Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley claimed Tuesday that the United States has never been a “racist” country, rejecting a suggestion that she might have trouble becoming the GOP president…
That one is a lot more nuanced. It distinguishes based on freedom not race. Obviously the US itself was extraordinarily racist and the practice of chattel slavery abhorrent. But that isn’t what that clause says.
I always liked Frederick Douglass’s take on the clause:
But giving the provisions the very worse construction, what does it amount to? I answer—It is a downright disability laid upon the slaveholding States; one which deprives those States of two-fifths of their natural basis of representation. A black man in a free State is worth just two-fifths more than a black man in a slave State, as a basis of political power under the Constitution. Therefore, instead of encouraging slavery, the Constitution encourages freedom by giving an increase of “two-fifths” of political power to free over slave States. So much for the three-fifths clause; taking it at its worst, it still leans to freedom, not slavery; for, be it remembered that the Constitution nowhere forbids a coloured man to vote.
I’m not sure how quoting a man saying ‘A black man in a free State is worth just two-fifths more than a black man in a slave State,’ proves that the 3/5ths compromise is not racist.
I’m not. I’m objecting to your saying the clause was racist when its very purpose was anti-slavery. Slavery is the thing that is racist.
I think a Civil War era leader on abolitionism and civil rights would know what he’s talking about when he describes the clause as supporting his cause.
Also the whole ‘black people are 3/5 of a human’ thing in our founding document.
That one is a lot more nuanced. It distinguishes based on freedom not race. Obviously the US itself was extraordinarily racist and the practice of chattel slavery abhorrent. But that isn’t what that clause says.
I always liked Frederick Douglass’s take on the clause:
I’m not sure how quoting a man saying ‘A black man in a free State is worth just two-fifths more than a black man in a slave State,’ proves that the 3/5ths compromise is not racist.
Because it’s not the clause that invokes racism, it’s the practice of slavery. The clause, as Douglass points out, promotes freedom.
He also points out it’s about black people. Why are you ignoring that part when you quoted it?
I’m not. I’m objecting to your saying the clause was racist when its very purpose was anti-slavery. Slavery is the thing that is racist.
I think a Civil War era leader on abolitionism and civil rights would know what he’s talking about when he describes the clause as supporting his cause.
You are, because Douglass is literally calling it racist.
I think you should read it again. He’s saying even taking the worst possible interpretation, the clause promotes freedom for slaves.
Okay, I’ll read it again.
Yep, it still says “A black man in a free State is worth just two-fifths more than a black man in a slave State”