Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings by Annette Gordon-Reed

Author:Annette Gordon-Reed [Gordon-Reed, Annette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)
ISBN: 9780813933566
Google: hk86gGtn8sUC
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 1998-03-29T02:55:28+00:00

Jefferson the Racist

The final prong of the character defense of Jefferson is somewhat ironic. The first three prongs rely on citing the positive aspects of Thomas Jefferson’s character: his gentle breeding, his great intellect, and his love of family. This last prong points to what most people would concede was the negative part of Jefferson’s nature: his racism. To blunt criticism of Jefferson on the matter of race, scholars have often presented him as a man ahead of his time on the question of slavery or have emphasized his kindness to his slaves. When dealing with the Sally Hemings charge, some of those same historians and commentators wave his racism about like a cross in front of a vampire. Thomas Jefferson, they say, was too racist to have touched a black woman, even one who by all accounts looked white. The pseudo-scientific racism in Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia and his statement that “amalgamation produces a degradation to which no one . . . can innocently consent” are said to settle the matter.39 How could a man who wrote such things engage in a sexual liaison with a black person? One might answer, the same way that a man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and various ringing indictments of slavery and who was forever railing against tyrants could hold people in bondage and act as a tyrant himself.

There can be no question that Thomas Jefferson was deeply and profoundly racist. But where is the empirical evidence that racism invariably trumps sexuality? If it is true that when one talks about Thomas Jefferson one might as well be talking about the nation, historians’ suggestion that Jefferson’s racism would have inevitably overcome his sexuality presents a view of this country’s history and the nature of racism that is seriously flawed.

The notion that a racist white man will not engage in a sexual relationship (even one of long duration) with a black woman is, to put it charitably, quaint. The evidence of miscegenation is far too extensive to support such a claim. It should be clear to all by this point in our history that what some slave masters said they felt about the idea of sexual relations with black women and what they did were often two different things. Being attracted to or having affection for one member of a race does not mean that one has to love or respect other members of that race. It just means that whatever it is that attracts one person to another (something that may be a matter of instinct) can sometimes operate independently of any social construct that tells us how to react to groups of people. As there is sufficient evidence that this happened to other slave masters and slave women, it could have happened to Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

Thomas Jefferson’s racism was not extraordinary. It looms large for us only because he put his views about blacks—and practically every other matter under the sun, trivial and nontrivial—on paper. Those views were horrific.

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