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Sophia A. Nelson Roseanne Barr's racism is part of a legacy dating back to Thomas Jefferson — and that Trump is making worse
Something very ugly is happening in our nation right now with respect to black Americans. Is this what America has become, or what America always was?
Something very ugly is happening in our nation right now with respect to black Americans. Is this what America has become, or what America always was?
On Tuesday, May 29 global coffee chain Starbucks closed down around 8,000 of its stores in the U.S. for “unconscious bias” training. On the very same day, ABC cancelled its highly rated reboot “Roseanne” over the sitcom star’s racist Twitter rant (or as she called it, a “joke”) about former presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett.
While Roseanne Barr may be finally facing the consequences for her actions, the same cannot be said for millions of others in this country. Indeed, something very ugly is happening in our nation right now with respect to black Americans. And that ugliness cannot be swept under the carpet anymore by the rest of America.
Obviously this race problem did not begin or end in a Philadelphia coffee shop (or the social media feed of a sitcom star), but the public arrest of two black men sitting quietly in a Starbucks in April is yet more evidence of a situation that can no longer be ignored. To tackle this problem, however, we have to understand its origins: What we are confronting in 2018 is in fact the continuation of an American legacy dating back to the 18th century.
As president and slave owner Thomas Jefferson noted in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” in the early 1780s:
From the beginning, the Founding Fathers believed not only that slaves were inherently less than, but that they would stage an uprising if they were ever allowed to be free. This sense of superiority, mixed with a racially charged fear of free African Americans, continues to inform society today.
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While Roseanne Barr may be finally facing the consequences for her actions, the same cannot be said for millions of others in this country. Indeed, something very ugly is happening in our nation right now with respect to black Americans. And that ugliness cannot be swept under the carpet anymore by the rest of America.
Obviously this race problem did not begin or end in a Philadelphia coffee shop (or the social media feed of a sitcom star), but the public arrest of two black men sitting quietly in a Starbucks in April is yet more evidence of a situation that can no longer be ignored. To tackle this problem, however, we have to understand its origins: What we are confronting in 2018 is in fact the continuation of an American legacy dating back to the 18th century.
As president and slave owner Thomas Jefferson noted in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” in the early 1780s:
"It will probably be asked, why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? 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."
Jefferson, like many of his white peers, considered blacks inferior to whites and feared a race war would ensue if they were emancipated. Jefferson believed that slaves would retaliate against their former masters and thus embraced the idea of "colonization": arranging for transportation of free blacks to Africa, regardless of their birthplace. Slavery, Jefferson wrote, was “demoralizing to both White and Black society.”
From the beginning, the Founding Fathers believed not only that slaves were inherently less than, but that they would stage an uprising if they were ever allowed to be free. This sense of superiority, mixed with a racially charged fear of free African Americans, continues to inform society today.
Continued
