Me and Jefferson and White Supremacy

One of the many reasons we celebrate Thomas Jefferson is his work authoring our Declaration of Independence. He, and a relatively small group of mostly young accomplices, not only believed that the American colonies should be independent of Great Britain, but also also that the new nation they proposed to start should be founded upon the notion that governments are expressions of the will of free people.

But Jefferson was not perfect, and his vision for the United States of America was clouded by significant blind spots. He owned slaves, and the issue of slavery was a deeply contentious one as our founders tried to create a single new nation on this side of the Atlantic. And we know that when he wrote that “all men are created equal” he meant men, and white men at that. Thomas Jefferson was, like his compatriots, a person both of extraordinary vision and of his own time.

We can and will continue to honor Jefferson, and the others, for the lasting good they did at great risk to themselves. But we also can and must at the same time acknowledge their shortcomings and failures. Otherwise, we may never move beyond them.

As I’ve been working through the Me and White Supremacy project of our presbytery—which is basically about me and my participation in white supremacy—I recalled several times some words of Jefferson’s that show just how blind he was. On July 6, 1775, Thomas Jefferson published a Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, an argument for going to war to secure our independence.

(I know these words because American composer Randall Thompson set them to music in 1942 in a piece called, The Testament of Freedom. I have sung it several times. But now, I don’t think I can sing again.)

Consider these words: “We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.” (More dreadful than involuntary slavery?)

Or these: “We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations (earlier dubbed, “our innocent posterity”) to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.” (But it’s okay to force hereditary bondage upon others?)

He says that Americans must be “with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves.” (How far would he—or I—go to defend Black people who made such a resolution about themselves?)

And this: “In our native land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it; for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves; against violence actually offered; we have taken up arms.” (Not property acquired by blood and broken promises, and worked as surely by the enslaved as by the free?)

These words of Thomas Jefferson’s are painful to read, even more painful to sing. We now know, or by now we should know, just how blind they are to the reality that was all around him, and that is still around us almost 250 years later.

But if I try to fling those words back into Jefferson’s face, it is my own that takes the hit. I have not understood, because I have not seen, the full extent of the injustices and moral compromises supporting the kind of life I have been privileged to live and to enjoy. I see today more than I saw yesterday, and it’s really uncomfortable. Once I see, I cannot not see.

It is well-known that in 1781, Jefferson faced slavery and its awful consequences more directly, causing him to write, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” Unfortunately, he left the bringing of God’s justice up to God, apparently hoping slavery might be abolished by some gentle divine fiat. It didn’t happen that way, of course. Nor will it happen that way for the racism that still plagues us. I—we—need to do far more than tremble.