain, what we cannot do is try to rationalize these relationships as ‘consensual’ given the fact that many of these women did not have the knowledge of recognizing these relationships for what they were. Today, there are many victims of long term sexual abuse who don’t recognize it as such at the time until they acquire knowledge or the tools of recognizing it for what it is. Do you think an illiterate slave girl would? Do you think that this information was taught in schools? The slaves didn’t go to school. Sex education and watching out for predators wasn’t something that was taught, especially in regards to the slave master. A slave was property, so presumably, the owner could do whatever they pleased with them, many did. There was no consent in that the women had no real choice. Giving in, in order to get along doesn’t equate consent, sorry. The abolitionist were always making much out of these relationships, and they always characterized them as abusive and coercive and in many cases as rape. So people at the time were aware of the goings on in these relationships. They knew they were wrong then, as they do now. The slave women who fought back probably didn’t have the ‘choices’ Hemings had. They probably witnessed many incidences of abuse, violence, and fought according to their means. It doesn’t change the ordure of these ‘relationships’. These weren’t relationships given the context. It was literally a matter of life and death on so many levels. Of course the American textbooks don’t delve into this, why would they. They don’t cover so many aspects of American history or the people who made it. Oh, and we are talking about black female slaves in this particular instance, not women as a whole. Sometimes you sound like those white women feminist!
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“Peanut:
Just to be clear, the right place for a completely new topic is under Suggestions.” – abagond
Sorry abagond…just thought it was related to American Racism.
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How can you come to an agreement when you have no rights and you’re legally someone’s property? Do you seriously think a slave has any real say in the “agreement,” of a slavemaster. It’s more like I’ll be nice and treat you somewhat fairly provided you continue to act accordingly w/ my wishes otherwise I’ll be forced ot take disciplinary action. (ie sell you, your children, whip you, harm you sexually) That’s not a real agreement…
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“Thirdly, up until about 1970 in the U.S. (and 1990 in Brazil) WIVES couldn’t say “no” to sex. It was perfectly legal under American law, to rape one’s wife. So does that logically mean that all married sex before 1960 was also rape, Peanut?”
you know that’s a vastly different scenario,Thad. No, it was still rape. What difference does that make? That was rape and so was the rape of slave women by thier masters…what’s your point? The difference is though, ww had the freedom to divorce and or go before a judge for being raped by men she was not married to. slave women couldn’t do that ever. If a man raped a slave that was simply trespassing, there was no such thing as “rape,” of a slave in the eyes of teh law. So the two scenarios are vastly different and you know it. Not a valid comparison.
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the married ww to white men were not put on the auction block butt naked and poked a prodded at for all to see…they weren’t tied up naked and beaten for masochistic relief by their masters…(yes that happened, read the slave memoirs and you will hear stories of white master who got off on that)
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so there is a big difference Thaddeus…
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http://www.lawbuzz.com/can_you/celia/celia.htm
I guess to some people stories like these aren’t really rape…
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@peanut:
What happened to Celia was terrible. I cannot fathom the horror she faced of being raped repeatedly. She fought back the only way she could. I would’ve done the same thing she did.
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Why am I not surprised by Celia’s story?
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Thad said:
“As I said before, I think you are mistaking “consensual” to to mean “egalitarian”, “respectful”, or “loving”. I’m looking in my Webster’s thesaurus right now, Abagond: it’s none of those things.”
I never said that.
“But isn’t your entire thesis based on the idea that Jefferson was this deeply evil, child-raping man who could care less about his slaves and their rights?”
I never said that.
“Not a bad show for a woman who was supposedly suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.”
I never said that.
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Thad said:
“Abagond, seriously: this age thing is obviously an ISSUE with you, just like homosexuality is an ISSUE to some people. It doesn’t appear to have any logic at all: it’s just a knee-jerk reaction.”
and (quoting Jonathan Warren approvingly):
“‘The root of the problem is that Americans are hung up on sex. They idealize sex. It’s a huge cultural neurosis with them. So it’s no wonder that sex is and always had been essentialized as the battle ground of American race relations.'”
Both of these should have deleted as ad hominem attacks but it is too late in the thread to do it now.
Just because someone disagrees with you that DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN they are:
– experiencing a knee-jerk reaction
– have an ISSUE
– are hung up on sex
– have a cultural neurosis
or suffer from some other disorder. And to say that they do amounts to an ad hominem attack, a subtle and extremely condescending one.
So the next time you feel the urge to question someone’s state of mind please keep it to yourself.
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Thad:
Like Jasmin, I do not think “consensual” means anything like “egalitarian”, “respectful” or “loving”. I think it means having to do with consent. Rape is sex without consent so, strictly speaking, sex that is not consensual is rape.
Marriage requires consent. That is why people see shot-gun weddings as wrong. That is why the idea of marital rape took so long to catch on.
So to compare a free, married woman to a enslaved concubine and to say they are almost the same thing is jumping right over the very line that the argument turns on.
It also common white racist derailing tactic, by the way, to miss the point of what a black person is saying in order to be able to say whites experience the same thing too.
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I’ve been thinking about this whole “consensual” thing most of the evening while I’ve been doing fieldwork.
As some of you may know, my fieldwork involves interviewing prostitutes and American sex tourists here in Rio de Janeiro. I think this is one of the reasons why I see what I see with regards to Hemmings and Jefferson. Let’s see if I can explain it to folks here.
People seem to presume that there’s two kinds of sex: there’s good, loving, mutually respectful sex and then there’s everything else, which is bad sex. The first kind is absolutely voluntary and mutual. The second kind is anything that’s NOT.
The problem with this sort of thought comes when it becomes combined with good old American binary thinking. Then, what’s “good” over here needs must be balanced and opposed by what’s “bad” over there and if one presumes that “good” sex is mutually respectful, balanced in power and loving, why then “bad” sex must be be none of that and “none of that” is rape, right?
There is, however, a huge middle ground which lies between these two extremes. Prostitution is one thing that falls there. Adultery tends to be another. Casual sex a third. Non-normative sexual forms like sado-masochism and the like also fit in this middle ground.
And, finally, there are various forms of “empowered” sex, where unequal power flows end up creating unequal relationships. By “empowered” I don’t mean the pop psychology “I feel empowered” sense of the word: I mean a more Foucaultian notion of power in sex: sex which occurs as a result of or in response to power flows; sex which itself is charged with power relations.
It seems to me that most people here throw a lot of these “middlem ground” categories – and certainly the last one – into the category of “rape”. I do not. This does not mean, as some people have implied, that I consider these relationships to be “good” or “appropriate” or what have you. But, for reasons which I will discuss below, I do think it is important to distinguish between sexual situations that are caused by social structural power imbalances and those that are caused by an individual’s will to power.
Rape, to me, falls into the second category. Here we have a person who takes it upon themself to use their own body as a weapon to force another to have sex with them. This is a fairly easy thing to perceive and to fight, in social terms, because it is the result of a clearly individual act which breaks well established social laws and norms. It’s quite easily perceivable as “evil” and it is not a social event, in the Durkheimian sense of the word, because it does not express a social norm but rather the violation of social norms.
“Empowered” sex is more difficult to perceive and fight against, precisely because it relies on the social structure itself and upon deeply embedded social norms in order to produce coercion. No one HAS to threaten in empowered sex or use individual coercion because the social context itself is enough to produce that. Much of what is today labled “sexual harassment” is empowered sex. (And no, kneejerkers, I’m not implying that sex under slavery was “sexual harassment”).
The problem with looking at sexual relations in the context of slavery is that they are by definition a form of highly empowered sex which occurred in a very specific social context – one which, furthermore, we don’t have direct access to today and which is thus only observable through historical methodology. In order to understand the actions of individuals within that context, the entire structure itself needs to be taken into consideration.
First of all, power relations in slavery were not absolute. Slaves were expert at exploiting whatever loopholes could be created to pull out more autonomy for themselves. Interpersonal relationships with whites were notorious for creating these loopholes – dangerous and unreliable loopholes, but loopholes nevertheless. The annals of southern and Brazilian slavery are full of examples whereby slaves were able to achieve a greater degree of autonomy for themselves or their descendants by manipulating this or that personal relationship with a slaveholder. This was a risky game which could quite easily backfire on the slave: nevertheless, it often worked and slaves were well aware that it did.
Sexual relationships, of course, were one of the most highly charged sorts of interpersonal relationships possible in this dangerous game.
Now, some people are going to say “Oh, the Jezebel stereotype! You believe slave women were these evil temptresses who seduced the innocent white man”.
Hold on, there! Whoah.
I’m saying that the interpersonal sexual relationship could be manipulated NO MATTER who was responsible for starting it and I will also note that this situation was also valid for those few but significant cases of slave MEN involved in sexual relationships with slaveholder women. Given the power imbalances of slavery, it’s pretty logical to presume that the people who would most often be initiating these sorts of relationships would be the slaveholders. Be that as it may, once such a relationship was underway, the slave in question definitely had a tiger by the tail. It was a situation which needed to be carefully worked and thought about, for it could result in disaster and the odds were good that it would. However, if the slave was lucky and knew how to play their cards right, such relationships could open up opportunities as well.
If the slave was lucky and judged the situation correctly, such relationships could and did result in privileges and even manumission. I repeat, this was a very high stakes and risky game, but once in it, shooting dice with the devil, a slave could indeed win something for him or herself.
Of course, these sort of relationships were highly empowered sex. But the slaves themselves would often distinguish them from rape, even though this did not mean that they thought these relationships were necessarily good, or just, or nice.
Now, alot of historians have talked about this sort of situation, but I’ll just mention Deborah Gray White here, given that she’s black and a woman and thus no one can accuse her of being blinded by gender or race. White emphasizes the high-stakes nature of these relationships, the fact that they were far more often than not exploitative and the fact that it was rarely black women who began them. She also admits that some slave women were able to turn the game in their favor, that slave concubines could indeed use their position to better their lot and even achieve freedom for themselves and their children.
Now let’s look at the situation of a young female slave like Hemmings. What people here are defining as “consensual relationships” were not likely on her horizon of possibilities. What she had as sexual/affective options were a series of different forms of empowered sex in which she was definitely going to come off on the short end of a very sh$%%y stick. What were Sally’s three most common possibilities in life and how did these translate into sexual and affective relationships for her?
1) She could have remained a regular slave and “married” (for slave unions were not legally recognized) another slave. Her rights in this relationship would be few to none. In fact, her master might even conceivably choose her mate for her (though there’s no evidence that Jefferson did this and some evidence that he encouraged the formation of slave families). In any case, her role in this relationship would be that of a brood mare. As the WPA slave narratives and other first-hand sources point out, a slave woman’s worth was measured by her breeding ability and, if she were lax in this department, a master might even assign another slave to “breed” her or do it himself. So this option was definitely no protection from sexual exploitation. Finally, as a common slave, Sally would live in fear of having her family broken up and sold – perhaps not even because of the acts of a bad master. Bankruptcy, a state which Jefferson constantly flirted with, could also result in the liquidation of the plantation by the courts and the destruction of her family.
2) Sally could have opted for freedom, either in Paris or by running away later. Though other opportunites might be opened by this route, it would also entail that Hemmings leave behind freinds, family and every place she knew in her short life in favor of a shot in the dark. Furthermore, as a young black woman, this option would also probably not have resulted in “consensual” relationships. Her most likely employment would be as a prostitute, or a maid – and young maids at the time (of any color) were also very much vulnerable to empowered sex.
3) Sally could take up as the mistress or concubine of one of the Jefferson men. This she apparently did and it resulted in significant benefits for her and her family. It might not have. It was definitely a situation frought with risk.
Now, was Sally exploited? Most certainly. But there was never an option on her table where she wouldn’t have been exploited, sexually or otherwise.
Was the sex between Jefferson and Hemmings “consensual”? Not if we take Jasmin’s meaning, that it be “an agreement made of one’s own free will, without coercion, whether implicit or explicit.” (And yes, Jasmin, you are right: “agreement” is not a synonym for “consensual”. It is for “consent”, however). Would the sex have been “consensual” in either of the other two options above? Well, as Jasmin points, slavery rather makes a mockery of consent. Perhaps Sally would have had slightly more say in options one and two, but she certainly wouldn’t have been excercizing her own free will without implict or explicit coercion in either case.
Now, was the sex between Jefferson and Hemmings rape?
I don’t think so. First of all, there’s an obsolete crime from Jefferson’s day that much more fits what went on than “rape”: seduction – the crime of using false promises or power to lead a presumed innocent young woman into sexual relations outside the bonds of matrimony. Secondly, there is no oral memory in any of the Hemmings families that Sally was raped and these things do tend to get emphasized in the oral histories of slave descendents. Her son Madison didn’t seem to think that she was raped.
So this is how I see the situation: Jefferson “seduced” Hemmings in the legal sense of the word and the resulting relationship ended up in concubinage. The whole thing was highly empowered sex and Jefferson did indeed exploit Hemmings, but then again, the very idea of slavery is based on exploitation, so this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Sex doesn’t make the relationship any more or less exploitative in that sense, just more or less unpleasant. Jefferson does indeed deserve to be condemned for this and, indeed, was so at the time, if for the wrong reasons.
Now why do I think it’s wrong to paint Jefferson as a rapist? As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, because it completely mistakes the kind of power and the kind of evil that’s being implemented. It takes a power and evil that is social in nature and attempts to turn them into individual sins. To say this is not to defend or excuse Jefferson: it’s to properly frame and classify the evil that occurred. What’s Jefferson’s sin in all this? Precisely that of Eichmann, as Hanna Arendt pointed out: we condemn him on this point not because he was an bad man. His individual moral worth is really not the point. We condemn him because, more than any other man of his class and age, he had the power to take a PRACTICAL stand on abolition and did not. When the time came for him to stand forth, he went along with the crowd, with the interests of the other planters. His relationship with Hemming is a reflection of that.
It’s the banality of this evil which is scary, not its exceptionalism, and painting Jefferson as a rapist, while it may make people feel good, draws attention away from the real problem and the real crime.
Furthermore, I think the rape charge ends up demeaning Hemmings and taking away from what was a very significant accomplishment for her. If one believes that Hemmings was raped for, what, 20 years, having 7 children with her rapist, then one reduces her to a little automoton, basically a human blow up doll, and – ironically enough – situates her and her children’s freedom as a result of the supposed good will of her master and rapist. The annals of American slavery show a lot of rapes and very, very few manumissions by rapists. I think we can discard the view of a Jefferson who was simultaneously so brutal that he’d rape the same woman for 20 some years, but then have his heart melted by paternity. Sorry. Slave masters who raped slaves typically did it either to a) satisfy their own lusts or b) to make more children in order to increase their property. They didn’t do it to manumit said kids.
I think Hemmings did something very significant which should be recognized: SHE BEAT JEFFERSON AT HIS OWN GAME.
Think about it: here’s this young slave who managed to get the late 18th century’s primier philosopher and one of the most powerful men in the U.S. to take a practical stand on her behalf and the behalf of her children. A stand – as many people here have pointed out – that he took with no other slaves in his life, ever. She won her kids’ freedom from this man.
That is significant and it should be recognized. The view that Hemmings HAD no agency because she was under duress (“at gunpoint” as angel would have it) from day one and that Jefferson manumitted her kids, because, “y’know, why the hell not?” is not consistent with history and takes away from this remarkable woman’s accomplishment.
Long post, I know. I hope, at least, that it adequately describes my feelings on this matter. I have little hope that said feelings won’t be turned into a parody by some commentators, but that’s the nature of topics like this.
And you people want teachers to discuss this in school. Good grief…
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It also common white racist derailing tactic, by the way, to miss the point of what a black person is saying in order to be able to say whites experience the same thing too.
I think it’s pretty clear, Abagond, that you have missed the point of what I am saying. I hope it is clearer now.
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Herneith sez:
I am referring to the children who walked away, not Ms. Hemings. Jefferson, if nothing else, was a politician and as such, had the same scruples as other of his day and since. He had many political enemies who may have jumped on the opportunity to use these children to wreak havoc on his career, if they’d gotten their hands on them. There were many such allegations throughout his career in regards to his relationship with Hemings. Hence, getting one’s hand on these children would have been a coup for his enemies. Rumours and innuendo are one thing, live ‘proof’ is another. That is why he may have sent them on their way with cash in hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if he also set them up in their new life. In short, he paid for their silence.
I’m sorry, Hereith, but that still doesn’t make logical sense. Jefferson has these kids on Monticello, correct? They are in his power – a power which, according to the Jefferson-as-viscious-tyrant theory – is absolute and being wielded by a totally unscrupilous man. So the kids decide they are going to leave. Does Jefferson jump on them, beat the hell out of them, lock them up to make sure that they stay in his power and can’t possibly be used by his enemies?
No, he pays for them to go off into the wide world where they’ll be far removed from his control and oversight.
The theory still violates Occam’s Razor.
As for repeated rapes, I never made a comment about it in regards to Ms. Hemings and Jefferson.
Yeah, I do, with so many people above implying that I’m defending it.
I think that the most logical thing in this argument is to believe exactly what Hemming’s son Madison said: Hemmings only agreed to go back to America if Jefferson would manumit any children that would come about from their union. Somehow, she managed to keep him to that promise. I do not think he manumitted those kids out of the goodness of his heart and the idea that freeing them would somehow make them LESS vulnerable to his enemies manipulations just doesn’t hold water – provably so, in fact, being that Madison’s testimony was published by some of Jefferson’s
enemies.
I agree with your comments regarding Hemmings and Jefferson, as should be obvious by now.
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^Yeah, I do have rape on my mind, with so many people above implying that I’m defending it.
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Abagond sez:
Rape is sex without consent so, strictly speaking, sex that is not consensual is rape.
The problem comes when a social structural situation – like slavery – is presumed to take away absolutely all individual power to say “yes” as well as “no”, to GIVE consent as well as to take it away. And that’s what’s being presumed here, Abagond. At that point, you reduce someone to an agencyless manikin, driven by forces completely beyond their ability to control.
Could Hemmings have said no? Yes, she could have. Other slave women did. Would Jefferson have then raped her? We don’t know. Would he have taken it out on her in other ways? We don’t know.
The problem here isn’t rape: the problem is the social structural coercion that would have made it very likely that Hemmings was going to give her consent. The fact is, she apparently said “yes” under certain conditions of her own and apparently managed to hold Jefferson to those conditions. That indicates, to me, a significant amount of agency which belies the view that she had no choice. She did have choices, no matter how small, and made the very best of them that she could.
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Having Stockholm syndrome does not mean being “robotized” or being a passive blow up doll.
Patty Hearst was the prime example of that. She was kidnapped and tortured by Symbionese army. But she became pro-active and help them rob banks. Definitely not robotized……
The hostages taken by the bank robbers in Stockhom actively resisted rescue. They refused to testify against their captors, raised money for their legal defense and apparently one of the hostages became engaged to one of their captors..
They don’t realize that what the captor is giving them is their RIGHT…food,shelter( in Jeffersons case, freedom for her kids) but they are mistaking it for kindness.
In the end the captor is serving his own self interests.
Does this apply to Jefferson and Hemings?
Yes, there is no doubt that she suffered from Stckholm Syndrome.
When Jaycee Lee Dugard was held captive by Garrido for 18 years, he let her kids from his rape go out and socialize, she handled his business, even sent emails.
When the police questioned her,she said that Garrido was a great guy who was good with the kids.
She also initially refused to admit who she was,lied and made up a fake story. It was Garrido who confessed as to her identity. After further questioning, she then confessed to her true identity..
So this story about how she stuck with a man who freed her kids because it was a love affair or an arrangement that benefited equally the parties involved is pure crap
Just try telling Jaycee, her mother, stepfather or her kids that being held captive for 18 years was a benefit to everyone involved
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there is a difference between adapting to your enviorment and enjoying your enviorment.
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I’ve been thinking about this discussion on and off throughout the last few days, pondering why I bother trying to discuss this topic and what I’m trying to do.
The comment about Americans and their sexual values wasn’t an ad hominem attack, Abagond. First of all, I truly mean it in the same ideal typical sense that you use when you make comments about white people or black people and why they do the things they do. It was meant to be a sociological observation, not a personal one. And I’m damned sincere about it and do not think it’s stemming from some sort of deeply embedded racists tone in my psyche that I haven’t overturned.
I truly believe that you Americans (and again, remember that I’m talking about you in the same non-absolutist, generalist way you talk about white people) have some very culturally particular and deeply held beliefs about sex that are hard-wired right into the ways you think about race. They are so thoroughly interconnected that you switch back and forth between the two concepts at a drop of a hat and make absolutist statements about values involving the two all the time. What’s scary to me, as a Brazilian, is that I watch you people do this and presume that these views are absolute and that all humans, everywhere, share them and should share them, because they are unquestionably good. And I have my doubts about that.
One of the reasons that I write here is that it allows me access to a good set of intelligent American laymen reactions regarding certain concepts, certain thoughts, that Brazilians tend to find commonplace but which are pretty E.T. from the American point of view. High on this list is this knot of intertwined values regarding sex and race which lie at the root of both cultures understandings of themselves and yet which are, in many ways, absolutely atagonistic.
Very few Brazilians would find what I wrote about Hemmings and Jefferson offensive or a defense of slavery. As a matter of fact, a lot of Brazilians would probably take the position that Hemmings seduced Jefferson. You could call this the “Jezebel Stereotype” and click your tongue over how much more racist Brazilians are than Americans (as certain posters above have done), but that wouldn’t be an adequate description of what’s going on.
Why?
Because the more thoughtful and perceptive of those Brazilians wouldn’t be basing their views on the understanding that “blacks are much more sexually active than whites”: they’d be basing their views on a gut-level understanding – bred by years of Brazilian literature and T.V. programs and interpersonal politics – that sexuality is one of the best (and certainly the most often employed) weapons available to people who find themselves in low- to no power situations. No one is surprised in this country when someone in a subalternate position uses sex to carve personal exceptions for themselves out of social structural power flows. In fact, our political vocabulary is full of sexual metaphors which describe this belief and which flat-out contradict American sexual political metaphors.
An American will say, for example, that “Bush is in bed with Enron”. The underlying sexual metaphor is one of mutuality: he’s doing favors for them, they’re doing favors for him and they have the same general outlook on life. They are lying side by side together, looking out at the world. A similar Brazilian metaphor indicates dominance, hierarchy and patron/client relationships: “O Bush é a putinha de Enron” – “Bush is Enron’s little whore”. This indicates that Enron is in the driver’s seat, so to speak, that Bush’s interests are being dominated by Enron’s and that Enron will do everything in its power to protect its useful little client. Bush is behind Enron in the most basic sense possible.
Americans think of sex in deeply democratic ways. Brazilians think of sex in deeply hierarchical ways. Yes, this is a huge generalization with plenty of exceptions but – by and large – I believe that these exceptions prove the general rule. So a Brazilian, looking at the Hemmings/Jefferson issue, will laugh and say “I’m not surprised”. Depending on his racialized outlook, s/he’ll chuckle and say either “Old Tommy got his” (more of a typical white view) or “Sally certainly managed to get that bastard tied in knots” (more of a typical non-white view). NEITHER of these two positions is surprised or offended by the fact that the sex was empowered and unequal, because we don’t expect egalitarian sex in Brazil. In fact, I‘d say most Brazilians don’t even want it. It’s really not on our list of cultural “to dos”. Meanwhile, white and black Americans are equally shocked – and this is the ironic part – because they fundamentally share the same belief that sex must be an expression of egalitarianism or it is a fundamental crime against human decency. The racist whites can’t believe that Jefferson would “degrade” himself by sleeping with an “inferior”. Non-racist whites and blacks are shocked because they believe that sexual relations in slavery must be tantamount to rape. Both groups are appalled that a paladin of democracy could act in such an undemocratic fashion.
As a person who grew up in the U.S. but whose adult sexual socialization is Brazilian and who’s done a lot of study regarding slavery and race in both countries, my personal opinion is that the Brazilian way of looking at sex is better for understanding the Jefferson/Hemmings debate and the American way of looking at it is, ironically, better for framing it within Jeffersonian philosophical constraints of democracy and morality.
But this whole argument is fascinating to me because it really throws American and Brazilian views on sex, gender, power and morality into high relief.
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“Very few Brazilians would find what I wrote about Hemmings and Jefferson offensive or a defense of slavery. As a matter of fact, a lot of Brazilians would probably take the position that Hemmings seduced Jefferson. You could call this the “Jezebel Stereotype” and click your tongue over how much more racist Brazilians are than Americans (as certain posters above have done), but that wouldn’t be an adequate description of what’s going on….”
this is in essence the story of Chica Da Silva. She was a brazilian slave who seduced her way to freedom.
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this whole sally hemmings argument is really too deep.
None of us commenting on this blog were there, we have no 100% accurate knowledge of what really went down.
however the evidence that we do have does not outright state or really even imply that sally hemmings was being raped.
I’m not going to pretend that I know anything about this because I don’t.
All I do know is that I saw a film about it once and everyone commented how much I looked like ‘sally hemmings’ lol
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lol @ the pedophile comment
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the earliest that sally hemmings could have gone to france was 14 I believe. In my home country(a western european country) 14 is the ae of consent- you can have sex at 14.
whether or not jefferson raped hemmings- I cannot really comment because I don’t know.
but he was hardly a pedophile.
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my point is though where I was born- the age of consent is 14. which just again proves the point that morals are not absolute.
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* so sally according to that law would not have been underage and jefferson would not be a pedophile.
as for the rape thing- I have nothing to say. Idk.
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please don’t tell me ‘to get a clue’. it is patronising.
I don’t lnow you and I’m not personally insulting or directing my previous comments solely to you.
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…and please don’t take that “shut up” as anything more than metaphorical. With out your input, this site wouldn’t be what it is.
But I would like to see some proof of your assertion that people think this is a love story. So “put up or shut up” about that particular allegation at least, please.
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ffs I’m not american I have already mentioned previously I don’t know anything about jefferson or hemming. I barely know who jefferson, Im not american, its not im portant to me. I’m not painting him as a great man – I have no reason too and I don’t know him.
all I am commenting on is her age.
all I am saying is where I am from sex at 14 is legal- it is not perverted or wrong or sick.
that is all. really nothiong else.
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sorry my spelling is getting a bit dodgy. I was typed fast because i was irritated.
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FFS are you reading my comments?
I have NOT commented on whether hemmings was raped. I don’t know!!! I don’t knowing anything about jefferson or hemming. how many times do I have to say that?
all I am saying is where I come from 14 is the age of consent. thats not opinon – that is legal fact.
and FYI i am mulata
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Lucia, cê fala português?
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at the end of day this jefferson stuff is not important to me.
american schools don’t teach about the kingdom of gaza, or the unification of italy- so why should I know about jefferson?
I was simply commenting on the age issue. not the rape. I mean why would I argue on something I know nothing about?
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sim um pouco, minha mãe é africana e meu papa e italiano.
Eu devo melhorar meu português
i have not used it really since I was a kid lol
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I have no idea why everyone seems to think i am saying sally was not raped- I never said anything about rape.
*sigh* I guess everyone is just ignoring the only thing I did say- that 14 is not necessarily a child.
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I never said anything about love.. where are you getting this from? show me word for word where I said sally was not definitely not raped or that they were in love. I never said either.
I think I will cease visiting this blog
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I think it is the removal of race from the whole argument,
and what it meantto be a Black woman under that system of genocide is what is causingthe difference here in my opinion.
Remove the genocidal system and race from the equation then in essence you have a completely different argument altogether.
By the way Lucia, would you like to give an analysis to what you wrote earlier please,
“This is in essence the story of Chica Da Silva. She was a brazilian slave who seduced her way to freedom”.
Thanks??!!
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@ J
I was not talking about the story of sally hemmings being similar to chica da silva.
I was commenting on thad’s point that in brazil they recongise that seduction can be used as a tool- chica da silva is example of seducing your way out of something.maybe I should have made that clearer or maybe you needed to read things clearly.
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I mean seriously why would I quote something if i wasn’t directly responding to it??
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Thanks Lucia,
That’s exactly what I thought you were saying – so you did make yourself very clear ha ha – but I am still interested who is Chica da Silva.
If you do not wish to say then please free to give it a pass…
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“I don’t see why you are here trying to say 14 is not a childs’ age.
Is that supposed to make jefferson look innocent?”
no it is not supposed to make jefferson look innocent… you called him a pedophile and I all said well in my country wsher i was born 14 is in the age of consent. thats all.
for the millionith time Idk about jefferson I have no interest in making him look innocent. I don’t know about him or american history.
I’m done with all these goddamn attacks.
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@ J
chica da silva was a brazilian slave who started a romance with the richest man in brazil. he freed her and married her. he even built her own church- she was barred from attending the white church. she famously used her feminine charms to seduce him. chica was a smart woman.
she was born a slave and died the richest woman in brazil.
there have been many telenovelas and films about her- often titled ‘xica da silva’. very popular in luso and hispanic world.
🙂
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Thank you!!
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This slave raper Jefferson is a example of how nasty white old geezers prey on young black females. White people like to excuse the rape of Hemmings because still in this day and age they do not veiw black women as fully human.
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I don’t know if I’d qualify Chica’s relationship as a “romance”, Lucia, for the very same reasons that I wouldn’t qualify Jefferson and Hemmings as rape.
But Chica did indeed win the jackpot in that particular game.
The upshot of it, however, was that she lost it all when her “husband” went back to Portugal. She ended her life poor and outcast.
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Lets’s look at Sally’s “choices”:
1 – she could have fought back and ended up on the exucutioners or the auction block. If she was lucky and was simply sold away from her family. She could have been made a field slave, who faced the threat of rape and sexual coersion every day.
2- She could have refused and faced the auction block or have been sent out into the fields, and faced the threat of rape and sexual coersion every day without her family
3- She could submit and face and sexual coersion every day with her family intact.
“Jefferson also went after a married white woman as well but she refused his advances.”
He not only had a relationship with Maria Cosway but persued another married woman, Angelica Schuyler Church. This man was no saint, even if you take Sally out of the picture.
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She could also have run away, Esh.
But OK, let’s take those choices at face value. They were REAL and yet Sally did something else. Choice Three doesn’t imply keeping her family intact. She could have faced that and STILL lost her family.
Sally USED Choice Three to BARGAIN to keep her family intact and gain it freedom.
Good thing she had a wider view of her choices than you do, don’t you think?
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Thad, I asked you to not to address your comments to me, nicely. I am requesting yet again, keep my name the hell out of your mouth.
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Y’know, I’m pretty damned respectful and try my best to be. But I direct my comments to people’s handles here if I think they are relevant and I don’t think you have the right to censor me in that as long as I’m not attacking you or being disrespectful.
Sorry.
If you don’t want people to use your name, keep posting under your handle.
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Thad:
1. Measured by the number of comments I have to delete, you are currently the most disrespectful commenter I have.
2. If Eshowoman does not wish you to address her, please respect her wishes. You can still quote things she says and comment on it, but do not expect her to answer.
The two of are in danger of getting into an extremely ugly fight and I want to prevent that as it will probably end up with one or both of you leaving.
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Abagond, I do not expect her to answer. I am just indicating where the comments are directed and I do this to AVOID people feeling offended, thinking I’m commenting on them.
I DO think that it’s hypocritical for her to use my name, however, which you’ll notice that she’s done on other posts today, and then request that I not use hers.
You might also want to pass along to her that she not use her real name if she’s paranoid about it being in other people’s mouths.
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Though I have to admit, I’m damned interested in the “Painting the Mulatta Black” paper she’s giving in Saint Louis. 🙂
If there’s a write up of it available yet, I’d be happy to give it a read-over. Seriously.
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whew, abagond, I thought it was me getting deleted the most…
“This slave raper Jefferson is a example of how nasty white old geezers prey on young black females……”
Please, there is no need to get personal here….
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i just got done reading an article about how iraqis want to kill black soldiers due to the humiliation of being occupied by “negroes”. any humane, bleeding heart liberalness i had for iraqis pretty much disappeared after reading that article…
we all know this won’t be mentioned in the history books 20 years from now…
its still amazing that some textbooks have at least made mention that blacks fought a war only to come home and be mistreated…
now i am curious if a white person makes black history textbooks….i wonder how wrong those are.
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Alwaysright sez:
i just got done reading an article about how iraqis want to kill black soldiers due to the humiliation of being occupied by “negroes”. any humane, bleeding heart liberalness i had for iraqis pretty much disappeared after reading that article…
Now, now, alwaysright. No need to exagerate. I’m sure the Iraqui resistance movements are JUST as happy killing whites, too. I’m sure they don’t look any gift horse in the mouth when it comes to killing the people occupying their country.
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thad all i will say to you is to look up the article yourself.
i am not going to engage in a debate with a troll that is always looking to pick fights with everyone.
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alwaysright101, you wrote:
“i just got done reading an article about how iraqis want to kill black soldiers due to the humiliation of being occupied by “negroes”.”
Obviously the article is a fabrication. Sounds like it appeared in The Onion. Anyway, its central claim is phony.
How do I find it online? I would love to read this fictional gem.
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Well hell, always, give us a link, then.
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Is this the article, alwaysright?
http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=11994
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Black soldiers are a particular target. ‘To have Negroes occupying us is a particular humiliation,’ Abu Mujahed said, echoing the profound racism prevalent in much of the Middle East. ‘Sometimes we aborted a mission because there were no Negroes.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/12/usa.iraq
Hope this of some insight…
Trust you Thad you still running with the ball…far away from the topic of conversation at hand ha ha ha
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Snap…
You must be based in London then
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fine, since the 2 trolls above me are too lazy to search for it, here is the link.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/12/usa.iraq
you are welcome.
now go away and leave me alone…i don’t engage with trolls.
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lol, thanks J, wish I had seen your comment earlier then i wouldn’t have posted mine!
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@natasha
that was the other article i read too. both of them i read yesterday.
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J sez:
Trust you Thad you still running with the ball…far away from the topic of conversation at hand ha ha ha
I wasn’t aware that there WAS a coherent topic of conversation anymore. And Always needs to look up “sarcasm” in his Websters. 😀
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I’ve read that book, too, J. Years ago I did a review of all of this “African conquers the world” lit and some of it is quite interesting.
The problem with the “hemitic peoples colonize Ireland” thesis is that there were people there long before there was anything like adequate sea-faring tech in Africa. Or the mediterranean, for that matter. Or ANYWHERE.
The “Welsh is really Egyptian” argument is droll and interesting enough after one’s smoked a big fat spliff. Got me imagining things, at any rate. But from the linguistics viewpoint, it’s utter pants.
The author is also simply ignorant of human genetics. He seems to believe that curly hair is a specifically African gene instead of a common human gene.
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dude, note the avatar, i am a female. why do you always assume someone is a male?
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Whoops! That last post shouldn’t be here folks, but over on the black brazilian gringos discussion.
Sorry.
Gotta stop sluggin’ this ‘tussin here…
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dude, note the avatar, i am a female. why do you always assume someone is a male?
My avatar’s Tom from Tom and Jerry. Do you think I’m a cat? 😀
I didn’t even notice your avatar and – correct me if I’m wrong here – isn’t the male gender the default gender in the English language?
Sorry. No insult intended.
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alwaysright101 and natasha,
The articles about sunnis attempting to target blacks rather than white soldiers are obviously nonsense.
Maybe it’s news to you but even fighters as idiotic as the muslim insurgents are determined to kill ALL enemy soldiers. Meanwhile, at all times, soldiers will say anything that might demoralize the enemy.
In 2003, when the US was crushing Saddam’s military in Baghdad, big-mouth Baghdad Bob was on the radio claiming Iraqi forces were beating the crap out of the US Marines. You should always remember that muslims freely lie about anything at any time.
By the way, one of the articles was written in 2004 and the other was written in 2007. At both times, muslim insurgents were getting shot to pieces by US forces. That’s why we are basically doing a victory lap now — except for the fact that Obama does not want to declare victory over muslims.
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and texas just passed a stupid standard on textbooks like a week ago, making them tilt to the conservative side, so now they will definitely be very racist against blacks….
i wouldn’t give such a crap about it if my state and other states weren’t affected by texas’ garbage that people want to call “textbooks”.
I am praying that the teachers will teach students without using the textbook, because the last thing schools need to breed are more idiots like the tea baggers.
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One of the many reasons I am an English teacher: I use excerpts from “Before the Mayflower”, “In White America” and “Lies my teacher told me” in class…or at least I did before the state of California cut funding to the bone, loaded my classes at 35 students per class and lumped all reading levels together…can’t get the occasional kids with a 2nd grade reading level to read much…but I try…teaching “Beloved” and “Ceremony” allows me to put in a lot of background on the good old U S of A…and we did not buy Texas from Mexico, we stole it fair and square…the way we do most of our stuff…along with Arizona, New Mexico and California in the Mexian-American War. Remember the Alamo? It was all about the Texans wanting to keep slavery…Mexico had outlawed it. That is what Davey Crockett & Jim Bowie (among others) were fighting for the right to own and keep slaves…and anyone who says that Sally Hemmings had any choice in the matter of her situation with Thomas Jefferson is a moron (hint..hint…) or maybe women DO want to be raped…right… Also, the only one who could have freed her was good old Thomas Jefferson…women did not own property in good ol’ Virginney…women in the South had the legal status of idiots and children: they were the property of their husbands, fathers and brothers. Man, willfully ignorant stupid people irritate me!
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In all this talk about racism, one group is undermentioned if it is mentioned
at all–Native Americans, who were subjected to physical (and later cultural)
genocide. I remember reading about how the “treacherous” Sioux wiped
out Custer at the Little Big Horn (which he richly deserved), but nothing
about the massacre of native women and children at such places as
Ash Hollow, Bear River, Whitestone Hill, Sand Creek, Washita (perpetrated
by Custer), Marias River, Sappa Creek, and Wounded Knee. Looking at
a later text, I did see some references to Sand Creek and Wounded Knee,
but these two incidents were only the tip of the bloodberg. The history
of California is written in blood (Indian Island, Humboldt Bay, and many
other incidents not even recorded). Then came the era of the so-called
boarding schools, which were more like juvenile prisons. Native young
people were punished for speaking their own language, forbidden to
practice their own religion, and made to feel ashamed of being native.
And the so called Allotment Act was nothing but a legalized attempt at a
land grab. Native contributions to world culture are rarely mentioned,
but include nearly half of the world’s food crops, or many of the world’s
drugs (e.g asprin, which is found in willow bark.).
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