F yo nickel!
Man, I’m really learning a lot in my African American history class.
I remember in elementary/junior high/high school, we would learn about American presidents and all the things they did like Thomas Jefferson for instance.
You hear all the time about all the inventions he came up with and how great he was and how his face is on a nickel.
But I’ve never heard of him being a sexist ignorant bigot.
Here are some of the things he wrote:
“I 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.”
“They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor”
“They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.”
“Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.”
“But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait, of painting or sculpture.”
The thoughts of one of our supposed “greatest presidents”…
Amazing that information like this has never even been grazed in a regular history class. I feel very uncomfortable and wonder what else has been ignored in order to preserve the hero status of our “greatest leaders”…
