FAIRstory 3: The Jefferson Paradox

To take the next steps toward universal equity, our country must reckon with the full historical record of its most hypocritical Founder. We will struggle to do so, and FAIRstory's whitewash of Jefferson's legacy will not help.

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Recently, I wrote about a treatment of Thomas Jefferson on 1980s network television: how Sally Hemings had been impregnated by Jefferson seven times, and how White Americans reconciled that fact with their admiration of Jefferson as a Founder.

Where Jefferson is concerned, little has changed since the 1980s. The backlash sidestepped by network TV then has reached full intensity, directed at initiatives to meet head-on the impact of Jefferson and other enslavers on enslaved persons and their descendants.

In response to the removal of Confederate statues and place names, Donald Trump and his acolytes warned that progressives would be coming for Thomas Jefferson next. To activate fear, they have propagated the false claim that, in revealing Jefferson's legacy as an enslaver, progressives intend to destroy the country. Of course, the fissures being exploited by right-wing politicians weren't put there by progressives. They exist because Jefferson embedded in our country the same internal contradictions we find in Jefferson's own mind.

Thus, it's no surprise that FAIRstory treats Jefferson gently and with more than a little spin.

After a fleeting acknowledgement that he owned slaves, FAIRstory praises Jefferson for condemning slavery in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, he condemned the slave trade, targeting the Crown for their role in creating the slave trade and for granting freedom to the enslaved as a means of destabilizing the simmering rebellion of the Colonies. Jefferson could have freed his slaves on any day of his adult life. He freed only two in his lifetime and five in his will.

In FAIRstory’s Video #8, Jefferson’s signing of the bill to end the transatlantic importation of slaves receives mention without the context that the market value of the people Jefferson and others enslaved increased as a result.

Any public reckoning of our history must include an unabridged account of Jefferson’s words and deeds: the good, the bad, and the ugly. FAIRStory panders to the right by skirting this essential responsibility.

This article has been edited to omit information provided in a previous post.