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Javier E

Justin Lafferty, Tennessee Lawmaker, Draws Fire for Three-Fifths Compromise Remarks - T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-three-fifths-compromise.html

tennessee constitutional convention 3_5 compromise racism Culture

shared by Javier E on 05 May 21 - No Cached
  • The Three-Fifths Compromise, an agreement reached during the negotiations in 1787 to create the United States Constitution, found that, for the purposes of representation and taxation, only three-fifths of a state’s enslaved people would be counted toward its total population. It is regarded as one of the most racist deals among the states during the country’s founding.
  • Yet in a speech in the Tennessee General Assembly on Tuesday, one representative defended the compromise, arguing that it was “a bitter, bitter pill” that was necessary to curtail the power of slaveholding states and that helped clear the way to ending slavery
  • — remarks that were rebuked by critics, including Black colleagues, as insulting and demeaning
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • “By limiting the number of population in the count,” the state representative, Justin Lafferty, a Republican from Knoxville, said on the House floor, participants in the Constitutional Convention “specifically limited the number of representatives that would be available in the slaveholding states, and they did it for the purpose of ending slavery — well before Abraham Lincoln, well before the Civil War.”
  • lawmakers in Tennessee were debating legislation on Tuesday aimed at limiting what public and charter schools can teach students about the influence of institutional racism and privilege.
  • Antonio Parkinson, a Democrat from Memphis and the chairman of the Black Caucus in the Tennessee House of Representatives, called Mr. Lafferty’s comments offensive, and said the applause from other lawmakers after he finished the speech had been especially stinging.
  • “I thought it was horrible,” Mr. Parkinson said, adding that no matter the argument, it was impossible to defend policies that protected slavery and failed to account for the full humanity of African-Americans. “I don’t care if it’s policy or how you’re counting heads, there is nothing good about slavery.”
  • In his speech, Mr. Lafferty repeated an argument that has long been made by some scholars and raised by lawmakers in other states. The counting of enslaved people had been a significant sticking point in the convention. Northerners argued that none of them should be included in the population totals, but Southerners wanted them to be fully counted, thus further strengthening the region’s political power and insulating slavery from abolition efforts.
  • Ron Hanks, a Republican state representative in Colorado, was assailed last month after he said the Three-Fifths Compromise “was not impugning anybody’s humanity.” In Oregon, Dennis Linthicum, a Republican state senator, was criticized for making a similar argument in 2019, saying the compromise was not rooted in a belief by the country’s founding fathers that “three-fifths was an appropriate measure of a man.”
  • Mr. Lafferty, who did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, said in the speech that he was exasperated by what he saw as a larger drive to look at the nation’s history in a harsher light.
  • “I don’t say anything on this floor today with any malice toward any of my friends on the other side,” Mr. Lafferty said. “I say this only because I’m tired, y’all. The people of this nation are tired. If you start looking for trouble — if that’s all you’re bent on — I guarantee you, you’re going to find it.”
Javier E

Republican lawmakers defend Three-Fifths Compromise - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...s-compromise-was-actually-good

3_5 compromise history crisis Politics racism

shared by Javier E on 05 May 21 - No Cached
  • The Three-Fifths Compromise, reached during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, is a complex topic. It put states that permitted slavery in the position of arguing that enslaved people should count for more than three-fifths, because they wanted the representation that came with that (albeit without letting enslaved people be free or actually vote for that representation). States that did not permit slavery argued for less, because they feared such representation would make the South too powerful.
  • The compromise eventually landed upon three-fifths.
  • But generally speaking, historians don’t count this as anything amounting to anti-slavery
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  • the historian Staughton Lynd wrote that the compromise “sanctioned slavery more decidedly than any previous action at a national level” because, while not technically codifying slavery into law, it acknowledged a difference between free people and “other Persons.”
  • In addition, while the result of a compromise, historians generally agree it was a good one for the South and the institution of slavery. Historians including Lynd and others have posited that the South got more from the Three-Fifths Compromise, while Northern states that did not permit slavery got a prohibition on slavery in what was then the Northwestern Territory during separate debates.
  • Given the Three-Fifths Compromise is frequently cited as the original constitutional sin when it comes to institutionalized or systemic racism, it would make sense that it’s something opponents of teaching that would seek to call into question. It was quite literally something that was built into our system of government from its founding.
  • Slavery was eventually outlawed, but not until Northern states gained in population to counteract the advantage the Three-Fifths Compromise had given Southern states and not until a war had to be fought over the matter.
  • There is basically nothing in the historical record to suggest this was somehow a deft maneuver by Northern states to pave the way for that 80 years later — even if that was somehow a viable and foreseeable plan — nor was it pitched as such at the time.
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