American History

Winthrop Jordan explored the culprit behind rampant racism in the US. He not only investigates US, instead he goes back from the first contact of Europeans to the Africans. In the book, Jordan suggested that white men encountered black men and monkeys at the same time, they thought that there was a connection between them. He said that belief was not wide spread but was available as a theory for later use. Fast forwarding to America, Dr. Jordan cites the writings of Thomas Jefferson, who seemed conflicted knowing that black men were equal to white men, but doubting that black men were as intelligent as white men.
    This book by Jordan is valuable for its analysis of Jeffersons intellectual entanglement with slavery, but it does not delve into Jeffersons day-to-day relationship with slavery. This is important because Jeffersons practical involvement with the system of black bondage indicates that, while his racist beliefs were generally congruent with his actions, his libertarian views about slavery tended to be mere intellectual abstractions. This is particularly true for the years after 1785 and to a somewhat lesser degree, it holds true for the earlier period as well.
    Jordan dealt with this contradiction by citing Jefferson on his views on abolition and holding that the role of the latter role as an owner of men was entailed upon him. According to Jordan, being born into a slave system, he could not in good conscience abandon his black charges he made the best of a bad situation by behaving as a benevolent and indulgent master.
    Accepting the traditional creation that the Virginian was trapped by a system he abhorred, Jordan analyzed Jeffersons central dilemma as being that he hated slavery but thought Negroes inferior to white men. Taking note of Jeffersons daily personal involvement with the slave system, Jordan concluded his heartfelt hatred of slavery did not derive so much from this harassing personal entanglement in the practicalities of slavery as from the system of politics in which he was enmeshed mentally.(Jordan 1974126-127)
    He then treated the problem almost exclusively in terms of Jeffersons ideas and continued with his perceptive account describing the confusion that emerged from the clash of the contradictory tendencies within the Virginians thought. First, his belief in a single creation and in a universe governed by natural law led him inexorably toward the view that the concept of natural rights applied to Negroes by virtue of the fact that they were human beings too. Second, Jefferson also held an intuitive belief in the inferiority of the blacks, which he tried to cover up with an appeal to science, but which actually stemmed from the interaction between his own psychological makeup and the mores of the society that surrounded him. Jeffersons refusal to accept an environmentalist explanation for the apparent inferiority of the blacks led to confusion which Jordan termed monumental. For if the Negroes were innately inferior, then Jefferson must have suspected that the Creator might have in fact created men unequal and he could not say this without giving his assertion exactly the same logical force as his famous statement to the contrary.(130)
    Lastly, his strong doubt that the Negroes were innately inferior is probably of great significance in explaining his ability to ignore his own strictures about their rights. Thinking of them as lesser men, he was able to argue into himself that his behavior toward them was just and benevolent.