This week my reading response is about the myth of the melting pot.
In this excerpt Thomas Jefferson , a founding father of the United States of America writes about what should be done with black people once they are freed from slavery. He lists many differences between white and black people; the majority of these differences being in favor of white people, thus these observations set out to prove that black people are inferior to white people.
Jefferson begins his comparisons of the two races, with skin color. Black people have an "immovable black veil that hides emotions" on the other hand white people are blessed with a "fine mixture of white and red tones." He also speaks of differences in hair and secretion glands. White people excrete less and have flowing hair – another blessing. On the contrary, black people, not only excrete more than white people but they excrete a terrible odor as well.
Thomas Jefferson surprisingly says that black people are "brave and adventuresome" but he takes the complement back by saying that black people are only brave because they are unable to think ahead and therefore they cannot see danger until it is present. Jefferson concludes his passage by declaring "When he is freed he is to be removed beyond to reach of mixture".
Growing up I was taught that Thomas Jefferson was a great man, who fought for our country’s freedom, by writing the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equal.
Later in life I read a book about Sally Hemmings, Jefferson’s slave mistress and mother of his children, and I was shocked to find out that a man who believed in equality for all men was a slave owner. Moreover, a man that did not want white blood to be stained had already went against his own ideals.
I then realized that he was a hypocrite and this essay really shed light on how much of a fraud he was, as well as on his supremacist ideas. The founding father’s choice of words was hard to comprehend mainly because of the time in which this essay was written. Also as a founding father, he should have realized that his audience would not be limited to the world of 1785, thus his harsh and brutal words would reach those reading in the years following. In general, Jefferson was very biased and one sided in his approach, due to his beliefs that black people were inferior. Therefore, his passage was inhibited by his twisted logic caused by his lack of knowledge and truth about the so called “inferior race.”
-Twin.Numero.Dos
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