The white supremacist terrorist who massacred the nine Black
people in the historic Charleston church sounded exactly like Thomas Jefferson
in his wild rant about rape. In Notes on
the State of Virginia, Jefferson speculates on the possibility of
emancipating the enslaved Africans. He argues, however, that Blacks would have
to be moved away from white society. One of the most pressing reasons Jefferson
gives for this separation is expressed as follows: “their own judgment in
favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is
the preference of the Oran-ootan for the black women over those of his own
species” (p. 138).
To put it in plain English, Jefferson is saying that just as
the Orangutans in Africa have an irresistible urge to mate with Black women, so
too Black men in America have an irresistible urge to mate with white women. It
is a law of nature: the inferior being is irresistibly attracted to mate with
the superior being.
No comments:
Post a Comment