I get a lot of praise, here and elsewhere, for the patience I demonstrate in my conversations. And I really do try my best. But before I give the impression that I always succeed, I think it’s time to prove that occasionally, I can be just as irrational and reactive as the next person. In my article Who Cares If America Is A Racist Country?, I criticised the notion of asking philosophical questions when there are real, concrete issues to address. After all, the only people who benefit from debating whether America is a racist country are the politicians and podcast hosts who earn votes or advertising dollars by doing so.Instead, I argued that focusing on helping people affected by racial inequality would be a much better use of that energy. A regular reader and commenter, named Michael, wasn’t happy to leave the question unanswered:
Yep, absolutely. With all the things to argue with in Michael's reply, I decided to just let some of it slide. Anybody who would describe Obama's politics as "radical left" would need longer than I was willing to invest to convince.
"But how do you talk about the end of slavery as if white people are the heroes of that story without recognising that they were also the villains?"
The real and significant division is not between white and black. The division is between those who oppose the whole idea race and skin as being valid measures of an individual, and those who reject the whole idea of individuals and insist on seeing only the racialized collectives. This is the division that matters, and today, within each side of this division we find both Black and white individuals, except on the one side they see themselves as individuals while on the other side they see themselves as "bodies."
You know this. But it is very difficult to avoid being drawn into accepting and using the frameworks of one's opponents. I think this is what happened here in this discussion.
"The real and significant division is not between white and black. The division is between those who oppose the whole idea race and skin as being valid measures of an individual, and those who reject the whole idea of individuals and insist on seeing only the racialized collectives"
Yes, I completely agree. If I'd been arguing with somebody who was demonising white people, I'd certainly have pointed out this distinction. That's also why I was at such pains to point out that I wasn't collectivising or blaming white people today.
But given Michael's framing, which completely ignored the harm done to black people whilst casting slavery as a problem that white people solved through their bravery and commitment to ending racism, I thought it was worth pointing out that it's not possible talk about slavery and cast white people (of that time) in the way he wants to.
After all, in 1780s America, it would have been fair to assume that all white people were racist. There were, of course, exceptions, but none of us would choose to go back to that time and live as a black person. Not a single one of us. And if we *were* unlucky enough to find ourselves in that situation, none of us could count on our humanity being recognised by the average white person on the street.
So I completely see what you're saying, and in a different conversation, I wouldn't have accepted that framework. But in Michael's case it felt as if there was value in adopting it. His view was so absurdly one-sided that it would have been difficult to show him what he was missing without mirroring his language.
Steve QJ you wrote "In fact, I'm speaking out against these idiots. I'm actually putting my neck on the line. The entire reason I speak out against them is that they cause the kind of "race issue fatigue" you seem to be expressing here. "
Yes you are and you have. I've read the last 5-6 of your articles and you take issue with the "woke" crowd often. And I believe you're correct re: "race issue fatigue. " In fact I think we as people are experiencing general info overload fatigue. What with Covid, Afghanistan, political harping and etc. I myself feel like a tidal wave has swamped my brain. The past two Sundays I tried an experiment. No social media, news, or other electronic input (with the exception of one football game on T.V. I read a book, cooked and played with the dog. I do these things anyway, but stayed off my phone and laptop. This was refreshing and I find myself already looking forward to this Sunday.
"What with Covid, Afghanistan, political harping and etc. I myself feel like a tidal wave has swamped my brain"
Ugh, I know the feeling. I spend way too much time reading about this stuff and losing myself on Twitter and I really need to remind myself to step away from it once in a while. The internet is both the best and the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity.
I haven't graduated to taking a day off once a week though. That's a great idea. I might try to follow your example.
I hope you do...I'd guess you'll be glad you did although I have to confess it wasn't easy. I had to turn my phone off and stay out of the bedroom where I'd stashed it. The 2nd time was a little easier.
Have compassion for yourself. Instead of digging in your heels, you introspect, recognizing where you have projected past frustrations onto the interaction. That kind of self-awareness can be so hard, and allowing others to bare witness to it is even more difficult. Thanks for modeling that process for readers and in general for doing this work.
Thanks Erin. Yeah, I'm not being too hard on myself. It's mainly just driven home the importance of stepping away from the keyboard when I'm annoyed. It actually crossed my mind to do so at the time, but I was just to irritated to obey my better instincts 😅
Also, I think the problem of black political actors like Obama, being seen to represent all black people, either as a scapegoat and or some kind of symbol of anything, is also a problem that black politicians AND activists perpetuate and take advantage of when they act as brokers or operatives that supposedly speak for people, that they may or may not represent. The problem goes both ways and is endemic across the board, with I think mostly negative consequences. Anytime anyone says "we" xyz, without representing an actual constituency or group they themselves have organized, that have put that person in a position to speak for them, its a problem. The benefits of "faces in places" type identity politics, often are pretty slim, esp when you are talking about either extremes, centrist neoliberal Dems, who don't confront capitalism as well as hashtag activists who aren't doing actual offline, non symbolic organizing.
"also a problem that black politicians AND activists perpetuate and take advantage of when they act as brokers or operatives that supposedly speak for people"
Yep, I completely agree. Especially when what they say in utter nonsense. So many of the people "speaking" for black people do so from a position of utter weakness. Portraying us all as feeble, helpless victims.
But of course, the fact that they perpetuate this idea gives them a certain degree of clout.
I don't where else to put this request, but I guess here is as a good as anywhere. I'm really glad that you have decided to do this full time. I'd like to give you more support that just the 5 bucks for the subscription. Could you please start a Patreon account so I can give you a bit more money each month?
First of all, I can't fully express how much I appreciate this. Thank you so much for this offer Teed. And second of all, this week's members only thread will touch on this topic, so well done for being ahead of the curve. 😁
I go into this in my next response, but this sentence really is breathtaking.
"The Constitution guaranteed equal rights for all but it took 90 years and hundreds of thousands of white lives sacrificed before we could even rid ourselves of slavery?"
Yes breathtaking and as you said indicative of Michael's ignorance. I'm currently working on a historical fiction piece that occurs during and right after over 200 black men women and children were massacred in East St. Louis Illinois in 1918. My point is the sacrifice of white people Michael mentions is to severely narrow the focus. Like wearing glasses with only a small hole in the center so all one can see is right in front of them.
"Like wearing glasses with only a small hole in the center so all one can see is right in front of them."
This is exactly it! It's natural to tend to focus on certain aspects of history. But to ignore so much and focus on so little is ridiculous. Of course, this practiced ignorance is why some people are able to hold such crazy views. The antidote to so many problems, from the "woke" left to the racism-denying right, is education.
Michael needs to hit the history books..since its inception? Race got invented to justify racism, and racism was the disciplining practice that arose to enact for the brutal enslavement and capitalist extraction of free labor of Africans and West Indian Africans in the US...if we aren't very clear on what racism actually is (the practice or action of a double standard based on ancestry) can't see any of this clearly...
The fact that he doubled down from "hundreds of years", which was already ridiculous, to "since its inception", says it all really. He's not interested in the truth, just in defending America. He doesn't offer any justification for this claim, and I doubt that he's aware of even a fraction of America's racial history. White people died during the civil war, and slaves were freed after the civil war, and that's enough for him.
So many conversations are a struggle because the person you're talking to has never had their beliefs challenged even a little bit, and so they have no idea how wrong they are. These people are the most infuriating and simultaneously the ones you need to be most patient with if you want to make them think even a little bit. I have another conversation with Michael coming up, on a different topic, which once again illustrates this.
The thing that triggered me about Michael's post was his statement that "As it turned out, Obama veered leftward and eventually started stoking racial animosity". It's hard to take anyone seriously who would make a claim like that. Michael, please give me an example of two statements in sequence which show him "veering leftward" and any statement whatsoever which shows him "stoking racial animosity". These statements went from Fox news to his mouth without ever passing through his brain.
Slightly off-topic and possibly just recency bias, but some of the discussion here reminded me of an excellent book I just finished, Amy Chua's Political Tribes. Highly recommend it if you haven't read it already.
I was surprised to see you seemingly repeat the myth that the 3/5 clause means that anyone is just 3/5 of a person. In the text, it is only about how many seats a state gets in Congress, and it meant that slave states got less than they would have with 5/5. (In the 14th Amendment, the number is changed to 0/5 to pressure ex-slave-states to grant black suffrage.)
No reference is made to race, only to status of free or other, so states got as much representation for free blacks as for anyone else.
Yeah, there’s a long conversation with Adam about this somewhere in the comments here. I think we hashed it out pretty well. The point is, the question of representation was only an issue because of the fact that black people weren’t allowed to vote. It was a solution designed to protect that particular outcome.
Lastly, I moved from California to Maryland years ago. Both have two Senate seats, but CA has seven times as many people. So did I become 7 times as much of a person when I moved to MD? And did I become a non-person when I lived in DC for a few years?
A small point: the phrase "...black people were only three-fifths of a human being..." is inaccurate.
First, it was slaves, not black people, who were counted as three fifths of a person. You can argue that this is a semantic difference because nearly all blacks were slaves but the distinction is far more than semantic in application.
Second, what were the alternatives? If slaves would have been counted as a whole person, the south would have had many more representatives in the House and progress toward abolition that much harder to achieve. If slaves would not have been counted at all, then the argument would now be that "black people weren't considered human beings at all in the constitution."
Should slaves have been considered whole people for purposes of representation (the argument that slave-owners were making) or should they have not been considered people at all for purposes of representation (the argument abolitionists were making)?
The alternative is painfully obvious. Slaves should have been counted as whole people, because they *were* whole people, and they should have been given the right to vote (along with all their other rights). I suspect that progress towards abolition would have been pretty rapid if the millions of slaves literally building the country were given a fair say in how it was run.
The only way your question makes sense is if you haven’t considered that *not* keeping human beings as slaves was an available option all along, the people of the time were simply too selfish, greedy, and in some cases, evil to consider it.
The point you seem to be missing about whether black people we're considered 3/5ths of a person or not human beings at all in the constitution, is that they *were* treated as property, legally, for generations, and then treated as subhuman for generations more. It doesn't really matter what the constitution says when that's the reality, does it?
And yes, I consider the distinction between slaves and black people in 1780s America to be pretty academic. So would you if you'd been living back then. I mean, think about it; how confident would you have felt about your freedom if you were black and living in 1780s America? Find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time and you'd be sold into slavery pretty quickly. And who would you ask for help? The police?
You're right, slavery never should have existed. However, it did exist and the people who wanted to eliminate slavery were the ones who argued that slaves should not be counted as humans and it was the slaveowners who argued that slaves should be counted as whole people.
Again, those people, almost exclusively in the north, who considered that *not* keeping human slaves was an available option all along were the same people who did not want slaves to be considered as human beings.
If it doesn't really matter what the constitution says, then it isn't worth mischaracterizing it either.
I'm really not sure what you're arguing for here. As you probably know, the amendment was called the "three-fifths compromise", and it was a compromise that was necessary because millions of Americans refused to recognise slaves as full human beings with all the rights that should have been afforded to them by the constitution.
You're splitting hairs about black people vs slaves while ignoring the part of my reply when I asked you to consider how meaningful a difference there actually was at that point in history. If you had to go back to live in that time as a free white person or a free black person, which would you choose? It's kind of a no-brainer, right?
You're also accusing me of misrepresenting the constitution when I'm not. I'm happy to admit it was "inaccurate" to fail to distinguish between black people and slaves. I am, however, questioning why you think that's a particularly meaningful inaccuracy given the gravity of what is actually being discussed.
You seem to be arguing that the three-fifths compromise was a good thing because it gave less power to southern states that wanted to maintain slavery. I guess you could take that position. But my position is that any compromise that didn't end the enforced slavery of human beings was a crappy compromise.
You can't compromise on an issue that's so fundamental. The civil war was what happened when the north was finally willing to do whatever was *necessary* (though of course it would be generous to claim the the entire motivation was abolishing slavery and it certainly wasn't ending racism as Michael claimed).
I think to understand history appropriately we have to split hairs, and understand the constitution, the Constitution talks about free people and other persons (euphemism for enslaved people), not race, if we want to undo race, and racism on any level we need to understand well, how these terms came to be, when, why and by whom. (See Racecraft page 118)
No, as much as I'm in favour of "colour-blindness" in general, this is the version of it that I actually agree is a problem. This language obscures the nature of the problem rather than clarifying it. It's like pretending that there was some reason, other than the fact that they were female and considered inferior, that prevented women from getting the right to vote until 1920.
Slavery targeted black people. Enslaved people were black people. Racism was invented to justify enslaving black people. There is no more appropriate understanding of this history. It wan't about ancestry per se (that's why I don't like Racecraft's definition of slavery), or about legal status, or anything else, it was about the colour of black people's skin. Which is also why the oppression of black people continued long after slavery was over.
I'm all for being precise (splitting hairs is something else), but again, language that obscures the reason why these particular people, out of all the other people in America, were enslaved, is *less* precise. The fact that the people who wrote the constitution (75 years before the end of slavery) obscured this fact with the language they used, doesn't mean we should do the same. We can absolutely undo racism without pretending it never existed.
There were not "black people" at the time Africans were enslaved. The Fields sisters are historians/sociologists and for that reason, very much in favor of historicity...
Yeah, I'm not talking color blindness, obviously we all see color, I'm saying what we see is ancestry, not race. Race was invented and reinfied to justify the racism of chattel slavery and Jim Crow, those things didn't happen because of race. Saying things happened because of race places the onus on the concept of race and the person being raced, instead of racism (racism creates race). Its a broader conceptualization that helps us understand much more about the current moment. For example, how the holocaust was racist
Thank you. This is an accurate summary of the points I was trying to make.
And one of the reasons I object to the characterization (and the implication that it was abolitionists who wanted slaves to be counted as whole people and slaveowners who wanted slaves not to be counted as human) is that it wipes away or buries a critical debate going on among those who opposed slavery: do we strengthen the union and slowly weaken the institution of slavery or do we jeopardize the infant union because we can't compromise on an issue that's so fundamental.
Maybe the north should have gone to war with the south on the heels of the revolutionary war. That's a valid argument and if there's any issue for which an absolutist position should be taken, it would be slavery. But the consequences could have been disastrous. More disastrous than deferring on the issue and having another 100 years of slavery and the civil war? That's hard to believe as well.
I think this pragmatic vs. absolutist discussion is important and relevant but I think it disappears when we lose the context of the 3/5 compromise.
"one of the reasons I object to the characterization (and the implication that it was abolitionists who wanted slaves to be counted as whole people and slaveowners who wanted slaves not to be counted as human"
I wasn't making this characterisation though. Nor was I implying this. I was simply stating the fact that slaves (who just so happened to all be black), were considered 3/5ths of a person by the constitution. And this was because the alternative, aka recognising their humanity, was considered unacceptable.
You argue that the consequences of doing so could have been disastrous. But slavery *was* disastrous. Not only for black people (including many black people today), but for the soul of America. We're having this conversation now because America made, what I'd have hoped everybody could agree, was the wrong choice. Over 150 years after the end of slavery, we're seeing all this division precisely because of that choice.
So I'd argue that I'm not the one missing the context of the 3/5ths compromise. The context is that rather than do what was necessary to live up to the founding ideals of this still young country, a compromise was made that America has been struggling to heal from ever since, and sadly will for some time to come. This compromise temporarily fixed a few problems for the white people of America, and did absolutely nothing for the problems of the black people.
Glossing over the fact that it was the slaveowners who wanted slaves to be considered whole people (no small part of "recognizing their humanity") does mischaracterize the situation. Substituting "black" for "slave" further confuses the abolitionist arguments against slavery. You can disagree with the results of their strategy, but they're the people who were trying to free slaves. Taking it at is worst, it still leans to freedom, not slavery.
"a compromise was made that America has been struggling to heal from ever since"
America has been struggling to heal from slavery, not the compromise. America would still be struggling to heal from slavery if a civil war had been fought in 1790 instead of 1860. The compromise ended up deferring a conflict, and allowing a repugnant practice to continue, for far too long. In that regard, the strategy of the compromising abolitionists may very well have been wrong and they probably would have admitted as much in hindsight.
Slavery was disastrous. Deferring on the issue a single day is a day too long. The abolitionists would agree with us on that. But attributing to them the qualities of selfishness, greed and evil does a disservice to them.
its crucial we are extra specific, especially for those of us on the left, because then we can see how non-specific things have become...and if we are to fight against injustice, to be truly anti-racist (not just SJW/Woke versions of anti racist) we have to know our terms, what we want, how it came to be, in order to forge a path to do something else
Again, I couldn't agree more with the importance of being specific, the reason I described a distinction between "black people" and "slaves" in 1780s America as "splitting hairs" is because, as I hope I've made clear, the distinction was both small and fragile. Many freed black people *were* sold into slavery because, again, slavery was predicated on skin colour.
It's possible to be aware of all this, to admit all of this, and focus on a path to something else. I'm not trying to wrap myself in these people's oppression, but I absolutely won't overlook it either. As far as I can see, this is what being specific is.
No, I'm with George Carlin on this one: https://youtu.be/7n2PW1TqxQk. I loathe soft language like "enslaved people". "Slaves" doesn't sound nice, because slavery wasn't nice. Softening one softens the other in my opinion. Anybody who doesn't fully understand that slaves were humans and deserved to be treated as such, might well be beyond hope.
Just an aside, Obama did NOT have radical
Left politics, they were actually neoliberal, the right wing of the democratic party, much closer to Reagan than FDR and the New Deal...
Yep, absolutely. With all the things to argue with in Michael's reply, I decided to just let some of it slide. Anybody who would describe Obama's politics as "radical left" would need longer than I was willing to invest to convince.
right...
"But how do you talk about the end of slavery as if white people are the heroes of that story without recognising that they were also the villains?"
The real and significant division is not between white and black. The division is between those who oppose the whole idea race and skin as being valid measures of an individual, and those who reject the whole idea of individuals and insist on seeing only the racialized collectives. This is the division that matters, and today, within each side of this division we find both Black and white individuals, except on the one side they see themselves as individuals while on the other side they see themselves as "bodies."
You know this. But it is very difficult to avoid being drawn into accepting and using the frameworks of one's opponents. I think this is what happened here in this discussion.
"The real and significant division is not between white and black. The division is between those who oppose the whole idea race and skin as being valid measures of an individual, and those who reject the whole idea of individuals and insist on seeing only the racialized collectives"
Yes, I completely agree. If I'd been arguing with somebody who was demonising white people, I'd certainly have pointed out this distinction. That's also why I was at such pains to point out that I wasn't collectivising or blaming white people today.
But given Michael's framing, which completely ignored the harm done to black people whilst casting slavery as a problem that white people solved through their bravery and commitment to ending racism, I thought it was worth pointing out that it's not possible talk about slavery and cast white people (of that time) in the way he wants to.
After all, in 1780s America, it would have been fair to assume that all white people were racist. There were, of course, exceptions, but none of us would choose to go back to that time and live as a black person. Not a single one of us. And if we *were* unlucky enough to find ourselves in that situation, none of us could count on our humanity being recognised by the average white person on the street.
So I completely see what you're saying, and in a different conversation, I wouldn't have accepted that framework. But in Michael's case it felt as if there was value in adopting it. His view was so absurdly one-sided that it would have been difficult to show him what he was missing without mirroring his language.
Steve QJ you wrote "In fact, I'm speaking out against these idiots. I'm actually putting my neck on the line. The entire reason I speak out against them is that they cause the kind of "race issue fatigue" you seem to be expressing here. "
Yes you are and you have. I've read the last 5-6 of your articles and you take issue with the "woke" crowd often. And I believe you're correct re: "race issue fatigue. " In fact I think we as people are experiencing general info overload fatigue. What with Covid, Afghanistan, political harping and etc. I myself feel like a tidal wave has swamped my brain. The past two Sundays I tried an experiment. No social media, news, or other electronic input (with the exception of one football game on T.V. I read a book, cooked and played with the dog. I do these things anyway, but stayed off my phone and laptop. This was refreshing and I find myself already looking forward to this Sunday.
"What with Covid, Afghanistan, political harping and etc. I myself feel like a tidal wave has swamped my brain"
Ugh, I know the feeling. I spend way too much time reading about this stuff and losing myself on Twitter and I really need to remind myself to step away from it once in a while. The internet is both the best and the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity.
I haven't graduated to taking a day off once a week though. That's a great idea. I might try to follow your example.
I hope you do...I'd guess you'll be glad you did although I have to confess it wasn't easy. I had to turn my phone off and stay out of the bedroom where I'd stashed it. The 2nd time was a little easier.
Have compassion for yourself. Instead of digging in your heels, you introspect, recognizing where you have projected past frustrations onto the interaction. That kind of self-awareness can be so hard, and allowing others to bare witness to it is even more difficult. Thanks for modeling that process for readers and in general for doing this work.
Thanks Erin. Yeah, I'm not being too hard on myself. It's mainly just driven home the importance of stepping away from the keyboard when I'm annoyed. It actually crossed my mind to do so at the time, but I was just to irritated to obey my better instincts 😅
Also, I think the problem of black political actors like Obama, being seen to represent all black people, either as a scapegoat and or some kind of symbol of anything, is also a problem that black politicians AND activists perpetuate and take advantage of when they act as brokers or operatives that supposedly speak for people, that they may or may not represent. The problem goes both ways and is endemic across the board, with I think mostly negative consequences. Anytime anyone says "we" xyz, without representing an actual constituency or group they themselves have organized, that have put that person in a position to speak for them, its a problem. The benefits of "faces in places" type identity politics, often are pretty slim, esp when you are talking about either extremes, centrist neoliberal Dems, who don't confront capitalism as well as hashtag activists who aren't doing actual offline, non symbolic organizing.
"also a problem that black politicians AND activists perpetuate and take advantage of when they act as brokers or operatives that supposedly speak for people"
Yep, I completely agree. Especially when what they say in utter nonsense. So many of the people "speaking" for black people do so from a position of utter weakness. Portraying us all as feeble, helpless victims.
But of course, the fact that they perpetuate this idea gives them a certain degree of clout.
I don't where else to put this request, but I guess here is as a good as anywhere. I'm really glad that you have decided to do this full time. I'd like to give you more support that just the 5 bucks for the subscription. Could you please start a Patreon account so I can give you a bit more money each month?
First of all, I can't fully express how much I appreciate this. Thank you so much for this offer Teed. And second of all, this week's members only thread will touch on this topic, so well done for being ahead of the curve. 😁
I go into this in my next response, but this sentence really is breathtaking.
"The Constitution guaranteed equal rights for all but it took 90 years and hundreds of thousands of white lives sacrificed before we could even rid ourselves of slavery?"
Yes breathtaking and as you said indicative of Michael's ignorance. I'm currently working on a historical fiction piece that occurs during and right after over 200 black men women and children were massacred in East St. Louis Illinois in 1918. My point is the sacrifice of white people Michael mentions is to severely narrow the focus. Like wearing glasses with only a small hole in the center so all one can see is right in front of them.
"Like wearing glasses with only a small hole in the center so all one can see is right in front of them."
This is exactly it! It's natural to tend to focus on certain aspects of history. But to ignore so much and focus on so little is ridiculous. Of course, this practiced ignorance is why some people are able to hold such crazy views. The antidote to so many problems, from the "woke" left to the racism-denying right, is education.
Michael needs to hit the history books..since its inception? Race got invented to justify racism, and racism was the disciplining practice that arose to enact for the brutal enslavement and capitalist extraction of free labor of Africans and West Indian Africans in the US...if we aren't very clear on what racism actually is (the practice or action of a double standard based on ancestry) can't see any of this clearly...
The fact that he doubled down from "hundreds of years", which was already ridiculous, to "since its inception", says it all really. He's not interested in the truth, just in defending America. He doesn't offer any justification for this claim, and I doubt that he's aware of even a fraction of America's racial history. White people died during the civil war, and slaves were freed after the civil war, and that's enough for him.
So many conversations are a struggle because the person you're talking to has never had their beliefs challenged even a little bit, and so they have no idea how wrong they are. These people are the most infuriating and simultaneously the ones you need to be most patient with if you want to make them think even a little bit. I have another conversation with Michael coming up, on a different topic, which once again illustrates this.
you are doing the lord's work! I mean this guy is even outside of the whole 1619/1776 polemic...
The thing that triggered me about Michael's post was his statement that "As it turned out, Obama veered leftward and eventually started stoking racial animosity". It's hard to take anyone seriously who would make a claim like that. Michael, please give me an example of two statements in sequence which show him "veering leftward" and any statement whatsoever which shows him "stoking racial animosity". These statements went from Fox news to his mouth without ever passing through his brain.
"These statements went from Fox news to his mouth without ever passing through his brain."
😂 It's both hilarious and tragic how true this is. If only people still watched the news to be informed instead of to be entertained.
I remember reading this conversation in Medium!
Slightly off-topic and possibly just recency bias, but some of the discussion here reminded me of an excellent book I just finished, Amy Chua's Political Tribes. Highly recommend it if you haven't read it already.
I was surprised to see you seemingly repeat the myth that the 3/5 clause means that anyone is just 3/5 of a person. In the text, it is only about how many seats a state gets in Congress, and it meant that slave states got less than they would have with 5/5. (In the 14th Amendment, the number is changed to 0/5 to pressure ex-slave-states to grant black suffrage.)
No reference is made to race, only to status of free or other, so states got as much representation for free blacks as for anyone else.
Yeah, there’s a long conversation with Adam about this somewhere in the comments here. I think we hashed it out pretty well. The point is, the question of representation was only an issue because of the fact that black people weren’t allowed to vote. It was a solution designed to protect that particular outcome.
Lastly, I moved from California to Maryland years ago. Both have two Senate seats, but CA has seven times as many people. So did I become 7 times as much of a person when I moved to MD? And did I become a non-person when I lived in DC for a few years?
😅 You’re ignoring a great deal of context here John.
A small point: the phrase "...black people were only three-fifths of a human being..." is inaccurate.
First, it was slaves, not black people, who were counted as three fifths of a person. You can argue that this is a semantic difference because nearly all blacks were slaves but the distinction is far more than semantic in application.
Second, what were the alternatives? If slaves would have been counted as a whole person, the south would have had many more representatives in the House and progress toward abolition that much harder to achieve. If slaves would not have been counted at all, then the argument would now be that "black people weren't considered human beings at all in the constitution."
Should slaves have been considered whole people for purposes of representation (the argument that slave-owners were making) or should they have not been considered people at all for purposes of representation (the argument abolitionists were making)?
"Second, what were the alternatives?"
The alternative is painfully obvious. Slaves should have been counted as whole people, because they *were* whole people, and they should have been given the right to vote (along with all their other rights). I suspect that progress towards abolition would have been pretty rapid if the millions of slaves literally building the country were given a fair say in how it was run.
The only way your question makes sense is if you haven’t considered that *not* keeping human beings as slaves was an available option all along, the people of the time were simply too selfish, greedy, and in some cases, evil to consider it.
The point you seem to be missing about whether black people we're considered 3/5ths of a person or not human beings at all in the constitution, is that they *were* treated as property, legally, for generations, and then treated as subhuman for generations more. It doesn't really matter what the constitution says when that's the reality, does it?
And yes, I consider the distinction between slaves and black people in 1780s America to be pretty academic. So would you if you'd been living back then. I mean, think about it; how confident would you have felt about your freedom if you were black and living in 1780s America? Find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time and you'd be sold into slavery pretty quickly. And who would you ask for help? The police?
You're right, slavery never should have existed. However, it did exist and the people who wanted to eliminate slavery were the ones who argued that slaves should not be counted as humans and it was the slaveowners who argued that slaves should be counted as whole people.
Again, those people, almost exclusively in the north, who considered that *not* keeping human slaves was an available option all along were the same people who did not want slaves to be considered as human beings.
If it doesn't really matter what the constitution says, then it isn't worth mischaracterizing it either.
I'm really not sure what you're arguing for here. As you probably know, the amendment was called the "three-fifths compromise", and it was a compromise that was necessary because millions of Americans refused to recognise slaves as full human beings with all the rights that should have been afforded to them by the constitution.
You're splitting hairs about black people vs slaves while ignoring the part of my reply when I asked you to consider how meaningful a difference there actually was at that point in history. If you had to go back to live in that time as a free white person or a free black person, which would you choose? It's kind of a no-brainer, right?
You're also accusing me of misrepresenting the constitution when I'm not. I'm happy to admit it was "inaccurate" to fail to distinguish between black people and slaves. I am, however, questioning why you think that's a particularly meaningful inaccuracy given the gravity of what is actually being discussed.
You seem to be arguing that the three-fifths compromise was a good thing because it gave less power to southern states that wanted to maintain slavery. I guess you could take that position. But my position is that any compromise that didn't end the enforced slavery of human beings was a crappy compromise.
You can't compromise on an issue that's so fundamental. The civil war was what happened when the north was finally willing to do whatever was *necessary* (though of course it would be generous to claim the the entire motivation was abolishing slavery and it certainly wasn't ending racism as Michael claimed).
I think to understand history appropriately we have to split hairs, and understand the constitution, the Constitution talks about free people and other persons (euphemism for enslaved people), not race, if we want to undo race, and racism on any level we need to understand well, how these terms came to be, when, why and by whom. (See Racecraft page 118)
No, as much as I'm in favour of "colour-blindness" in general, this is the version of it that I actually agree is a problem. This language obscures the nature of the problem rather than clarifying it. It's like pretending that there was some reason, other than the fact that they were female and considered inferior, that prevented women from getting the right to vote until 1920.
Slavery targeted black people. Enslaved people were black people. Racism was invented to justify enslaving black people. There is no more appropriate understanding of this history. It wan't about ancestry per se (that's why I don't like Racecraft's definition of slavery), or about legal status, or anything else, it was about the colour of black people's skin. Which is also why the oppression of black people continued long after slavery was over.
I'm all for being precise (splitting hairs is something else), but again, language that obscures the reason why these particular people, out of all the other people in America, were enslaved, is *less* precise. The fact that the people who wrote the constitution (75 years before the end of slavery) obscured this fact with the language they used, doesn't mean we should do the same. We can absolutely undo racism without pretending it never existed.
There were not "black people" at the time Africans were enslaved. The Fields sisters are historians/sociologists and for that reason, very much in favor of historicity...
Read the book...
Yeah, I'm not talking color blindness, obviously we all see color, I'm saying what we see is ancestry, not race. Race was invented and reinfied to justify the racism of chattel slavery and Jim Crow, those things didn't happen because of race. Saying things happened because of race places the onus on the concept of race and the person being raced, instead of racism (racism creates race). Its a broader conceptualization that helps us understand much more about the current moment. For example, how the holocaust was racist
Thank you. This is an accurate summary of the points I was trying to make.
And one of the reasons I object to the characterization (and the implication that it was abolitionists who wanted slaves to be counted as whole people and slaveowners who wanted slaves not to be counted as human) is that it wipes away or buries a critical debate going on among those who opposed slavery: do we strengthen the union and slowly weaken the institution of slavery or do we jeopardize the infant union because we can't compromise on an issue that's so fundamental.
Maybe the north should have gone to war with the south on the heels of the revolutionary war. That's a valid argument and if there's any issue for which an absolutist position should be taken, it would be slavery. But the consequences could have been disastrous. More disastrous than deferring on the issue and having another 100 years of slavery and the civil war? That's hard to believe as well.
I think this pragmatic vs. absolutist discussion is important and relevant but I think it disappears when we lose the context of the 3/5 compromise.
"one of the reasons I object to the characterization (and the implication that it was abolitionists who wanted slaves to be counted as whole people and slaveowners who wanted slaves not to be counted as human"
I wasn't making this characterisation though. Nor was I implying this. I was simply stating the fact that slaves (who just so happened to all be black), were considered 3/5ths of a person by the constitution. And this was because the alternative, aka recognising their humanity, was considered unacceptable.
You argue that the consequences of doing so could have been disastrous. But slavery *was* disastrous. Not only for black people (including many black people today), but for the soul of America. We're having this conversation now because America made, what I'd have hoped everybody could agree, was the wrong choice. Over 150 years after the end of slavery, we're seeing all this division precisely because of that choice.
So I'd argue that I'm not the one missing the context of the 3/5ths compromise. The context is that rather than do what was necessary to live up to the founding ideals of this still young country, a compromise was made that America has been struggling to heal from ever since, and sadly will for some time to come. This compromise temporarily fixed a few problems for the white people of America, and did absolutely nothing for the problems of the black people.
Glossing over the fact that it was the slaveowners who wanted slaves to be considered whole people (no small part of "recognizing their humanity") does mischaracterize the situation. Substituting "black" for "slave" further confuses the abolitionist arguments against slavery. You can disagree with the results of their strategy, but they're the people who were trying to free slaves. Taking it at is worst, it still leans to freedom, not slavery.
"a compromise was made that America has been struggling to heal from ever since"
America has been struggling to heal from slavery, not the compromise. America would still be struggling to heal from slavery if a civil war had been fought in 1790 instead of 1860. The compromise ended up deferring a conflict, and allowing a repugnant practice to continue, for far too long. In that regard, the strategy of the compromising abolitionists may very well have been wrong and they probably would have admitted as much in hindsight.
Slavery was disastrous. Deferring on the issue a single day is a day too long. The abolitionists would agree with us on that. But attributing to them the qualities of selfishness, greed and evil does a disservice to them.
its crucial we are extra specific, especially for those of us on the left, because then we can see how non-specific things have become...and if we are to fight against injustice, to be truly anti-racist (not just SJW/Woke versions of anti racist) we have to know our terms, what we want, how it came to be, in order to forge a path to do something else
Again, I couldn't agree more with the importance of being specific, the reason I described a distinction between "black people" and "slaves" in 1780s America as "splitting hairs" is because, as I hope I've made clear, the distinction was both small and fragile. Many freed black people *were* sold into slavery because, again, slavery was predicated on skin colour.
It's possible to be aware of all this, to admit all of this, and focus on a path to something else. I'm not trying to wrap myself in these people's oppression, but I absolutely won't overlook it either. As far as I can see, this is what being specific is.
another small point, going even further, it most humanistic language is "enslaved people"
No, I'm with George Carlin on this one: https://youtu.be/7n2PW1TqxQk. I loathe soft language like "enslaved people". "Slaves" doesn't sound nice, because slavery wasn't nice. Softening one softens the other in my opinion. Anybody who doesn't fully understand that slaves were humans and deserved to be treated as such, might well be beyond hope.