How To Talk About What We Can't Talk About

The current atmosphere around discussions, or non-discussions on race, gender, and ethnicity, and the rise of social justice, microagression, intersectionality, and the other nonsense spawned by post-modernists prompted me to track down something I watched on C-Span several years ago.  It's a short talk and Q&A by Annette Gordon-Reed in connection with her then-new book The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.

I had not planned to read the book as I was sick of the battles over the alleged relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.  It seemed that one group was intent on taking the relationship as 100% proven and then using it to trash Jefferson's reputation, while the other group steadfastly ignored any credible evidence supporting the possibility that such a relationship existed.

However, after watching Gordon-Reed I changed my mind, purchased her book and highly recommend it.  The author presents a plausible view of the relationship between Sally, and indeed the entire Hemings family, and Jefferson, and it's told with an understanding of the perspectives of everyone involved; Gordon-Reed treats everyone as a person, not as symbols or caricatures to make a point.  Along the way, I learned quite a bit about the history of slavery in Virginia and the evolving (or perhaps devolving) view of whites towards the institution during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The entire 33 minutes is worth viewing but it was a question at the end (asked at the 30:20 mark) that caused me to go back and watch it again.  The question goes to whether, or how, Jefferson reconciled his worst written racist utterances with his treatment of the Hemings family.  From Gordon-Reed's response:

[growing up in the South; Texas to be specific] . . . it is not uncommon for blacks and whites to have generalized racial views but see individual people differently.

. . . it is not unusual for people to have a set of intellectual beliefs that their emotional lives do not jibe with.

. . . some of the people who have been the most helpful to me in my life, if you were to sit down and talk to them, they would express sentiments that were racist sentiments but [they were not malicious] . . . there are malicious people who are non-racist and there are malicious people who are racist . . . and I don't see Jefferson as malicious. 

I'm not sure Gordon-Reed could get away with this thoughtful perspective today.  In our brave new world, anyone who carelessly utters what others see as the wrong words can be attacked, humiliated, and driven from public life, regardless of their actual actions.  It is a loss for our society and corrosive to our ability to function.  Having read and heard her in other contexts, it is clear Gordon-Reed and I tread different political paths but I think her approach to discussing these issues is the right one.

My own take on Hemings and Jefferson is that I think it highly likely they did have a relationship that lasted for 35+ years and that the author of the Declaration of Independence is the father of Sally's six children though it will never be proved to a certainty.  The DNA evidence only indicates that someone in the Jefferson family was the father of her children.  Defenders of Thomas have claimed the real father was his younger brother.  However, one of the other defenses, that Thomas Jefferson was not present at Monticello nine months prior to the birth of all of Sally's children has now been discredited, and it is accepted that the timing is now consistent with his paternity. 

In addition, there is a strong psychological element at play.  Jefferson, born in 1743, was only married once, in 1772, to Martha Wayles.  By all accounts, the introverted and aloof Jefferson was madly in love with Martha and she reciprocated.  When Martha died in 1782 he was distraught, isolating himself for weeks, leaving his family worried he might do harm to himself.

Sally Hemings was the half-sister of Martha Jefferson.  They shared the same father.  Sallie's mother was half white, so Sally was three quarters white (many of her descendents after being freed and moving to Ohio passed as white).   We have no pictures of Sally but according to those who knew her she looked strikingly like her half sister.  One can only surmise how Jefferson might have reacted when the teenage Sally showed up in Paris in the late 1780s, as escort to his daughter.  We also know that Jefferson treated the entire Hemings family much differently than the rest of the enslaved population of Monticello.

For a more complete and balanced analysis of the Hemings-Jefferson controversy read this piece by Professor Paul Rahe.