This week
in class, we read the Declaration of Independence as well as the Notes on the
State of Virginia which were written by Thomas Jefferson. It showed us the
mindset of many people in the early United States. Jefferson states that
"all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence, which
would make one believe that all people would be given the same opportunities.
In the Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson was extremely racist
towards Africans in his writing, he mentioned Africans to be “dull, tasteless, and
anomalous" in imagination as well as "inferior to whites." These
two statements completely contradict each other, Jefferson pledged to give
equal rights to all and then writes eight years later that Africans are like a
different species and inferior to whites. Did he say that all men are created
equal just to give the people false hope? Merriam-Webster states the definition
of a hypocrite to be "a person who claims or pretends to have certain beliefs about
what is right but who behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs."
Clearly, Jefferson is being hypocritical as he states that all are equal,
although he himself is a particularly cruel slave owner. The New York Times
writes, " He sometimes punished slaves by selling them away from
their families and friends, a retaliation that was incomprehensibly cruel even
at the time."
I also found it odd that after Thomas Jefferson helped write and signed the deceleration of independence, stating that "all men are created equal", then he goes and writes in the Notes of the State of Virginia, God may have made the Blacks at a lower level of status than us Whites. However, then we learned in class that in Jefferson's time "All men are created equal" meant; all white, 16+ years of ages, Landing Owning men are created equal.
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