Jeffersons Haltung [engl.]
Gerade Sklavenhalter Jefferson dürft es klar gewesen sein, dass die Sklaverei nicht dem Gemeinwohl dient und die Schwarzen nicht als Menschen anzuerkennen kann ich mir beim Imtelligenzgrad dieser Person auch nicht vorstellen.
Ich zitiere aus Jeffersons in den 1780ern entstandenen „Notes on the State of Virginia“, Query XIV:
_It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence 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. – To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? […]
To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. […] This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. […] When freed, he [the slave] is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture._
Quelle: http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefV…
Last but not least ein ziemlich schmissig formulierter Artikel des Historikers Paul Finkelman: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/opinion/the-real-t…&
~//~