The American Paradox: Jeffersonian Equality and Racial Science

Abstract

DAVID BRION DAVIS HAS RECENTLY DESCRIBED "RACIAL SLAVERY AND ITS consequences as the basic reality, the grim and irrepressible theme governing both the settlement of the Western hemisphere and the emergence of a government and society in the United States that white people have regarded as 'free."' To Davis, slavery and race form "the central malady in American history and culture," which he describes as "America's haunting original sin."1 Many students of American culture today would argue that this "original sin" seems to lie at the heart of a crisis of confidence in the late twentieth century. The historical issues of race and slavery are still central to the paradoxes of the present era because they continue to test the conflicting but equally essential goals of stable political order and progressive reform and confuse the relationship between the ideals of property rights and human rights.2 Today's paradox has a striking parallel in Thomas Jefferson's often confusing, and apparently contradictory, ideas as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and in his scientific analysis of racial characteristics as found in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Numerous scholars have noted the Jefferson paradox and expressed it in a variety of ways. As Douglas Wilson put it, "How could the man who wrote that 'All men are created equal' own slaves? This, in essence, is the question most persistently asked of those who write about Thomas Jefferson."3 For Frank Shuffelton, editor of one of the most complete Jeffersonian bibliographies, the paradox lies in that "no matter how much we admire him as an opponent of slavery, we must recognize his racism."4