Thomas Jefferson in “Notes on the State of Virginia” (1787) made the same two arguments against freeing the slaves that whites would later make against ending Jim Crow:
1. Race war:
- Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites;
- ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained;
- new provocations;
- the real distinctions which nature has made;
- and many other circumstances,
will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.
2. Race mixing:
Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.
He compares blacks to whites. Here is some of it:
Blacks are ugly:
- Whites have “flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form”.
- Even black men prefer white women over their own, just as orangutans prefer black women over their own.
Blacks smell bad:
They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour.
Blacks like sex more but love less deeply:
They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.
Blacks suffer less deeply:
Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them.
Blacks are better at music, but:
Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved.
Blacks are brave, but:
this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present.
Black intelligence:
in memory they are equal to the whites;
in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid;
and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.
Jefferson compares them to the white slaves of Rome who, despite living under crueler conditions, have produced great thinkers and writers – like Terence, Epictetus and Phaedrus. Unlike blacks.
Blacks have good moral character. Yes. Apart from their lack of respect for property laws, which is understandable, there are:
numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity.
In conclusion he says more study is required, so:
I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. … This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people.
See also:
- Jefferson
- Jim Crow racism
- The Bell Curve
- other racists
- Lincoln – “there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
- Madison Grant
- Steve Sailer
- black people according to white people
- Epictetus
I am sorry to repeat this.
Even black men prefer white women over their own, just as orangutans prefer black women over their own.
Besides being disgusting beyond words, I suspect there are still people who believe, deep down, that this might be the case.
(Just to make clear, I am not referring to black men preferring white women argument, but the orangutan analogy).
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“Whites have “flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form”. Even black men prefer white women over their own, just as orangutans prefer black women over their own.”
“They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour.”
Bear in mind, that this was all written while he himself was sleeping with a Black woman [Sally Hemmings] on most nights.
But, of course that was an exception.
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Ironies certainly abound, but in point of fact, he wrote most of the “Notes” in 1781 when Sally Hemings was eight.
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Of orangutans, etc:
Back then one of the excuses used in England for the slave trade was that black women had sex with apes, proving that were not fully human. And even today White Americans still tend to think of monkeys when they think of blacks (but not when they think of whites). It is part of how they dehumanize blacks in their heads:
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“Even black men prefer white women over their own, just as orangutans prefer black women over their own.”
I read an article a while back that explains how the movie “King Kong” is symbolic to the white racial mindset that black men lusts for white women, and King Kong represents the black male lust.
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Well the slave he was having sex with was a quadroon. She probably looked more white than black, still that doesn’t excuse his hypocrisy. Slave is a slave.
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So was Thomas Jefferson a monkey ? Since he slept ith black women…
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So were all these “fathers” of these “mixed” slaves monkey ? Since, to begin with, these “white” men raped black women- therefore all this mixing in this continent…
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“he wrote most of the “Notes” in 1781 when Sally Hemings was eight.”
Then I am encouraged by his sudden change of heart… to so quickly have learned to love that which he so despised.
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“Well the slave he was having sex with was a quadroon”
True. But I wonder how she got to be that way? There must have been quite a few fine Colonists in her parental past, who liked “ugly” and “stinky.”
Or weren’t there enough White prostitutes to go around?
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Is there any true to …….. “just as orangutans prefer black women over their own.”???
This is not the 1st time I’ve read similar statements like the one above. Can anyone shed some light on this for me. Fact or Fiction.
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@ E:
I’m not sure how you could even consider that it could be true, its so ridiculous. You may as well ask “is it true that once you go black, you can’t ever go back?”
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Or weren’t there enough White prostitutes to go around?
Great question King. Because back then every mixed race person had a white father. Many of these slave mistresses had their own private quarters and it was made nice enough because Master would frequently stop by, It was his Home away from Home. So where were all these “more elegant symmetry of form” white women?
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@ Eurasian Sensation
I never personally considered it true but i’ve read it at least 3 times. That’s just how many times I have seen it so imagine how many times other people have read it. I should have asked does anyone know how this lie got started?
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@ Eurasian Sensation
and Yes. it is true once you go black, you never go back. LOL!!
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I have had the misfortune to stumble upon some of the most vile of yt supremacist web-sites, and see much of this type of rhetoric spilled all over in ‘discussions’ and race debates. To learn that much of what I have read on these sites, coming from such a ‘learned’ man as Thomas Jefferson, is disturbing.
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And these words of “wisdom” are still a point of reference for many WP.
E said, “Many of these slave mistresses had their own private quarters and it was made nice enough because Master would frequently stop by.” Ehhh I think “many” is an exaggeration. Much of the time slave women were raped in your standard horrific fashion unless/until it became a routine in which, if she were lucky, she could disassociate until it was over with. I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not, sorry. I felt compelled to make sure there was no mistaking rape for a hidden romance in a private chamber.
It’s interesting the Thomas Jefferson would think blacks to love “eagerly” when whites weren’t exactly taking black women to dinner first and sweet walks in the park before they forced their “love” upon them. And someone should have told his ass that it’s reaaaaaaaaalllllllly hard to maintain a “tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation” when, oh I don’t know, black couples were regularly separated, not legally allowed to marry, and usually denied even simple unions there on the property.
How did he think that the people he denied an education would be on their A-game in the Euclid department? WTF.
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“How did he think that the people he denied an education would be on their A-game in the Euclid department?”
Hey, the people who we won’t allow to read books are not becoming philosophers!!!!!
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@King
You are correct. As is the case with most mixed slaves Hemmings’ white ancestry was paternal. There were certainly men of his race that got down with some “stinking”, “ugly”, “ape” of a BW.
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It is so interesting he would say all of that when so many white masters had black mistresses. Even the women on my mother’s side of the family who were slaves slept with the white masters. In fact, that is how we obtained land down in Alabama; the white masters loved her so much they gave her land when slavery was abolished.
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@ E:
“Is there any true to …….. “just as orangutans prefer black women over their own.”???
This is not the 1st time I’ve read similar statements like the one above. Can anyone shed some light on this for me. Fact or Fiction.”
Well, I saw a documentary in which a huge male orangutang wanted Julia Roberts as his own and almost kidnapped her from the film crew. Maybe he had seen Pretty Woman, I don’t know. 😀
I think this was and still is hypocracy. White men have always had sex with black women as black men with white women, given a chance to do so. And as we vey well know, Ole Thomas here was head over heels with a black lady, so…
Racism is funny thing. It makes liars out of everyone. I have never met a single white guy who hasn’t drooled over a black women at some moment, usually they do not even realize it. Some of these guys have said out loud that black women are ugly, monkeys etc., but once Beyonce or some other steps into a tv screen they are: Wow! I sure like her… 😀
Ole Thomas did what they all did on those days and still do in our days: he lied. He knew that somebody would read his writings so he wrote what he believed was smart and the common view in the future. I doubt he knew that we would know his hump o pump with a black woman. He thoughed that he could get away with it. Well, he did not and was caught 😀 Litterally with his pants down 😀
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What I find the most disturbing, is that he started pumping this girl when she was 14 or 15 years old and he was in his late thirties or forties. Your third president was in effect, a child molester as well as a racist hypocrite!
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@herneith: that is a bit strange. I wonder is there anything out there which tells her side of that “relationship”. I mean historical stuff, not movies nor novels.
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Herneith said:
“What I find the most disturbing, is that he started pumping this girl when she was 14 or 15 years old and he was in his late thirties or forties. Your third president was in effect, a child molester as well as a racist hypocrite!”
Jefferson was 30 years older than Hemings, so he was 44 or 45 then.
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I wonder is there anything out there which tells her side of that “relationship”.
Probably not. There is no excuse for how this girl/woman was treated, no justification. The yolk of oppression notwithstanding, which, at the time, was fairly common, does not make this wicked treatment excusable. Hence, that old standby argument; “It was the times!”, holds no water. Such behaviour is inexcusable in any era.
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Well, about the age difference… You shouldn’t judge that based on our own ideas about what is an acceptable age difference. It was (is?) a norm in some societies for a girl to marry at the age of 14 or 15, to the men twice their age (or more). We shouldn’t judge the age difference based on our idea of what is acceptable and what is not. The more important question is, how did THEY, back then, see this age difference? I guess he was seen as too old for her, but she wasn’t seen as a child the way we see 14 year olds today, and she certainly wasn’t the only young woman who was with men much older than themselves.
The problems I see with their union have nothing to do with the age difference, and I highly doubt anybody in their days thought the age difference to be the most questionable thing about them.
The main problem here was the fact she was a slave, and he was her master. THAT’S the problem I see with their union, not the fact a young woman had sex with an older man, which was, more or less, norm back then (maybe not so much of an age difference, but it was certainly not unheard of).
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Also, I don’t see anything surprising about their “union”: she was young and (presumably) beautiful, and he owned her, so he could do whatever he wanted with her (and we all know men are known for exploiting women sexually). She had no choice.
She wasn’t the first, the last or the only black woman with a similar destiny, she is more famous than the others because her master was more famous, but there are thousands and thousands of those young women who suffered the same destiny.
What I dislike about this story is the fact some people want to romanticize it, which was really disrespectful to say the least. It’s not really about them; ok, maybe, somewhere, was a master who really fell in love with the slave girl and who, maybe, loved him back. There are all kinds of strange couples, and there’s also Stockholm syndrome that maybe worked in some cases… Some very rare cases. To portray these rare cases as the norm instead of a rarity is extremely disrespectful.
Also, people need to live with the face Jefferson was racist, end of story.
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It’s easy to test. Would Jefferson have allowed a White daughter of his to become the mistress of a 44 year old, married man of another race?
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He wouldn’t, but I doubt the age difference would be the main factor in his decision.
The better question to ask is would Jefferson have allowed a white daughter of his to marry a white 44 old man? Maybe not, but there were plenty of fathers who have allowed it to happen back in the days.
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Also, I agree that Jefferson (given the times that he lived in) can’t be looked at in the same light as a modern-day pedophile, since women were being married off in their teens quite regularly, at the time. (usually after 16).
However, the whole system, was guided by different social norms and gender expectations. How many 15-year-old boys were being married off to 30 year old women? Lol! It was expected that the wife would be subservient to her husband and that the husband would be older, wiser, and wealthier, than his bride. Therefore, men were older, but usually in their 20s, not their 40s!
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True. But marrying someone 30 years older wasn’t unheard of. Just like today, age difference of 5 years is more often seen than the one of 20 years… But it’s not unheard of.
There were plenty of young women, that we would call girls today, who were forced to marry men in their 40s, because of whatever reason. I don’t know if these sort of things happened in African communities, but were definitely common (well, relatively common) in Europe, and I assume, white America (though I can’t be sure about America).
I do think the age difference is hardly the most alarming thing about Jefferson and Hemings (though I don’t disrespect anybody’s personal opinion on what they find the most disgusting about the story… It’s not like there aren’t plenty of ugly things to choose from).
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well, the age difference of 20 yrs is not that bad, IF the guy is 40 and the girl is 20, OR the guy is 20 and the woman is 40 ( I know these too, so do not laugh out there :D).
the problem is that if this girl was 14-15, that is yong by any day and of the guy was 40, that is a bit of stretch even by that days standards. but that is the point: Ole Thomas was his master and could what ever he wanted with her and did too. Nobody gave it a thought since, hey, that is the dudes slave, so…
But if a 40 yr old guy would have taken 15 yr old white girl, that would’ve been rising some eyebrows even back then.
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It would be rising some eyebrows, but not in today’s sense of the word (pedophilia cases).
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I agree with Mira. The age thing is sketch but the fact that she was a slave and he was the maters alarms me the most. Most teens back in those days married men who were about 10 years their senior. The Jefferson-Hemmings relationship was definitely pushing the limit in that regard.
I too am appaulded by the romanticizing of this relationship. I’m sure there were slave-master relationships that involved feelings/love but I don’t think that was the norm. Jefferson was a Founding Father and this country puts these men on a God like pedestal. Nobody is going to get onto mainstream TV and speak frankly about Jefferson’s racism, hypocrisy and sexual misconduct. It’s much easier to spin the story into a “forbidden romance”.
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It would probably raise eyebrows the same way a 18-21 yr woman dating a 40-50 yr old man would.
Yeah it’s legal but still considered “creepy” and pushing the limit.
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@ Y: well, I have dated women 20 yrs younger than I am and the only comments I get are schauvinistic “Good for you” or “Can you keep up the pace”. Some younger women seem to like older guys but I have to remind them about the realities of life; when they are forty I’ll be sixty 😀 After that they usually go :D!
Actually the mother of my daughter was 18 when we met and I was 30. I got some comments on that but after we got married, nobody said a word.
And before anybody gets any funny ideas; I have been with women of my age and dated fifty year old lady before I met the mother of my child.
Now that I really think about it, age has never been a real issue for me. But I know, that if some forty year old geezer would go out with my daughter now (she is fifteen), that guy would have very limited life expectancy indeed.
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Indeed. Still, the wost part about this particular couple is not the fact he was a slave master who did this to his slave (not because it wasn’t horrible, but because it’s not unique to them and it would be disrespectful to all anonymous black girls who suffered to focus on Hamings story exclusively). The worst part for me is the romanticism some people want to see here. Or people who claim he was gentle with her or something. (What does that have to do with anything? A rape doesn’t have to be violent or to involve knives and punches to be a rape!)
Heck, if you really want to go into that, I bet Jefferson thought he was fair to her, that he gave her many thing and treated her well. Still doesn’t sound romantic to me.
I MEAN SHE WAS HIS PROPERTY. How romantic is that?
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sam,
But the guy would be with your daughter.
Actually, I am not into relationships with great age difference. I was never into that. Though I must admit I did date men younger than myself, but not much older than myself. So it’s not like I’m defending something personal here.
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Jefferson’s attitude was shared by many people, then and now. It’s not surprising.
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“Heck, if you really want to go into that, I bet Jefferson thought he was fair to her, that he gave her many thing and treated her well. Still doesn’t sound romantic to me.”
Yes, but the only truly relevant question is, ‘could she say NO?’
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@mira: not for long 😀
The age difference was a stretch here but the thing is, she did not have a choice here. That bugs me. Like Mira says, she was his propety.
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Yes, but the only truly relevant question is, ‘could she say NO?’
Of course. I just wanted to say that some (probably white) people see things form his POV only… I don’t know if he was cruel to her or if he bought her presents; it’s irrelevant for this discussion.
Once again, the fact he might not beat her up or had sex with her with a knife under her throat doesn’t make it romantic.
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By “of course”, I meant: “of course it’s the only relevant question”, not “of course she could say no”.
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Marriage in colonial times depended on the region and your class. For instance, if you came from a wealthy family, you may have married earlier than the average age, because your family could afford to marry you off and provide a dowry. These marriages were for enhancing and maintaining the family`s wealth and position in society. If you were in ‘service’ you may not have married(your employers discouraged it), or, if you did, you did so later, when you could afford it, or some man offered` you his hand. The average age for marriage was therefore in your early twenties if you were female. The males may have been several years older. I am not concerned with that however. I am concerned with the extreme age differences between Jefferson and Hemming, and the fact that this young girl could not say no, without dire consequences. So in effect, she was coerced into this relationship either wittingly or unwittingly.
Sorry, but I don’ hearken to that old argument , `It was the times`. The age difference was to great. You should read about prostitution in Victorian England with underage prostitutes for example, some as young as ten years old, to see the public reception it garnered. The average age of marriage was not 14 for a girl. If a girl did marry at 15 or 16, the groom was only 4 or 5 years older then her on average. Marrying or living in concubinage with a man 30 to 40 years older than you was not the norm, nor was it common. People as a rule in the lower classes got married when they could afford to, unless they were wealthy. Men could legally beat their wives and had complete sovereignty over them back then. it wasn’t right then nor is it now. People will still make the argument, ìt was the times`.
All in all, women had it bad back then, whatever their class or station in life. It was not the times. It was just another patriarchal mode of control over females and any other group that they wished to subjugate. Sexually abusing girls and women was their way of doing this. Jefferson is the epitome of this. If abusing 14 year old girls was common, why did he keep his relationship with Hemming a secretÉ There were many other well-known `gentlemen who kept black mistresses either openly or at least everyone knew they had one. Now this was the norm. But good ol Jeff swore up and down that he had no relations with Hemming. His white daughter and her children also did the same thing. Why, because they knew that men who were 30 to 40 years older than a 14 year old girl had no business doing so, as well as the fact that she was a slave. If anything, the fact that she was a slave would have been the lesser of the two evils and would have been seen as par for the course as everyone knew someone who was molesting their slaves and having children by them.
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Herneith,
So, basically, you say that the age difference played a significant role in his shame? That he didn’t want to openly admit the relationship because of the age difference?
Also, not all times and places are the same, but unfortunately, teenage brides and old grooms were usual thing all around the world (ancient Greece, for example, the cradle of European civilization).
Not to mention the middle ages. So, Europe does have its history of it.
Granted, colonial times were later and not Europe, but there were always cases of really young women who had to marry really old men… It wasn’t seen as a norm, perhaps, or even the best thing, but it was happening, for various reasons. If you were “damaged”, for example, you couldn’t expect to marry a wealthy young man. You had to take whoever wanted you (a widower, for example).
So I have a hard time believing the age difference was something Jefferson, or anybody in his days, would worry. If that was, indeed, the case, then his story is different than what I always assumed it to be: a classic example of a master taking a young slave woman.
Now, I don’t know: whether other masters open about their “relationships” with slave girls? Or was that something that nobody talked about? How old were the slave girls that masters usually picked for their mistresses/for rape?
I am sorry, I just have a hard time believing the age difference was such a big deal (in this case at least).
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For what it’s worth, Jefferson never commented on the possibility of a relationship with Hemings. He stayed silent, which seems an admission in and of itself.
Keep in mind that Sally was probably his late wife’s half sister–which adds all kinds of weird family dynamics into the situation. Creepy all around.
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The reason it was kept secret was because Jefferson was President. I’m sure his wife and daughters were going to be silent, just like you have politicians wives do the “stand by your man” thing today. His campaign became very nasty and as a result his affair with Hemings came to light.
Quite often the wife had the money in the family so often the master and slave mistress relationship was kept quite.
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@ Hathor his wife was dead. his daughters had no say so.
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I was told a story by a classmate, that her great grandmother who was white had bought her husband as a slave so that they could live together. The woman’s wealth and property were pass down to her children. I don’t know how she passed her children off. Perhaps isolation was the key.
Ames,
In some instances slavery was a family affair, especially where there were no large plantations. Alex Haley did a TV miniseries, Queen about his grandmother which was a half sister to the master’s daughter, she acted as a surrogate sister, servant and living doll, until her father died and his wife then took revenge against her.
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E.
It was just a guess. The link I provided just noted how the story got out.
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I thought black men really do prefer white women over their own…
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There can be no consensual relationships between a master and a slave. P
eople are so quick to say that Jefferson and Hemmings were in “love” (without realizing that she was likely still a teenager when he started molesting her), but when a teacher has sex with an adolescent student people want to get up in arms.
If people are quick to condemn teacher pedophiles who get involved with underage students who hold unequal power in a teacher-student relationship, then why are they quick to justify Jefferson’s relationships with Sally given the serious inequality of their power relationship (she was not only underage, but she was considered his property and had no rights)?
Like I said, there can be no consensual relationships between a master and a slave, especially when the slave is born into and raised in a society that dehumanizes her, deprives her of rights and hardly even considers her human. And when she has no legal recourse if her master does rape her.
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And as for teenage brides being the norm at the time, when an older man is paired with a much younger woman, there is automatically a power difference in the relationship even if the man and girl are of the same social standing. Not only is the man considered a more valuable societal asset, but wisdom, education, wealth and power tend to increase with age until senility, decrepitness and uselessness set in during senior years.
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“Back then one of the excuses used in England for the slave trade was that black women had sex with apes, proving that were not fully human. And even today White Americans still tend to think of monkeys when they think of blacks (but not when they think of whites). It is part of how they dehumanize blacks in their heads”
That’s interesting. In the part of India I come from a slang used for white people is “lal bandar” – pink monkey, because their faces look like the pinkish/tawny faces of the rhesus monkeys we have there, as well as the monkeys having light colored eyes.
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@Indian Gyal, LOL we learn something new everyday.
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@Indian Gyal
Hahaha!
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@indian gyal: 😀 and some chinese call us pink devils 😀
If Good Ole Thomas was 40 and this girl was 14-15, I think everybody understud that this is not a norm even in those days. Royals, blue bloods could and did have teen wives and married them, but in those marriages it was always about something else too: propety, politics, alliances etc. Not that I am saying that is was okay.
But this girl was a slave. She was poor. She was black. It was only because Thomas J wanted her, lusted for her, this thing came to be. He did not marry her, he did not make it know that he was in love with this girl etcetcetc. He wanted this teenager into his bed. Thats it.
What are we to think about this? The age difference was big. It was an older man with a teenager. It was not a 20 yr old gold digger with a 60 yr old millionaire. It was not older rock star with a 18 yr old fan. This was a man, 40 yrs old, who owned this nice looking teenage slave girl and took her into his bed.
This can not be right, or was not right even by that time, so they tried to keep it silent. Other slave masters went about quite openly sleeping with their slaves, sometimes they got some comments about it and that was it, but Ole Thomas tried to keep it a secret. Why??
He knew what he had done and it was not nice. It was not normal even back then.
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Gata
“I thought black men really do prefer white women over their own”[?]
————————————————————————
hmmm? Interesting; but given the gigantic social, physical ‘class’ and ”master’/slave status, how was this determined?
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I really wouldn’t know about black men preferences, but what I find interesting here is the fact black women are referred as “their own”.
Call me crazy, but I don’t see people of opposite genders, but of the same racial, ethnic or any other group, to somehow “belong” to each other.
aiych,
The teacher/student relationship is not the same with this one. Indeed, there were teachers who married their students; my aunt, for example, did so. Granted, she wasn’t 14 when they met, but still.
You correctly pointed at the huge power difference between an older man and a young woman, even if they are of the same social status. It was a point, in a way: men were supposed to be more powerful than women. Marrying a boy your age was not seen as prestigious as marrying someone older (not 30 years older, but 10 years older), who is successful and who can provide for you. You can see traces of this left even today.
Men, more or less, legally owned their own wives. There was no much love or respect between spouses in that time, an women were frequently abused.
All in all, huge power difference was a norm.
Now, take that to another level, to slavery, where people didn’t have any rights or weren’t even considered people. This power imbalance is so huge that I don’t understand how can somebody see anything romantic about it. Once again, I can’t claim that none of the masters, absolutely noone cared about a slave girl; statistically speaking, that probably happened somewhere… But to claim this without any evidence, just for the sake of it, because you can’t accept that Jefferson was racist, a master who abused his slave girl, who owned other human beings…
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Sam,
He knew what he had done and it was not nice. It was not normal even back then.
I don’t know… It seems really strange to me that the age difference would be what he was ashamed the most. A slave boy, perhaps, that might have been a problem (not sure about the exact time- I am not sure when homosexuality became taboo, around their time, I think). But the age difference? I am not convinced that it was the case.
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@mira: I think it was the combination: the age difference was so huge that it alone could have caused some talkin at least, but all aspects taken together: a teenage black slave girl.
I think it says something that he wanted to hide this thing. That pegs the question: Why?
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I have no idea. I don’t know much about the American history. All I know Jefferson was an American president. What we’ve learned in school was mainly about the declaration of independence and those things in XVIII century… Very little after that (I don’t remember if we ever talked about the American civil war, for example). The chapters about American independence went with those about French revolution, which we treated as more important.
So all in all, I don’t know why Jefferson was quiet on this matter. But he was a politician, after all, and they lie all the time. It’s what they do.
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Why is it so difficult to imagine that a prominent slave master would not want it to be known he slept with his slaves? if society thought of it the same as having sex with sheep.
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@hathor; a good point. And the fact that this was also very young slave just increased his shame.
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At the time Hemings was NOT seen as a helpless, innocent party. In the white press she was called “African Venus” and a “slut as common as the pavement”.
From what I have read the scandal at the time was not that he took advantage of her but that he was degrading himself by having sex with a black woman. More like what Hathor is saying. Many whites regarded it as disgusting and shameful. See Jefferson’s very own remarks in the post above. People often do things they regard as wrong, especially when it comes to sex.
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His short bio reads like that of a physically and mentally sickly pedophile. A racist who was living by double moral standards. Much like the contemporaries of our times who reminisce of those old days.
Actually unbelievable who is able to become the president of a whole country.
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Jefferson was not just some creepy middle-aged white man taking advantage of teenaged black girls. Nor was he some redneck at a bar running his mouth. He was one of the top minds in the country and, as a Founding Father, one of the men who helped shape the country into what it is.
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From what I have read the scandal at the time was not that he took advantage of her but that he was degrading himself by having sex with a black woman. More like what Hathor is saying. Many whites regarded it as disgusting and shameful.
Yes, it makes the most sense. (Why he tried to keep it a secret). Also, if Hamings was called a slut and what not, I doubt anybody saw her as a child. Whether they saw her as human is also questionable.
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Victoria said:
“How did he think that the people he denied an education would be on their A-game in the Euclid department?”
King said:
“Hey, the people who we won’t allow to read books are not becoming philosophers!!!!!”
Abagond says:
He compares the white slaves of Rome to the black slaves of America. He says that the white slaves of Rome had it worse. For example, they could be tortured to give testimony in court. Many were not allowed to have sex and have families.. Etc. But he overlooks the fact that most black slaves were not allowed to get an education – while Roman slaves were often prized for their education! That shows a level of wilful self-deception on his part.
In later years people sent him books proving that blacks were just as intelligent as whites. He kept saying he WANTED to believe they were – and yet he never did.
Many white people are STILL making pretty much the same argument, saying blacks are less intelligent while overlooking the bad schools many of them go to.
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Pedophilia only pertains to having sex with prepubescent children. There is another word for adults who prefer to have sex with underage teens; just can’t remember it.
I say this because often people misuse the language in order to put more emphasis on the immorality of some motive or action.
A person personal life or beliefs do not always inform their intellect. Jefferson needed to justify slavery in one context, because he led a leisurely life and was in debt most of the time; slavery allowed his lifestyle.
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The slavery in antiquity was different. If nothing else, it was different in a way they often enslaved the most educated people and used them as teachers (many prominent Greek philosophers were slaves, at least at one point in their lives).
Also, you were often allowed to buy your freedom, or you were not enslaved for life in many cases.
I don’t want to argue that the slavery in antiquity was a walk in the park or that it was somehow better or more humane than the transatlantic slavery (it’s disrespectful to do that: oppression Olympics is never a good thing). But so many things were different to compare it with the situation black slaves had to face.
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Olufemi.
Actually unbelievable who is able to become the president of a whole country.
Slavery was legal when the US was founded, many of the representatives of the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention were slave owners. There wasn’t too much of a debate in the convention about slavery and the compromise was the ending of slave importation not the end of slavery and slaves be counted as 3/5 of a person for apportionment.
The first president George Washington owned slaves. There was an excavation of the The Presidents House in Philadelphia in which the finding about the slaves lives are now part of the exhibition of the partial reconstruction of the house.
http://www.nps.gov/inde/historyculture/history-of-the-presidents-house-site.htm
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Hathor:
Thanks for the link on the President’s House. I have been thinking of doing a post on it.
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People often confuse love with romance/lust. It is said that he prostituted her as well that is why the lineage of her other children, also fathered by white men is sketchy. Also he never emancipated her. The fact that Hemmings was the half sister of Jefferson’s late wife shows a tradition of rape and subjugation of black women, well lets be frank little girls some as young as age 12 by a dominate diseased culture. (A deliberate attack on african families and corruption of bloodline)
The system of White supremacy and the pathology it breeds cannot be expressed into words. The fact that Disney made this into a love story illustrates how sick this culture remains and how the perception of the past continues to shape the psyche of today.
You don’t love your slave since by law of nature you wouldnt keep them captive. You may love what they produce for your economic gain. Couldnt imagine what Ms Hemmings, her mother, grandmother went thru. People placed into this slave system to create a permanent underclass…i digress. Thanks for the info!
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@Hathor:
If I recall, the word is ephebophilia.
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@hathor; pubophilia? something like that.
The conditions in Rome for slaves was some of what draw of the luck. If you were the emperors secretary slave you were in some cases the second most powerful person in the whole Empire. BUT if you were a rowing slave in war ship, your life expectancy was at most three years. And of course, if you ended in on a arena of a circus as a show piece, you life was over in less than one hour.
Not a single slave in USA had any possibility to rise anywhere near the top of the society like some did in Rome. Slaves were more likened as toilers, domestic animals to be used as a labour or at most as domestic help. That was it. Or, like Ole Thomas did here, to be used as sexual toys.
Regarding the mud slinging against the poor girl, just look around how they still handle the rape victims in courts. “She was dressed in this or that way, she had drinks, she was dancing this or that way, she was talking to him, she was “well known” “etc.
Of course the papers and people at the time thoughed miss Hemings as slut as common as pavement and more understandingly “African Venus”. Now who could resist the African Venus, eh? Or she was such a slut that of course she seduced the poor old man, right? wink wink…
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Hathor
The terms are Hebephilia(interest in 11-14 yr olds) and Ephebophilia(ages 15-19)
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Thanks leigh204 and Y
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Herneith
What I find the most disturbing, is that he started pumping this girl when she was 14 or 15 years old and he was in his late thirties or forties.
*chic noir turns down the volume of the Jerry Springer show to say to Herneith*
Sally Hemmings was also the half- sister of Thomas Jerfferson’s wife.
Barbara Chase Ribound wrote a pretty good take on the Sally Hemmings/Thomas Jefferson saga.
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SMH. I am disappoint for POC who share this surname, such as George and Louise (Weezy).
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Yes, the thing with Roman (and not just Roman… whole antiquity slavery) was that the conditions varied to a great extend. Most of the slaves were tortured, etc, so don’t get an impression that every second one was a powerful person… But a small number of them were. There were also highly educated individuals sold into slavery, because ancient peoples used slaves for all sorts of things and not just manual/hard work.
Sam,
Regarding the mud slinging against the poor girl, just look around how they still handle the rape victims in courts. “She was dressed in this or that way, she had drinks, she was dancing this or that way, she was talking to him, she was “well known” “etc.
Right. I hope I’m not getting way off topic here, but it’s really, really important to understand rape myths. Some of those are still widespread, like the one you mentioned above.
Another popular one is that a rape needs to be physically violent to be a rape, meaning, if a person doesn’t have scars, wounds, etc. (s)he wasn’t raped. Wrong. Each victim has a full right to do whatever (s)he thinks it’s best to ensure survival. If you believe the best thing is to be calm and don’t fight, so be it. Sexual integrity is an important thing, but life is more important.
In case of people who are being raped over and over again (like slaves), ensuring continuous survival was a priority.
As for the rapists, I repeat, a rape doesn’t have to include a knife or a punch in the face to be the rape. I am not quite sure if men in general ever cared about females and their physical well being when it comes to sex (not to mention female pleasure), not even if said females were those they respected the most (their wives and mothers of their legitimate children). It gets even more absurd discussing this with a slave girl. Still, I bet Jefferson thought he was gentle and fair and good with Hamings and perhaps he wasn’t physically violent towards her; so what? It doesn’t change the fact it was rape. She couldn’t say no.
A slave can’t give her consent if she is not considered fully human to even posses said ability (to give her consent).
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SAM But I know, that if some forty year old geezer would go out with my daughter now (she is fifteen), that guy would have very limited life expectancy indeed.
*Sam pulls out Weed Wackers and gets to sharping*
Hathor the compromise was the ending of slave importation not the end of slavery and slaves be counted as 3/5 of a person for apportionment.
This was to give balance in legislature representation.
Mira But so many things were different to compare it with the situation black slaves had to face.
Yes, even comparing slaves in America to blk slaves in Arabia. Very different systems.
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Mira What I dislike about this story is the fact some people want to romanticize it, which was really disrespectful to say the least.
Yes Mira, I agree.
There are all kinds of strange couples, and there’s also Stockholm syndrome that maybe worked in some cases
I believe Sally had Stockholm syndrome, otherwise she would’ve left Jefferson while they were in Paris. IIRC, she did leave him for a short while and stayed with a group of nuns but she went back to him.
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chic noir,
In a sense the Jefferson house hold may have been a substitute for family. She probably was her sister’s slave, then moved with her when her sister married Jefferson. The house would be all she would have known. If she was isolated in France, how would she know, what to do, if she left. I’m certain she wouldn’t have found a sympathetic black. The convent may have prepared for her to work as a servant or if they thought she a wayward girl, kept her in the convent to do penance. The spartan lifestyle might have been too severe.
There are a lot of Irish women who know that convents can be like prisons.
Sally Hemings didn’t stay fourteen forever, the relationship lasted at least to her mid-twenties to have had five of his children. I do believe at a certain point she would have had a choice to say no, slave or not. If she said no, didn’t mean that she had the threat of death, it may just have meant being beaten and sent to the fields, to lose status. There were other options, escape or death on your own terms.
I didn’t expect heroic acts from the slaves, but I do think they had options, even though not with the best of outcomes. The idea of freedom wasn’t some alien idea. Many slaves fought with the British a few years before hoping to gain their freedom. The Fugitive Slave Act was not in effect, so the slave was more safe from being tracked down than years later.
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“Jefferson was not just some creepy middle-aged white man taking advantage of teenaged black girls. Nor was he some redneck at a bar running his mouth. He was one of the top minds in the country and, as a Founding Father, one of the men who helped shape the country into what it is.”
Abagond, why does it have to be either/or?
Yes he was a top mind and a Founding Father who shaped the country. And he was also a SLAVE OWNER. Someone who engaged in the evil slave trade. A middle aged man who did in fact take advantage of a very young girl.
People are multi-faceted.
If he did today what he did then he would be jailed for statutory rape, even if the relationship was consensual, which is highly debatable.
Did an owned slave have any say in the matter at all?
And we really can’t blame it “on the times” either because their were plenty of people who opposed slavery back then too on ethical and spiritual grounds.
Anyway you look at this, it just ain’t right.
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Indian Gyal:
I was unclear: I think he was creepy AND a top mind AND a Founding Father – but NOT some redneck.
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You mean, he should have known better?
But Abagond, there are so many intelligent, educated, talented people who are pathetic human beings. Even those that create beautiful work of art or come up with important scientific discoveries. Even those who otherwise did good stuff for humanity, even them.
I do think it should be talked about.
But is it surprising? No, not at all.
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Also, the fact he (or anybody else) was a slave owner doesn’t automatically change the fact he (or anybody else) was an intelligent person, or even a person who did many good stuff.
Some people see this as a paradox, but it’s actually how things are. Many, many famous people (politicians, historical persons, artists, scientists) who did some great work and created and invented beautiful stuff have a bad side.
But, should we admire those people? And what “admiring those people” even mean? Is it possible to separate their work from their character? (I try my best to do this for, say, actors I like), but what about the people, like Jefferson, whose character is one of the essential things to admire (or hate) about him? (I mean, it’s impossible to separate his work from his character… And if you realize he was a bad person, what do you do?)
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Mira,
I think if you don’t wallow in idolatry, myths or live in a black/white(not race) world you have the ability to admire what is right, the work and achievement without elevating that person to sainthood.
I also do not like those who challenge me to disown America, because of its corrupt intervention in the world, as if this would be the only immoral place on earth. In some instances the argument is about the founders ethics, if they are bad, therefore the government formed must be too.
If we could not function unless we were in a perfect state, there would be no life.
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@ Hathor
I think most people would be surprised at how much immorality is often necessary, (in the current system of geopolitics) even to accomplish that which they perceive to be a good end. The devil is always in the details of compromise.
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Jefferson, like most people, was a mix of good and evil. But in Jefferson’s case his mix of good and evil helped to shape the country, a country founded on the profound contradiction that “all men are created equal” AND that whites are “more equal” than others, as Orwell would say.
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“I also do not like those who challenge me to disown America, because of its corrupt intervention in the world, as if this would be the only immoral place on earth. In some instances the argument is about the founders ethics, if they are bad, therefore the government formed must be too.
If we could not function unless we were in a perfect state, there would be no life.”
Excellent points Hathor!
I globe-trot a lot and some “foreigners” blame me personally for whatever my (US) government does, even though I’ve never voted for a single one of them.
Yes, there’s a lot wrong with the United States. And a lot right, too.
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I globe-trot a lot and some “foreigners” blame me personally for whatever my (US) government does, even though I’ve never voted for a single one of them.
Um, well… But that’s how it goes, I guess. My people were satanized (and suffered military intervention) for something most of us opposed. I spent my early teens fighting against Milosevic and I know so many others who did, and yet, we all received NATO bombs and heavy satanization in media to the point of discrimination (that is still not over today).
So… yeah.
(I’m not saying it’s fair… Honestly, it’s not your (personal) fault if your government or president do bad things and I certainly won’t hate you because of it. Especially if you do your best to stop it).
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Thomas Jefferson reminds me of Strom Thurmond. I wonder how he rationalized his actions to himself. I guess we humans are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites at heart.
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Wow, you guys are really laying into Jefferson here.
I wonder is there anything out there which tells her side of that “relationship”.
The best one I’ve seen is The Hemingses of Monticello. There’s a good review of it here: American Unions.
I too am appalled by the romanticizing of this relationship.
I’m not. The Bible also has stories of men taking slaves as concubines (which is what she was, not a mere mistress), and those are also romanticized. And — let’s be honest here — being TJ’s concubine put her at the very top of the female food chain, in that day. I’m not saying that I think his behavior was justified (he shouldn’t have been owning slaves, in the first place), but calling him a rapist or making him out to be a pervert, is a bit of a stretch. I’m don’t know how she felt about the situation, but I do know that she had it better than 75% of women in America of all races, and she probably knew that as well.
Their relationship started in Paris (where she was free, was learning a trade, and had plenty of opportunity to leave his household), but she agreed to go home to America with him afterward. That wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome; that was a young girl getting played by someone who was infamous for being a player. She was apparently pregnant before she went back to America, so the deed had already been done and she was just trying to make the best of it.
The reason it was such a scandal was not because he had sex with a black woman (which was relatively common), but that he was treating her as if she was his wife and refused to publicly distance himself from her. There had been a slew of such scandals recently, and white women were starting to write hysterical articles about white wives being sent to the guest room while a black slave takes up residence in the master’s bed. If he had just been sneaking down to the slave quarters at night, nobody would have cared. But this woman clearly had some sort of hold over him, a hold they found unnatural and quite horrifying. Besides, it was a juicy sex story, which makes for good gossip.
But really it was a political ploy to discredit him right before an election, as a man who would fall in love with a “mere slut” or foolishly allow himself to be seduced by an “African Venus”. He kept quiet until the election was won, and then everyone lost interest in the story.
It was only because Thomas J wanted her, lusted for her, this thing came to be. He did not marry her, he did not make it know that he was in love with this girl etcetcetc.
He couldn’t marry her, and if he had freed her she would have had to leave the house. He freed Sally’s brother on the return from Paris (part of the deal they had struck to lure him back to Monticello as a trained French chef), but a free woman would not have been allowed to stay. He did educate and eventually free all of his children with her, as well as some of her siblings.
His close friend and mentor, George Wythe, publicly acknowledged his own concubine and child (through his unusual generosity in his life and in his will), and was promptly poisoned by his nephew for it. Thomas Bell (another close friend of Jefferson’s) took Mary (Sally’s sister) as a concubine and they lived relatively openly together. But Jefferson’s political career could have been completely derailed by owning up to the relationship, so he kept mum.
I think things were quite complicated back then, and it is easy to oversimplify in hindsight.
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@ Alte
“The Bible also has stories of men taking slaves as concubines (which is what she was, not a mere mistress), and those are also romanticized.
An interesting observation. Which of the stories of men taking slaves was romanticized, and where?
I’m certainly not a Bible expert, but I can only think of Abraham and Hagar. You may no of some others?
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Thanks Alte, for providing a much need perspective on things here.
King, if I’m not mistaken, King Solomon had numerous concubines.
O.
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When and where were they romanticized?
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Not in the Bible, but in folklore and novels they are sometimes romanticized.
Abraham, Solomon, David, Jacob, Lamech, Nahor and others had concubines. If they married a woman of the same class she was a wife, if she was of a lower class (usually a slave) then she was a concubine. Her status prevented the marriage from being formalized, just as with Jefferson and many other couples throughout history. Charlemagne had a concubine named Himiltrude.
Sally’s own son insisted that his mother was not a mistress, but a concubine. He made the distinction because concubines have a higher status, as a form of lower-ranked wife. We know she had concubine status because after Jefferson’s death, his daughter made sure she was well-cared for and honored her father’s wishes that all of her children should be freed. They wouldn’t have done that for someone he was treating like a mere sex object.
Most women didn’t marry for love back then, so saying, “We don’t know how she felt about him” is sort of a moot-point and an inappropriate modernism. Many women married much older men they didn’t love. The moral question was actually whether he loved her, provided for her, and treated her well. Obviously, he did. That’s more than even many white women had at the time (there were white women in the countryside around her who starved or froze to death, who would have gladly changed places with her), so it is no surprise that her family has always been quite proud of their association with Jefferson, as the relationship was not seen as shameful among black people. That we view it as shameful today is based upon our changing sexual mores. I’m sure they would hardly consider us paragons of virtue, either.
Insinuations that she was meaningless to him, and that he had “passed her around” was a cruel slander his white relatives threw at her after he had died, to quell the rumors of their relationship.
According to the Wikipedia:
In 1789, Sally Hemings returned to the United States with Jefferson. His wife had died seven years before and he was still only 46 years old. As evidenced by Jefferson’s father-in-law, it was common in Virginia society for widowers to take enslaved women as concubines. That Jefferson also would do so was not unusual for the time, On September 1, 1802 the Richmond Recorder newspaper reported that Jefferson “for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is Sally. The name of her eldest son is Tom…”
Although there had been rumors of a sexual relationship between Jefferson and a slave before 1802, the article that had been published had spread the story widely. It was used in contrivance by Jefferson’s Federalist opposition and was published repeated number of times in many newspapers throughout the end of Jefferson’s presidency.
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“Abraham, Solomon, David, Jacob, Lamech, Nahor and others had concubines”
– Abraham had 1 concubine
– Solomon was a concubine sex machine to all the chicks. (evidently) 1 Kings 11:3,” Solomon loved many women” … 700 wives and 300 concubines!
…Kind of hard to romanticize that.
-Who was Jacob’s concubine?
Lamech had two wives:
Genesis 4:19-20:
Lamech took two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the ancestor of those who live in tents and have livestock.
Did he also have additional concubines?
Nahor, had a concubine named Reumah, whom I was unaware of, but I wasn’t really sure who Nahor was anyway.
-So, where did you say you read of these being romanticized in literature?
-Also, in many cases, there is not much information given on many of these women beyond a name. How are you determining that they were slave concubines?
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LOL. You are certainly determined!
Bilhah and Zilpah were Jacob’s concubines, and their relationship is depicted in numerous novels including The Red Tent (good book, by the way). What about The Handmaid’s Tale? There is a long tradition of Biblical fiction that builds upon concubine stories. Even the story of Dinah’s rape is retold as a tragic romance.
Genesis 25:1 notes that Abraham had an additional concubine name Keturah.
We know that these women were slaves because they were given to their husbands by the wives, which is something that a wife couldn’t do with a free servant (who would be under the jurisdiction of her own men). Women gave their slaves as concubines because the children of a woman’s slave were legally the wife’s children. (Hence the deal with Hagar.) A wife’s status depended in part on how many children she could produce for her husband, so if she had many slaves to give as concubines, then she could “make” more children and raise her own status.
These women are also all described as “handmaidens” which was a title for a high-ranking female slave. Female servants who weren’t slaves were rare, as most women were married off at a young age. For a female slave, the best way to “move up” in society was to become a concubine.
Sorry, I was wrong about Lamech. I am confusing him with someone else, but can’t remember who. There were many polygamists in the OT. But Jefferson wasn’t actually a polygamist, as he only had one wife at a time.
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LOL. You are certainly determined!
No, I was just interested in what you said. You have the information and I don’t – why not get it from you? It beats me having to look it all up on my own.
Genesis 25:1 notes that Abraham had an additional concubine name Keturah.
You see, I didn't know about Keturah!
We know that these women were slaves because they were given to their husbands by the wives
I find no record of this in most of the cases. Solomon’s 300 concubines are not even named, much less are the details of their introduction to Solomon recorded. I doubt if we know anything about the conditions of how 95% of the concubines mentioned in the Bible became concubines.
I’ve never read The Red Tent, but I gave it once as a gift. I always thought that The Handmaid’s Tale was kind of a dystopian novel, more like science fiction. Does it really deal with any of the Biblical concubines as romanticized figures?
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From the Wikipedia on The Handmaid’s Tale:
“Handmaids” are fertile women whose social function is to bear children for the Wives. They dress in a red habit that completely conceals their shape, including red shoes and red gloves. The only exception to the “all red rule” is the white wings they wear around their head that prevent them from seeing or being seen except when standing directly in front of them. Handmaids are produced by re-educating fertile women who have broken the gender and social laws. Owing to the need for fertile Handmaids, Gilead gradually increased the number of gender-crimes. The Republic of Gilead justifies the nature of the handmaids through the biblical stories of Jacob taking his two wives’ handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah, to bed to bear him children, when the wives could not (Gen. 30:1-3), and Abraham doing the same with his wife’s handmaid, Hagar (Gen. 16:1-6).
I find no record of this in most of the cases.
Go back and read the Biblical passages concerning the women I mentioned. They are mostly listed as being the handmaid of their mistress, and in the case of Israel and Abraham, the surrogacy is specifically described in the stories.
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I’m not some sort of Biblical scholar, or anything. I was just trying to emphasize that Sally was a concubine, not a rape victim. At least according to the mores of her time, and perhaps according to Sally herself.
Furthermore, there were real slave rape victims, and I’m sure they would be floored at being compared to Sally Hemmings, who was one of the most spoiled, doted-on, and privileged women in the entire USA (from a family full of spoiled black people), at the time. The white women were scandalized, after all, because they were jealous of her. Who wouldn’t have wanted to be loved by the President and live at Monticello? Why should it be some stupid, slutty negra? She must have seduced him with her magical African voodoo, or something.
We should keep things within their historical context.
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Maybe I am misunderstanding what you’re saying.
Are you using a definition from a modern piece of science fiction The Handmaid’s Tale and imposing that definition upon the antique Biblical terminology (which is another word in archaic Hebrew?)
Because the term “handmaid” is, of course, not defined based on the works of Margaret Atwood. Almost any dictionary defines it very similarly to the definition below:
Hand·maid [hand-meyd] Show IPA–noun
1. something that is necessarily subservient or subordinate to another: Ceremony is but the handmaid of worship.
2. a female servant or attendant.
There may have been cases where “handmaids” or “servants” did serve as surrogate mothers (particularly if the wife was unable to conceive) but I assume that you’re not making the point that all handmaids were surrogate mothers, by definition.
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Alte said:
“Sally Hemings, who was one of the most spoiled, doted-on, and privileged women in the entire USA (from a family full of spoiled black people), at the time. ….
We should keep things within their historical context.”
Sally Hemings was a SLAVE. One that Jefferson never freed.
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@alte; you are truly funny guy, but ups, you slip your real idea out in to open right here:
” …one of the most spoiled, doted-on, and privileged women in the entire USA (from a family full of spoiled black people)…”
So, it is about thoise damn n*****s again! 😀
They were just so effin spoiled back then, even if they were slaves weren’t they? And now this! Don’t those negroes know they place, eh, alte??? 😀 “family full of spoiled black people”!!!
And bible? Man, you gotta be kidding!
Bible is just a book. Nothing else. You tell me that since you read from that book that slave women were actually very lucky and loving towards their masters, who treated them like lovers all the time, that was the reality in USA 1780’s?? 😀
Oh, man, you are funny, dude!
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Alte, I understand what you’re saying about Sally Hemings, but you have to realize that a boss who pressures and harasses his secretary into having sex with him, is not all that much better than a rapist.
And just because the secretary is then favored at work, does not mean that she is being “spoiled.” After all, she is still a person being coerced and pressured into something that she might not otherwise engage in. It is certainly worse to be violently raped, but you wouldn’t say that the secretary was “privileged.”
For most wrongs we can think of an even greater wrong, but that doesn’t negate the wrongness of original offense.
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I have never read the book, I just know that it was integrated into the story. I was just trying to think of such books.
I’m not generalizing about handmaids, just pointing out that many of the women named were handmaids who became concubines. I am no way romanticizing these types of relationships. Rather, I’m being very practical about it.
I’m just pointing out that such relationships were considered legitimate at the time, and that women in such relationships would never have been considered “rape victims”. That struck me as particularly preposterous. People thought differently about things back then. Not necessarily better, but differently.
Alte, I understand what you’re saying about Sally Hemings, but you have to realize that a boss who pressures and harasses his secretary into having sex with him, is not all that much better than a rapist.
Perhaps not, depending upon the circumstances, but being “not much better than a rapist” is still not a rapist. Rape is a word that gets stretched past incredulity lately.
Sally Hemings was a SLAVE. One that Jefferson never freed.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO YELL, Abagond. I’m not deaf or an idiot, I’m just disagreeing with you. I am allowed to disagree with you, aren’t I? Especially if I am making a logical case for my argument.
I know that she was a slave, but she was living as a free woman when they started their affair, and she could have refused to return with him. That was a commonplace occurrence at that time (many American slaves refused to leave Paris after stays there), and she had the means and opportunity to leave him. Her brother was working as a chef and even considered staying there. She could have stayed on with him. That she didn’t, implies that she made a choice to go with him. I don’t know the exact circumstances of her choice, but neither do any of you.
We also don’t know why he didn’t free her. We don’t even know if she wanted to be free. Quadroons were often raised in preparation for concubinage, sort of like in New Orleans. She might not have expected anything else, known anything else, wanted anything else, and might have been glad to have hooked such a large fish. You are all assuming that she would have been comparing her fate to the wealthy white women, but not all women were wealthy or white.
She was a slave, but she probably didn’t think of herself as “just a slave”. She was a Hemmings. This meant something back then because of their family ties with man very powerful people, and the members of her family were not treated like “just slaves”. They were a notoriously privileged group, a sort of black aristocracy, and most of them ended up free and/or relatively well-off.
Sam, you are way off about me. But I won’t bother to respond to your insolent tone.
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where is the sense in his reasoning other than uplifting whites. if you have a women on a pedastole, embracing their beauty what men wouldn’t like her or prefer her to the dirty poor women dressed in rags. all they had was music they didn’t have any lesson. how can a man that a slave be romantic with a female slave, when they both don’t got no freedom.i’ll be brave too i want my freedom. They where living like animals, uneducated, did he expect their oppressed culture to produce a bunch of rocket scientist.
lol history
and we have a low IQ
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We should never underestimate the power of manipulation. To this day, there have always been countless cases of mental abuse to those regarded as “dependants”. There have always been predators and prey, where often even both sides deluded themselves into believing that the manipulative actions were benign.
Then there is the shame factor. Most manipulated and their manipulators keep the ugly details on the down low. Unless every single conversation and action between the two are known in all details, one must assume that the person in the power position committed some sort of abuse, especially when that person holds another human being as his property.
Otherwise, “Gaslighting” comes to mind.
There is no reason to not assume that psychological manipulation has existed for many centuries in all its subtleties. Only the terminology is relatively modern.
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Alte said:
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO YELL, Abagond. I’m not deaf or an idiot, I’m just disagreeing with you. I am allowed to disagree with you, aren’t I? Especially if I am making a logical case for my argument.”
I was not yelling. I was just emphasizing the word. Of course you are allowed to disagree with me.
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and i’m sorry, sally hemings was one of the most spoiled woman in the usa is a overly exaggerated.
she had certain privileges compared to another slave. but in our reality, where education has given us a better understanding . she was a uneducated slave woman that didn’t know better an she didn’t have a choice it was a life she had to live. so i for one in this day and age comparing the privilleges i have i wouldn’t considered her privileged. whether or not hemings made her his lover, she was still a slave women,doing her slave duties.
also the master making his slaves, lover, mistress,etc. was a common practice. if those women had the choice in the way they live their life alot of them wouldn’t live that way. maybe this situation got more attention, because thomas jefferson was a political hypocrite.
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my mistake its whether or not thomas jefferson made her his lover. continue from there.
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Ape or not. That sure as hell didn’t and still don’t stop the white man from gettin his hard on. Ya feel me? lol
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And yet many consider him one of the greatest if not the greatest president.
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Father of American Gynecology Experiments on Slave Women
http://www.nathanielturner.com/jmarionsims.htm
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@ Abagond
Indian Gyal is right, you really should consider doing a post on J. Marion Sims, given the current controversy regarding his legacy.
http://www.nathanielturner.com/jmarionsims.htm
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Has anyone seen the movie about Sallie Hemmings with Thandie Newton? In the movie the romance is ALL her idea. In fact she LITERALLY jumped into his bed giggling and laughing. I was young when I saw that movie and I was mad ass hell. Black women back then would have been taught to be more wary around WM. Especially since her grandmother was raped during the middle passage by a sea captain, and her mother was the mistress of Thomas Jefferson’s wife’s father. Making Sally in essence, Thomas Jefferson’s sister-in-law. (Sally was a wedding present given to the new couple after their marriage although some say she was part of an inheritance).
They basically made Jefferson look naive even boyish and immature when she jumped in his bed while they were in Paris. At one point in the movie Sallie’s brother informed her that they were free in Paris and that they should leave. Sally began to cry and say she didn’t want to leave because Massa was so good to them and they wouldn’t know how to make it on their own. That part MIGHT have happened,but her seduction of him, I’m not buyin it.
Although, I do think he would have a good reason to want sex with her. It is said that he truly loved his first wife that died, Martha, and Sally, being her sister; bore a great resemblance to the late Mrs. Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson simply used his power to take advantage of the situation and use his slave sexually. But instead, in the movie he was depicted as pure of heart and Sally Hemings was portayed as a jezebel in training.
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[…] The Women of The Bible « Graham Global Ministries1Biblical Baby Names | Always Marsha1Black people according to Thomas Jefferson « Abagond […]
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Although this is a super old post, I found the arguments/ comments about the nature of Jefferson’s relationship with Hemmings to be extremely humorous because previous posters failed to take into account that Jefferson is likely to have had Asperger’s, his mentality during the period is not likely to have been common. Additionally, his motives for doing certain things may not have always entirely made sense.
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SIR,
–– I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me on the “Literature of Negroes.” Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their re-establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family. I pray you therefore to accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their relief; and to be assured of the sentiments of high and just esteem and consideration which I tender to yourself with all sincerity.
Th. Jefferson
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@ King,
You have to understand that there was a different ideology at that time. People considered slaves objects so knowledge, skill, and other human elements were irrelevant.
As much as he helped found and form a nation, this isn’t a character flaw as much as it is a blemish on society because a lot of people thought this way. You can’t blame one man for the way many people think because in the end, it is the individual who has to make a choice on what to believe and what not to.
Though it is hypocritical to talk about black people that way while simultaneously having a sexual relationship with a black woman is more strange than actually having a slave to do work. It is creepy that someone would own someone just for sex. Understandable, yet, wrong, why someone would want to own another human for work.
Like I said, this is more telling about the ideology present within society at the time. Given that human thought hasn’t changed much, the ideas have, but not the way we create or think about the ideas, who knows what the future will hold and how we will evolve to become better as a society.
One of the reasons America is a great country or maybe was (depends on who you ask nowadays), is we were able to transition from that to our current society, which equality stretches across all boundaries better than any other country on the planet.
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Interesting.
By the 1780s, hadn’t there already been 180 years of intermingling and mixture? It had been going on for 6-8 generations already. Basically, it was too late already by then.
Could it be because they were not allowed to get married and form families in the usual sense? If you or your partner could be torn from you at a moment’s notice, or snatched away to breed with someone else?
Obtacles perhaps, hence the need for “We Shall Overcome”.
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@ Mira
Jefferson’s wife was actually Sally Hemmings’ half sister, so many people think that he fell for her because she looked just like his late wife.
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Black men may prefer white women if they are conditioned to. Just like white men may prefer black women if hey are similarly conditioned. But black African men certainly do not prefer white women. In fact African men encountering white women for the first time would see them as ugly grotesque creatures.
I am often surprised at Jefferson’s stupidity. Sure he was a man of his times, but there were enlightened thinkers during Jefferson’s time who wouldn’t have made such stupid comments.
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[…] He has some nice quotes.. Like these: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/op…rson.html?_r=0 Black people according to Thomas Jefferson | Abagond He pretty much came up with Jim Crow. The arguments he uses are the same used to justify jim crow. […]
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I’m so sick and tired of people trying to expose Jefferson as a “monster”! Yes the man was a racist, but guess what so was Voltaire! Does that mean that we are to completely reject these enlightenment intellectuals?! No! They were men of their times! Almost everyone in that time was a white supremacist! Even Lincoln believed blacks were inferior! Does that mean that their racism was right or ethical?! No! But we know better NOW! It’s unfair and intellectually dishonest to judge people who lived hundreds of years ago by today’s standards! Standards, I remind you, that we’ve had for just over a few decades! Does that mean that all those people who lived fifty years ago were all bigots and immoral?! No! So for the last fucking time! Jefferson was a great man with great flaws! So was Voltaire! So was Lincoln! And many other heroes of human civilization! You know what they say: Tall trees catch much wind!
PS If you want a nuanced and intellectually honest historical look at Jefferson, I recommend the books by noted historian annette Gordon-Reed! Not that it really matters, but she’s black by the way! So don’t say it’s a “white” vision on Jefferson!
Peace
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@ Illya Van Hoof
I have one of Annette Gordon-Reed’s books, the one on the Hemingses. I used it as a source for this post
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@ Abagond: Abagond, you should have also directed Illya Van Hoof to the “It was the times” thread post. Because this sounds like the “It was the times argument. IJS.
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@ Illya Van Hoof
We? Is that the Universal White We? Did you mean:
You do it again here:
So were Black and Native Americans white supremacists too who saw nothing wrong with what Whites were doing? Or are they not part of “everyone” for some strange reason?
If we judge Jefferson by his own times, by whose standards should we judge him? Of Whites? Blacks? Natives?
You said:
So was Hitler also a great man with great flaws? If not, why not?
More:
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@ Mary Burrell
I don’t need to be directed to anything. All arguments stand or fall solely on their own merits. By the way, what’s the ” It was the times argument.”? Did you just made that up? I never heard of that “fallacy”. Don’t you think people are a product of their time? Are you really that naive?
Peace
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@ Agabond
“We? Is that the Universal White We?”
No, I was referring to all people in the Western world. Every person, regardless of race, has certain liberties and rights in today’s Western world. Liberties and rights that were hard-earned by civil activists and egalitarians.
“Standards, I remind you, that White Americans have had for just over a few decades!”
Straw man! Not valid.
“So were Black and Native Americans white supremacists too who saw nothing wrong with what Whites were doing? Or are they not part of “everyone” for some strange reason?”
That’s a valid concern that you’re posting there, and I should elaborate on that.
Of course I was talking about white people that were white supremacists. Mostly because, unfortunately, they solely had the power during that time.
“If we judge Jefferson by his own times, by whose standards should we judge him? Of Whites? Blacks? Natives?”
I have to say that this statements might be, probably completely unintentional, one of the most racist statements I’ve seen in a very long time.
We don’t judge anyone in history by what “race” they belong. That’s perverse.
We simply judge them by the society that was dominant at that time. Does that mean that Jefferson becomes a saint? Of course not. As I’ve said before, he had his faults and we should be critical of them, but he also was a visionary that was way ahead of his time.
“So was Hitler also a great man with great flaws? If not, why not?”
I’m sorry, but this is a very unintelligible comment and I think you know it yourself. Do I really have to take this seriously?
Peace
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@ Illya Van Hoof
Most White Americans have no trouble seeing Hitler as evil because his victims were white. Jefferson, however, gets a pass because his immediate victims were black. THAT is racist.
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@ Illya Van Hoof
Then judge Hitler the same way. He had the support of “the society that was dominant at that time”. He had the support of the German people. They VOTED for him. They fought and died for him. They BUILT and ran his death camps. The Holocaust complied with German law. Hitler’s racism was backed by Western science and scholarship, much more so than Jefferson’s. Genocide was not against international law until AFTER Hitler was dead.
I am not saying this to be nutty. I am saying it to point out the serious flaw in your thinking.
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I must admit I am having difficulty following the train of thought, ie,
It seems like non-white peoples in regions ruled by western morality earn rights to the extent that white westerners deem appropriate at the relevant point in time to confer to them. That, however, does not make it “universal”.
I don’t see why we have to judge the Holocaust by a different standard of morality than the Native American and Chinese American expulsions and genocides just a few decades earlier.
re: Illya Van Hoof’s comment re: Hitler
Well, he should take it seriously if he is going to adjust his frame of reference of moral standards to fit the situation. He suggests that the moral standards has something to do with the “times”, but there seem to be exceptions to it, e.g., Hitler. Abagond suggests that the reason that Hitler is judged by a different standard is because his victims were whites. If “race” is not the explanatory factor, then what is? What is the alternate explanation? I am sure that Abagond and his readers would like to understand why Hitler was judged by a different standard from the “great” U.S. presidents and statesmen that promoted or supported domestic policies that called for expulsion and genocide of its non-European descendant peoples.
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How dare you, Kiwi you piece of anti Semitic shit.
Abagond you are a hypocrite. You object to absolutely every kind of racism except Anti Semitism.
In the name of my slaughtered great grandmother, FUCK YOU.
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@ Truthteller
I think you are missing the point. Illya is giving Jefferson a pass, so I am using his logic to give Hitler a pass to show the hole in his thinking.
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@ IIyan Van Hoof, to tell the truth most of those who would be consider the very smartest open their mouths and inserted their foot. Jefferson must have known about Benjamin Banneker. Yet does he retract his statements does he modify? I mean there was a wickedly awesome black poetess during his time. However, no matter how we look upon those times European intellects still thought Americans in general lack the necessary frame to truly produce a classic society. Something that still linger in the air from a bigotry that was mounted from a more virginal era of American society.
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@ Truthteller
How dare you, Kiwi you piece of anti Semitic shit.
Get real! What Kiwi said wasn’t Anti-Semitic.
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Agree. There was nothing anti-Semitic about his statement.
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@ Truthteller
In the name of my slaughtered great grandmother, FUCK YOU.
And shame on you for using your Great Grandmother’s murder as an excuse to be a tender little snowflake who cheapens the meaning of the term ‘anti-Semite’. Get a pair of balls.
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@ Kiwi
I find it very disturbing that you think Hitler is hated in the Western world because he killed so many “white” people. And than you go on by saying that white blood is considered sacred in white mythology. That very phrase could have been from Hitler himself. You show a staggering ignorance of the historical facts. The reason Hitler is hated in the Western world is because he represents the most violent, disgusting and fanatical form of white supremacism. He was a megalomaniacal psychopath. By the way, Hitler hated all other races, and not just the Jews. He hated black people with a passion. He even refused to shake hands with Jesse Owens for fuck’s sake. Hitler and his associates invented the white mythology bullshit that you mentioned. It’s pure madness based on some mythical white superior Aryan race. So your comment is absurd at best.
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@ Agabond
“Most White Americans have no trouble seeing Hitler as evil because his victims were white. Jefferson, however, gets a pass because his immediate victims were black. THAT is racist.”
What are you saying here? Do you even realize how ridiculous that is? Hitler’s nazism was the most racist ideology ever. You can’t possibly compare Hitler to Jefferson, and if you can’t see that you’re just blind and beyond reason. By the way, Jefferson doesn’t get a pass at all. I’m very critical of Jefferson and slavery. He clearly lacked the courage to follow through with his ideals and was immobilised by his own fears. That was one of his big flaws and I recognize that.
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@ Agabond
“Then judge Hitler the same way. He had the support of “the society that was dominant at that time”. He had the support of the German people. They VOTED for him. They fought and died for him. They BUILT and ran his death camps. The Holocaust complied with German law. Hitler’s racism was backed by Western science and scholarship, much more so than Jefferson’s. Genocide was not against international law until AFTER Hitler was dead.
I am not saying this to be nutty. I am saying it to point out the serious flaw in your thinking.”
Wow, just wow…
Hitler didn’t had the support of the entire Western world you ignoramus. And only 18% of Germans were supporters of the nazi party. Do you know how many assassination attempts Hitler survived? Apparently not. The reason why the Germans voted for Hitler was because the country was in dramatic economic despair. Most of the Germans didn’t agree with the holocaust, but they unfortunately lived in a totalitarian regime that brutally persecuted public descent. And what’s this nonsense about “Western science”? There’s no such thing. Science doesn’t have any boundaries. It’s universal. And all the science that Hitler used, such as eugenics, was pseudoscience. You know what debunked it? SCIENCE! That’s the great thing about science, it corrects itself over time. And you know what? Apparently this so called “white Western science” has found out that there’s no such thing as race in the first place. We are all the same race you hack. We’re all African apes, whether we are white, black or whatever. Unfortunately, humanity had to wait much too long to discover that.
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@ Agabond
Oh and one more thing. I’m not the racist here. You’re the one who can’t see past someone’s skin color. Racism isn’t exclusive to “white” people. Everyone can be a racist, and I think you are one and you don’t even know it.
Peace
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@ Jefe
“I don’t see why we have to judge the Holocaust by a different standard of morality than the Native American and Chinese American expulsions and genocides just a few decades earlier.”
I agree! I condemn the genocide of the Native Americans just as much as I condemn the Holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda! And I’m happy to say that out loud!
“Well, he should take it seriously if he is going to adjust his frame of reference of moral standards to fit the situation. He suggests that the moral standards has something to do with the “times”, but there seem to be exceptions to it, e.g., Hitler. Abagond suggests that the reason that Hitler is judged by a different standard is because his victims were whites. If “race” is not the explanatory factor, then what is? What is the alternate explanation? I am sure that Abagond and his readers would like to understand why Hitler was judged by a different standard from the “great” U.S. presidents and statesmen that promoted or supported domestic policies that called for expulsion and genocide of its non-European descendant peoples.”
I agree with most that you’ve said here. The only problem I have is that you seem to also buy into the idea that Hitler is hated in the Western world because he mostly killed white people, and that’s just simply false.
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@ King of Trouble
“to tell the truth most of those who would be consider the very smartest open their mouths and inserted their foot. Jefferson must have known about Benjamin Banneker. Yet does he retract his statements does he modify? I mean there was a wickedly awesome black poetess during his time. However, no matter how we look upon those times European intellects still thought Americans in general lack the necessary frame to truly produce a classic society. Something that still linger in the air from a bigotry that was mounted from a more virginal era of American society.”
I completely agree with that statement.
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*SWOOSH*
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@ George Ryder
LOL, I just don’t like to be called a racist, because it’s just not true. 🙂
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George
That’s one of those delusional individuals I warned you about. They see things that are not there and exaggerate things that are. Usually prone to go into tangents about things that make little or no sense or have nothing to do with what was said.
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I am trying to remember which troll signed everything with peace. Usually the ones dumb as rocks but just kept talking as if at some point they may have an enlightening moment. *shrugs*
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@ Abagond
After reading through the comments, I second that SWOOSH.
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Oh boy the irony. I wonder how I ever landed in this filthy self-pity blog. Time to get out before I drown in this shit. Don’t forget to pray to Jesus now. Bible freaks.
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@ Illya Van Hoof
You are missing the point. Maybe this will help you to understand where I am coming from:
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@ Abagond
No, you’re missing the point. That thread piece is nothing but self-pitying nonsense. Stop playing the victim and grow up because you’re not convincing anyone who values reason, integrity and intellectual honesty. The very things most of these blog members seem to be missing severely. Emancipate yourself and look up to people like Neil deGrasse Tyson instead of crackpot racist organizations like the Nation of Islam. Get a live.
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Illya Van hoof
Based on your comments it would appear you were accustomed to sh*t before you got here. Plus you are a hyprocrite which I absolutely loath. You can’t preach intellectual honesty and refuse to engage in it.
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Van Hoof, why don’t you hoof it on outta here? Sorry folks, I couldn’t resist!
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@ Sharina
This blog is the very definition of hypocrisy, self-pity and victimhood.
By the way, you’re nor going to be the ones that block me before I can respond. I will leave this asinine blog before you people block me. And don’t even try to respond because I won’t read it anyway. So if I’m not responding it’s not that I don’t have an answer, it’s that I’m above it and don’t care.
“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.”
– Thomas Jefferson
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I wonder where his reasoning and integrity was when he was making all those assumptions?
@ Abagond
I did not know you were into ” Nation of Islam”?
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WHAT do you mean, “YOU PEOPLE!!!!
Sorry folks, I too couldn’t resist!
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Illya Van Hoof
I don’t like it when people deflect because it is a bit annoying and a waste of my time. So save the preaching about what the blog is according to you, because none of it will change the fact that you are a hypocrite.
“By the way, you’re nor going to be the ones that block me before I can respond. “—I don’t have the authority to block and if I did I wouldn’t because I don;t back down. 🙂
“So if I’m not responding it’s not that I don’t have an answer, it’s that I’m above it and don’t care.”—Your not above it seeing as you have already responded. Though pretending is nice I hear. 🙂
A quote that suites my responses to you quite well don’t you think?
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@ Sharina
Oh, totally 😉
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Herneith and King
LOL
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@ Illya Van Hoof: I love Neil De grasse Tyson. I sing his praises. I especially sing his praises on the science. But you have a good day. Peace to you.
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@Abagond: The Nation of Islam. *Rolls Eyes*
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On a svery lightly more serious note, have you noticed the irony?
On a blog like this one, the social “viewpoint advantage” is reversed. And for the first time for many, they have stepped into an environment where they are the ones in the ‘minority.’
Have you noticed how when the positions are switched, how quickly they themselves begin “whining,” are filled with “self pity,” and then imagined “victimhood?” The very things they accuse others of engaging in, they dive headlong into themselves—reducing their final arguments into the most puerile and petulant tantrums.
sounds like is time for a nappy, and then a time out.
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@ Mary
He is not hearing me, just the stereotypes in his head.
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@ Abagond: i wonder if Asplund is back? He seems very angry.
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@ King
I have noticed it, but they are usually so caught up in pointing the finger and positioning themselves on high that they don’t notice it or care.
@Mary Burrell
I noticed that too. Even in cases where people were trying to engage him in a reasonable manner he seemed to be angry at the responses and ready to call names.
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@ Sharina: Yes, we all see the same thing.
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@George Ryder
Nobody did. It reveals that this guy is a bit delusional.
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@King
Ha-ha, glad you mentioned that. My aunt’s husband was EEOC officer for several different Federal agencies, and his job was to investigate and settle complaints and disputes. He told me about several of them and one of the common things was when white managers used “You people” this “You people “that” when talking to his non-white subordinates. When those deliberations hit his desk, he would arrange for disciplinary action and training for that manager.
Should NEVER use that when trying to manage or influence a group of people. Nothing creates divisions more than that.
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“Actually, outside of the Western world, Hitler is considered a great man in many countries, like India.”
_ _ _
I knew some young Iranian guys, years ago, who felt the same way. One even stated verbatim, and with a smile on his face, that Hitler was a great man.
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@MB, Sharina
Some banned person is back, it seems. A new person would not react like that. At it seems like someone who seems wedded to the white version of history, so it might be Asplund, esp. his use of “Western World” perspective. You two are quite keen!
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Some theories on why those men slept with the black slaves(even though they thought them inferior and ugly) is because for one simply many men are horny sick perverts especially if they get away with it. There were men in australia who even mixed with aborigines and nobody would consider them attractive. Dont forget there are many guys who sleep/slept with actual animals. Besides that there are always those old bored (rich) bastards who look for anything new and scandalous they can do. Since slaves had no rights and could be treated any way against their will they used them for sadistic acts and anything they couldn’t and wouldn’t do to a white woman. Then there’s the classic forbidden fruit syndrom and here and there some plain jungle fever. Of course there’s no excuse for it and those men had no strength of character or honor. I still dont think it was “most” by far though. The real mix craze started in the 60s. On a side note: since he had much (intimate)experience with the black slaves those opinions must be his honest perception unlike prejudice.
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Hate on Jefferson all you want, but he helped set the stage for blacks to be free by writing the Constitution. He realized that slavery was a bad thing, but also realized that the Constitution would never be drafted if he were to outlaw it. Therefore, he wrote that ALL men are created equal, which was the basis behind the Emancipation, and the Civil Rights movement. He hoped that the Constitution would be the beginning of a battle to be fought at a later time. And he was right.
If Jefferson felt differently, then he most certainly would’ve enshrined slavery in the Constitution.
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Did Jefferson mention anything in his book regarding the origins/creation of black people?
Like most people of his day I suspect Jefferson was a theist and as such needed some way to account for Africans being flawed without indicting God?
With the exception of atheists, most white supremacists have adopted one of several cosmologies that serves this very purpose (pre-adamic theory, Eve cuckholding Adam with the snake…)
When white people question the value, legitimacy… of African people, they are really questioning that which created us; they don’t want to go there and it is your job to take them there.
Its a big paradox for racist white people because they know they can’t have it both ways.
We didn’t create ourselves and neither did they.
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Herneith said:
“What I find the most disturbing, is that he started pumping this girl when she was 14 or 15 years old and he was in his late thirties or forties. Your third president was in effect, a child molester as well as a racist hypocrite!”
——————————————————————————————-
Actually, back in the day it was quite common for teenage girls to have sex with older men as long as it was in wedlock; Hemmings was basically a common law wife.
In addition, people were much more mature back then. 13 year olds had adult responsibilities and were expected to carry themselves as such; it is still like this in much of the world today.
Adolescence is a modern, white, western social construct.
Imagine how much smarter, mature and capable you would be if you worked with your dad since the age of seven?
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@thelibertydefender
I don’t think anyone is advocating that.
What would be better is if we were taught real history about the nation’s “founding fathers” instead of pure patriotic mythology.
And the fact that he played the large role in writing the Constitution does not let him off the hook in and of itself. It also implies that blacks should be grateful that a white person had the foresight to ensure in the 1780s that blacks would get the right to vote in the 1960s.
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Reading this info on Jefferson makes me wonder how he and his cohorts could be such hypocritical cowards. This explains why America is so screwed up; its foundation is shaky.
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There has been many ignorant presidents that have represented the United States. Jefferson was one. He has contradicted himself on a number of things that he stated. All of his statements that were listed sounded ignorant. Jefferson’s statement: Blacks are ugly:
Whites have “flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form”.
Even black men prefer white women over their own, just as orangutans prefer black women over their own.
If this is the case, then why do so many white people get tans, enlarged their butts and enlarge their lips?
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I hate how Thomas Jefferson is being celebrated in the cmtext of black Americans and slavery
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[…] https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/black-people-according-to-thomas-jefferson/ […]
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” in memory they are equal to the whites;
in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid;
and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.
Jefferson compares them to the white slaves of Rome who, despite living under crueler conditions, have produced great thinkers and writers – like Terence, Epictetus and Phaedrus. Unlike blacks.”
Good old Tom, one of the best comedians the USA ever produced. I he cared to, he would have heard of Anton Wilhelm Amo, Abraham Gannibal and my favorite, Malik Ambar.
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you cannot take history out of text no more than a sentence out of text, your past out of text, leave these passages where they lay the past, history, these are lesson not to repeat but to learn from.
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Am I the oyster one who knows he race mixed…he was nuts.
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@ Jacob Blaustein
No, but you are the only oyster here!
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Love to hear you all judging a man who lived during a different moment in time. There were millions of people of all races that believed in and nurtured slavery. Ironic that black people still practice it today in Africa. Approximately 450,000 slaves were shipped the USA and yet where is the outage that 1,500,000 were shipped to the Carribean or 4,500,000 were shipped to Brazil… 10 times more that came here?
What about the Barbary Slave Trade where black muslims sold 1,500,000 white slaves and used the white women as sex slaves?
You are all quite pathetic.
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“Approximately 450,000 slaves were shipped the USA and yet where is the outage that 1,500,000 were shipped to the Carribean or 4,500,000 were shipped to Brazil… 10 times more that came here?”
Thanks for your attention to this matter. You will be happy to know that in 1791, the slaves of St-Domingue rose up and destroyed the slave system there to the point that France was forced to emancipate them in 1793.
From 1793 to 1802, the emancipated slaves became French citizens with rights of representation in the French legislature. In 1802 French tyrant Napoleon took away their rights and tried to re-enslave them.
As a lover of liberty, you’ll be glad to know that he failed at the cost of over sixty thousand white troops.
Sadly, I must report that Tommy J. was on the side of the slavers, despite all his fine rhetoric about the tree of liberty, patriots and tyrants.
“What about the Barbary Slave Trade where black muslims sold 1,500,000 white slaves and used the white women as sex slaves?”
What about white children being sold into sexual slavery by their white parents for drugs?
You are apathetic.
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“Love to hear you all judging a man who lived during a different moment in time.”
Like your hero, Tommy J., you’re big with the jokes, or just ignorant.
This bs about being a man of his time won’t wash. Abbé Grégoire (Henri Grégoire) who lived during the same period as Tommy, wrote a book called “On Negro literature” in 1808 giving more accurate facts about black intellectual capacity.
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You are right, Gro Jo. The only difference is that they were not afraid to show blatant racism en masse back then. Now for some reason, they are, with the exception of the virulent ‘white supremacist. I detest that argument; it is nothing but a cop out. Keep the references coming!
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@Libslayer
Actually, the numbers of Africans kidnapped during the Atlantic Slave trade (20 million plus) dwarfs the numbers of Europeans kidnapped during the Barbary Slave Trade.
What is truly pathetic is your profound ignorance of history or current events
(“black people still practice it today in Africa.”) Slavery is a global scourge that affects Europe, Asia, The Americas, Australia and Africa. Slaves are everywhere.
Libslayer, you need to do more reading and thinking.
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” Keep the references coming!”
Ok, who was Pierre Thomany, and what did he propose to commemorate starting on February 4, 1799 to The Council of Five Hundred?
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Name the nation that enslaved its citizens in 1802?
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@gro jo
Okay, I’m stumped.
Are you going to provide answers?
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Afrofem, google doesn’t work for you?
Ok, who was Pierre Thomany, and what did he propose to commemorate starting on February 4, 1799 to The Council of Five Hundred?
Answer:
Pierre Thomany
birth and death dates unknown
Elected to the Assemblée nationale or to the Chambre des députés
From 14 october 1795 to 26 december 1799
Representing Saint-Domingue
The fourth of February 1799 would have become a national holiday celebrating the abolition of slavery in 1794.
Name the nation that enslaved its citizens in 1802?
France in 1802. The attempt failed in what is now Haiti but succeeded in Guadeloupe. Blacks who had been free and French for over eight years found out they had no rights a white was obliged to respect, unless they could compel such respect by force of arms.
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@gro jo
You know how indolent I am. I like when people spoon-feed me information.
Thanks for supplying those answers.
That makes me think of how White people in Maryland tried to force a vote in the 1850s to re-enslave the free Black population because they were organized and independent.
Christopher Phillips wrote about this period in his book about early Baltimore entitled Freedom’s Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790-1860. An excerpt from a review of the book:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=2250
Black people seem to be experiencing these maneuvers by White America yet again. The country experiences an economic downturn, a flood of immigrants pour in, Black people suffer the most in the downturn and White people turn their wrath against Black people. History repeating itself, ad nauseum.
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Thanks go jo, here’s one I found on Google.
:
http://www.une-autre-histoire.org/dates-de-commemoration-de-lesclavage-un-imbroglio-entretenu-a-dessein/
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Gro jo,
How many times have you been on Jeopardy??
Are you one of the all-time winiest winners?
(“I’ll take Obscure Information for five-hundred, Alex!” )
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Nice find Herneith.
Afrofem, your ‘indolence’ is quite impressive. I’ve learned something new reading your comment. Thanks.
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“Gro jo,
How many times have you been on Jeopardy??
Are you one of the all-time winiest winners?
(“I’ll take Obscure Information for five-hundred, Alex!” )Gro jo,
How many times have you been on Jeopardy??
Are you one of the all-time winiest winners?
(“I’ll take Obscure Information for five-hundred, Alex!” )”
I even managed a slim victory over IBM’s Watson!
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Brilliant article. Thomas Jefferson is correct on a lot of analysis and wrong on others. First regarding : 1.) Race War: TJ is wrong, negroes are collectively inferior to white race and such war will never happen this despite the fact that negroes are 3 times more populated than white, worldwide. In Brazil, mutts/half-breeds, negroes are 80% and pure whites are only 20% still whites control the power.
2.) Race-Mixing: TJ is correct. Negro race will readily mix with white race on drop of hat. This can be proven by looking at rich negroid people’s behavior. When negroes become rich – Yes, they prefer white over their own. All one has to do is look at rich negro celebrities.
___
Characteristics:
1.) Ugly: Yep, negroes are universally ugly. Every race finds them as ugly and negroes find their own kind ugly. Isolated, this is not a white problem but in a multi-racial society, ugly and rich celeb negroes will contaminate the purity of the white race. Negroes are shameless creature and they will deny that they are ugly and while at the same time ignore their own negress women and race-mix with white. Negroes will call whites as racist while being racist themselves against their own kind. Ex: Tiger Woods.
2.) Smell: Irrelevant, unless white is going to sleep with blacks. But generally not true, scientifically unproven.
3.) Suffering: Wrong as well. Using blacks to white advantage is extremely wrong.
4.) Brave: Somewhat true but generalized.
5.) Music: Blacks are not complex thinkers, music is primitive and rudimentary such as (Hip-Hop, Rap).
6.) Intelligence: Negroes are 100% inferior, australian aborginies are inferior to blacks. Some east-indians are inferior to north american negroes, similarly tribal amazonian indians are inferior to negroes too. It is all relative. All are inferior to whites (western european). It is highly likely that north-american negroes are superior by intellect to people in asia minor (turkmenistan, armenia, uzbekistan, backward eastern europe etc) and many parts of asia.
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Get out of your mother’s basement!
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@wizier
Every point you wrote has been refuted with facts hundreds of times, both on this blog and over the past decades. You might buy it because it makes you feel good inside. However, nothing in your rant is based in reality.
It’s a jagged tumble from that White Privilege perch, isn’t it?
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@wizier
‘shut up’ was my initial thought. but then i thought… might as well.
this one is pretty straightforward. brazil was a colonial nation founded by white people. it would follow that the vested interests of white people would have carried on down through the ages.
the fact that white people have wealth was largely a historical coincidence: white people were one of the more backward ethnic groups until the chance ‘discovery’ of the new world. that discovery couldn’t have come at a better time, since constantinople had just fallen to the ottoman empire and the muslim world was technologically superior. europe was about to become a muslim continent (and in fact, large parts had been for a long time)
all races will readily mix with all races. for instance, it is well known that a lot of white men travel to asia to find asian brides. and again, the race-mixing argument is silly. when a black man goes with a white woman, it tells you that that black man is attracted to that white woman…
but it also tells you that that white woman is attracted to that black man. does that make you feel uncomfortable that a lot white women like black men?
beauty is in the eye of the beholder. i personally find african & asian women more attractive than white women.
if you want to use an evolutionary argument for beauty, go ahead. but your point would fail too. there is no evidence whatsoever that non-white females are attracting less males or vice versa. if anything, it is the fertility of whites that is dropping, not the other way round.
look at the charts, all dominated by black or black-influenced singers. Kendrick Lamar’s album from 2015 is one of the best reviewed musical albums of ALL TIME irrespective of any genre.
Kanye West has won 21 grammies, his album ‘my beautiful dark twisted fantasy’ is one of the most complex pastiche of musical sounds you will ever hear.
If anything, musical geniuses are overwhelmingly black. those that aren’t… were all massively influenced by black artists: elvis presley, eric clapton, eminem, adele etc.
intelligence is largely determined by environmental and cultural factors. not genetics. but if you want to use that terminology, okay…
whites were the most ‘retarded’ race up until the 1500-1600s. muslims/africans and chinese were the most advanced. in the 1800s, you could have argued that the situation had flipped. conclusion?
it’s all swings and roundabouts…
and you don’t know what you’re talking about.
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I’ll take a crack at wizier’s arguments starting with the most interesting one.
“6.) Intelligence: Negroes are 100% inferior, australian aborginies are inferior to blacks. Some east-indians are inferior to north american negroes, similarly tribal amazonian indians are inferior to negroes too. It is all relative. All are inferior to whites (western european). ”
Let’s entertain that this is true. Wizier, how do you explain that the “Shakespeare” of Russia was the great grandson of a Negro? You do know that Alexander Pushkin was the great grandson of Abraham Petrovich Gannibal right? Curiously, they both shared a facility for language!
How about the fact that a French noble family produced nobody worth remembering until one of them went to St-Domingue, present day Haiti, had children with a black slave by the name of Marie-Cessette Dumas. Lo and behold! out of their coupling a distinguished general,Thomas Alexandre Dumas was born, who begat, I’m going to get all biblical on you, Alexandre Dumas, père (sr.), who begat Alexandre Dumas, fils(Jr.) and Henry Bauer both of them writers. That’s not all, her great great great grandson, Alexandre Lippmann, was a first class fencer and publisher. You might ask, what did the pure white branch of the family produce? As far as I can tell, the Davy de la Pailleteries produced no eminent person outside of its Africanized branch! So much for white (western European) intellectual superiority, eh!?
Moving right along, let’s tackle your next interesting claim.
“1.) Ugly: Yep, negroes are universally ugly. Every race finds them as ugly and negroes find their own kind ugly. ”
Ironical ain’t it, when you realize that TJ’s mistress was a woman whose mother was sexually used by TJ’s father-in-law and whose grandmother served the same purpose, resulting in Sally Hemings being indistinguishable from a white woman!
“1.) Race War: TJ is wrong, negroes are collectively inferior to white race and such war will never happen this despite the fact that negroes are 3 times more populated than white, worldwide. In Brazil, mutts/half-breeds, negroes are 80% and pure whites are only 20% still whites control the power. ”
TJ was right, such race war did happen during his lifetime and with his support in the Caribbean on the island of Guadeloupe and the French colony of St-Domingue. The result was mixed, Blacks won on St-Domingue, hence the name change to Haiti, its Aboriginal name, and lost on Guadeloupe. Please spare me the bs that they won because of “yellow fever”. Antoine Richepanse, the man who reestablished slavery on Guadeloupe died of yellow fever like Charles Leclerc, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, who failed in St-Domingue.
Before exposing your ignorance so publicly, do a little research first, might save you the embarrassment.
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“TJ’s mistress was a woman whose mother was sexually used by TJ’s father-in-law and whose grandmother served the same purpose, resulting in Sally Hemings being indistinguishable from a white woman!”
Yes. The White woman Sally Hemings was most indistinguishable from was Jefferson’s late wife, Martha. Sally Hemings was her half sister (same father).
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I generally ignore posts such as wizer’s too but the music part was a real laugh. The one-sided tendency towards rationalization in Western European culture has gradually eliminated its indigenous art and music as cultural or emotional forces. Consequently, only a select few partake of “new music” because the technical means of production took priority over the subjective experience. Most of the popular music that white people actually listen to in 2017 has been heavily influenced or originated by black Americans and other members of the African diaspora. They surely aren’t generally listening to this:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ala_vGjv-YI)
BTW, it’s not only Hip Hop. Country music which is thought of as “white”, was heavily influenced by Blues and other African American musical forms. Jazz, again, is a musical genre associated with Black people from the city of New Orleans. One only needs to ask is why so much of America’s popular music comes from the South. Newsflash! It’s because that’s where most of the black people were!
For Black people music tends to be a living form of expression meant to have emotional force rather than to serve primarily as demonstrations of technical procedures. But then it’s typical of white people to present their particular priorities as universal goals before declaring others “inferior” for failing to be just like them. This psychological complex accounts for the white motivation to dominate and control others and their “success” in doing so more than intelligence does.
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@Origin
I’ve slept through plenty of recitals/performances of “new music” like your youtube link. LOL!
Years ago, I had several White people ask me, “why do Black singers always wail, scream, yell, groan or moan?” When I responded that they were using their voices as musical instruments and expressing emotion, they would shake their heads and say “but why can’t they sing quieter?”
Strange how Euro-descent people criticize Black people for their cultural expressions in the current moment and twenty years later adopt those expressions as their own. Some go so far as to try to write Black people out of the history of their own cultural creations.
One night in the past year, while channel surfing, I came across Ken Burn’s/PBS documentary about the history of jazz. One segment focused on an all White jazz quartet based in New Orleans that toured North America and Europe in the 1920s. The leader of this group was quoted denouncing the notion that jazz was a Black art form. He went so far as to say that Black people had nothing to do with jazz.
My first impulse was anger at the nerve of someone who grew rich and famous by performing Black music. Then I thought of how ridiculous that person’s words were—–he and his group are a historical footnote. Meanwhile, Black performers of that era such as Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith and King Oliver are considered giants of that period of jazz.
It seems that pattern persists to the present day. Black culture is integrated into American culture. Black people not so much.
Abagond explored this pattern in his post on cultural appropriation:
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“Years ago, I had several White people ask me, “why do Black singers always wail, scream, yell, groan or moan?” When I responded that they were using their voices as musical instruments and expressing emotion, they would shake their heads and say “but why can’t they sing quieter?”
Strange how Euro-descent people criticize Black people for their cultural expressions ,,,”
I’ve had a similar question asked of me once or twice by WHITE believers/churchgoers who somehow see Black people’s holy/spiritual dancing as satanic because it was rhythmic and different from WHITE people (supposedly) normal staid bodies’ flailing about.
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I wonder if wizier is acquainted with the history and social status of whites known as Bajan Redlegs on Barbados? The Wikipedia article on them says:”Redleg is a term used to refer to poor whites that live on Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada and a few other Caribbean islands. Their forebears came from Ireland, Scotland and the West of England.[1]…According to folk etymology, the name is derived from the effects of the tropical sun on their fair-skinned legs. However, the term “Redlegs” and its variants were also in use for Irish soldiers of the same sort as those later transported to Barbados by the English. The variant “Red-shankes” is recorded as early as the 16th century by Edmund Spenser in his dialogue on the current condition of Ireland…By the 18th century, indentured servants became less common. African slaves were trained in all necessary trades, so there was no demand for paid white labour. The Redlegs,[which?] in turn, were unwilling to work alongside the freed slave population on the plantations.[citation needed] Therefore, most tried to emigrate to other British colonies whenever the opportunity arose, which reduced the white population to a small minority; and most of the white population that chose to stay eked out, at best, a subsistence living. The Redleg descendants of indentured servants today are extremely poor, almost all living in shacks in the countryside. Many Redlegs reside in St. John’s Parish.[which?]…For the small Redleg community still living on Barbados, most live a poorer standard of life than the blacks, relying on farming or running small shops and brothels that serve the wealthier blacks.[3]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redleg
BLACKS ON BARBADOS ARE WEALTHIER THAN REDLEG WHITES! SO MUCH FOR INHERENT WHITE ‘GENETIC’ SUPERIORITY! THIS FACT SUCKS FOR YOU WIZIER.
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Let’s sum up, The Davy de la Pailleterie stock was improved by the infusion of ‘superior’ Black African genes into the family gene pool. Abraham Gannibal did the same for the Russian family he married into. Bajan Redlegs occupy a lower status than their black neighbors and have done so for centuries. On February 13, 1802, colonel Jacques Maurepas defeated French Generals Jean Joseph Amable Humbert and Jean-François Joseph Debelle with only a half of a brigade under his command before he decided to accept to rejoin the ranks of the French army! Conclusion, White ‘genetic’ superiority is a myth.
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@Afrofem
“Strange how Euro-descent people criticize Black people for their cultural expressions in the current moment and twenty years later adopt those expressions as their own. Some go so far as to try to write Black people out of the history of their own cultural creations. ”
Commoditizing other people’s cultural expressions and divorcing them from it fits with the pattern of acquisitiveness. You’ll also see it when white celebrities are considered fashionable for “rocking” hairstyles typically associated with black people when black people are sometimes put in a negative light for wearing their own hair. In order to truly take control it is necessary to berate those who have what you wish to take and make them feel as if they have no right to it. This technique was also applied during colonization land grabs when the Christian classification of indigenous people as heathen negated all of their claims to their homelands.
With regard to art, art forms within the prevailing culture tend to ossify as the tradition becomes increasingly obsessed with technique. For example, a large component of what is considered “good”, “new music” is the theory behind how it is constructed. If someone within that tradition tries to write heartfelt music that does not employ the techniques that are academically sanctioned they may be dismissed as writing old-fashioned or “pastiche” music.
But art created without the primary concern of communicating with the ordinary experiencer [or art only for other aritsts] will not be of value to most people. Art for art’s sake is like language for language’s sake: pointless. Yet this sort of narcisstic art that is concerned primarily with admiring its own “complicated” construction is considered the most cultured art within the context of Western civilization. Probably this is fitting and reflective of the entire cultural thrust! They’ve quite spontaneously recreated it in art: a self-admiring technical behemoth that exists for its own sake and out of which humanity has been progressively distilled, to the extent that it could feasibly kill us all (instead of just putting us to sleep)!
The more participatory traditions of other cultures result in very different kinds of artistic expression. So Western art will take from these traditions as a way of revitilizing its own. Consistent with the technical focus, there are presented as new techiques. Picasso did this. He reworked his paintings into the famous examples of “Cubism” after he saw carvings taken from Africa at an expo in Paris. Another example is “Primitivism” which Wikipedia describes as “a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin’s inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics. Borrowings from primitive art has been important to the development of modern art.” While that is clearly written from a Western perspective it essentially admits that the tradition does not spontaneously generate culturally relevant expressions but needs regular infusions from outside sources. Yet they still manage to consider those sources fundamentally beneath them as Picasso did.
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“Can you share Jefferson’s comments on the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley? Perhaps in the Black People According To Jefferson thread”
Here goes: “Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar ;oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and shew how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his stile is easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning: yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived, and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column. This criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy investigation.”
“Notes on the State of Virginia”
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffvir.asp
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They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and shew how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal.
That bloviating jackanapes Jefferson!
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@ gro jo
Thanks for the link and (a small) portion of the text. I saw a lot to respond to in that section of text. I will have a longer reply later.
All I can say now is that the White desire to justify enslaving Africans led to a lot of loopy logic on the part of Jefferson and others.
“…below the dignity of criticism”, indeed!
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Note how what he says has been repeated, almost verbatim, since 1787.
“Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived, and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column.”
Sancho ‘was a credit to his race’ by producing “Negro literature” of low quality when compared to ‘universal’, i.e., “white” literature. Anatole Broyard, a mulatto, was deemed a brilliant critique when he ‘passed’ for white, had he disclosed his real racial identity he would have been relegated to the ‘black writer’ category.
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@ gro jo
I found a lot of rehashed talking points in the Notes on the State of Virginia by Jefferson in 1787. They were likely rehashed even in those years before the 1800s.
For example, I’ve seen this one repeated ad nauseum by White political leaders in the US:
This bit of fear mongering has been repeated every generation since Whiteness was developed in the late 1600s. At the base of each iteration is the fear of retribution coupled with a desire to rewrite history and by extension control future narratives.
After destroying millions of African lives and societies and treating fellow human beings worse than cattle, perpetrators of this line of thinking want to cut ties and pretend it never happened.
In Brazil, the White minority made this talking point into official policy after Emancipation in 1888. They didn’t send the African-descent people away like the US President Lincoln planned after the Civil War. Instead they sought to dilute the influence and future political power of Afro-Brazilians by enticing millions of European immigrants to their shores. They called this process, embranquecimento or whitening.
There are echoes of this thinking in the “White Flight” panics of the 1950s-1970s. Those ideas or talking points underlie the forced removal of Black people from major US urban areas these days in the process currently known as gentrification.
Open and unapologetic White supremacists love trotting out the “…produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.” talking point. Instead of race war rhetoric a la The Turner Diaries, White bigots have latched onto current White victimhood propaganda such as:
🗯 “White genocide”
🗯 “White people are discriminated against more than Black people”
🗯 “Black people are racists” (against White people)
More echoes of Jefferson’s ideas.
I will make another observation from the Notes later….
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[…] The first African slaves arrived in North America in 1619 in Jamestown. Over the following four centuries many Americans believed that Africans – and their descendants, African-Americans — were not fully human, but rather subhuman. It was long an essential belief among colonial revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson as well as Confederate secessionists and those of the today’s alt-right. As Jefferson wrote: […]
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[…] The first African slaves arrived in North America in 1619 in Jamestown. Over the following four centuries many Americans believed that Africans – and their descendants, African-Americans — were not fully human, but rather subhuman. It was long an essential belief among colonial revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson as well as Confederate secessionists and those of the today’s alt-right. As Jefferson wrote: […]
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[…] The first African slaves arrived in North America in 1619 in Jamestown. Over the following four centuries many Americans believed that Africans – and their descendants, African-Americans — were not fully human, but rather subhuman. It was long an essential belief among colonial revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson as well as Confederate secessionists and those of the today’s alt-right. As Jefferson wrote: […]
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“Even black men prefer white women over their own, just as orangutans prefer black women over their own.”
Jefferson could run a country, but he was not capable of discerning where orangutans preside, huh? Last time I checked, they are neither native to West Africa (where most of the enslaved came from) nor any region in Africa. They are from Indonesia, and to a greater extent, Asia.
http://www.orangutan.com/orangutans/orangutan-facts/
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From the mind of a rapist. The original baby daddy.
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They raped men women children…the original baby daddy….and his face on our money…sickening disgusting evil….High IQs? Superior? I hate em all. There were so many revolts and deaths of massa and his family but, of course, the high lQers would be embarrassed and jealous ….that same enviousness and hatred ruined OUR BLACK WALLSTREET….NO REPARATIONS FROM USING US AS CHATTEL OR WALLSTREET. They owe us….
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Thomas Jefferson was a real piece of human excrement
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But the whole lot of the so called “Founding Fathers were garbage as well so there’s that.
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“will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.”
Which will happen to Whites unless we defend ourselves from the traitorous Whites who want us dead. Seriously Whites who allow blacks to kill us exponentially and put them over their own are the worst people on the planet, just go live in South Africa and get killed so you can leave my family the fuck alone and I don’t have to protect them with force.
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