Thursday, October 11, 2007
Was Thomas Jefferson a racist
Thomas Jefferson is obviously most commonly known as the author of the declaration of idependence. One woud assume that he was ahead of his time and have the beleifs that all me are created equal. However, this essay, Notes on the State of Virginia was quite shocking. "...when they should be colonized to such a place as the circumstances of the time should rendermost proper..." Not a quote that I would've thought came out of Jefferson's mouth. However, in his defense, although he was racist for our times, he was at least for the abolishment of slavery. What are your beliefs on this? Was Jefferson a cold hearted soul that should be removed from the textbooks, or do you understand his opinions and beleive he was even a little ahead of his time?
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6 comments:
I think that Jefferson was not a racist, but he more or less tried to please the elites of his time, but didn’t want to encourage more slavery. I feel he should not be removed from the history books or anything like that, but people should realize that Jefferson was somewhat of a hypocrite.
Thomas Jefferson had slaves of his own. I do not think he was racist, he was just raised during a certain time period in which it was not unusual to have slaves. It doesn't make him racist even though he could have let his slaves free.
I agree with iwish you were here Thomas Jefferson was indeed a hypocrite. His discussion of African Americans in the essay does not agree with the life he has been said to live. He talks about how blacks are not equal to whites, but he was said to have fathered several mixed children.
It seems that we are all in agreement that he was a slaveholder, but not a racist man. I agree that he was raised during the era of slavery. He was wealthy, and thus he owned slaves. THe fathering issue might not mean particularly much, due to certain... factors; however I still do not think that he was a ricist man. He just repeated what he heard and thought to be true to fit in with his peers.
Racism back then is nothing like it is now days. And Jefferson was only presenting the normalities of back then in a more abrupt way then his fellow citizens. No one should be punished for their opinions, but in order to stand by your opinion you need to have reasoning. That is something Thomas Jefferson was shy of and caused many deliberations about.
Like it or not, Thomas Jefferson is a founding father of this country. To take him out of textbooks would be like changing history. In high school, I took a class that was all about the presidents. I found out numerous amounts of information that I never imagined would be associated with a president of this country. For example, Benjamin Franklin cheated on his wife numerous times and was associated with purchasing prostitutes. Should he be removed from textbooks? I'm not saying or protecting that what he did was right, I'm just merely stating that just because we may not like what someone does or believes in does not change the fact that they were a part of this country.
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