Her name was Sally Hemings
pease
Tech Admin
in Epiphanies
On these forums, the basic idea regarding identity issues is treating people with respect. That includes not introducing them into a discussion as tangents, or using them to make a point about a different issue. Referring to an unequitable relationship between two people in order to illustrate man's capacity for hypocrisy reduces the relationship itself to a rhetorical device. When the example depends on a drastic power imbalance, and the dehumanising nature of chattel slavery, and when the relative importance of the two people is indicated by giving one of them a name while referring to the other as a slave who happened to be involved in the production of a child, it's hard to see how respect has been allocated equitably.To the discussion of Jefferson, my purpose was not to discuss slavery directly, but to bring up a very powerful example of a man who was clearly very contemplative in his life and yet also marked by some rather glaring hypocrisy. His contemplation did not prevent him from being positively horrible to other human beings who, it seems, he was on some level aware of as humans.
Far as the bounds of the discussion, I will happily defer to a host in this matter. You need not apologize, since you lack that authority.
We not only know Sally Hemings' name, we know quite a lot about her life. From Sally Hemings' son, Madison Hemings:
My mother accompanied her [Jefferson's daughter, Maria] as her body servant. When Mr. Jefferson went to France Martha was a young woman grown, my mother was about her age, and Maria was just budding into womanhood. Their stay (my mother and Maria's) was about eighteen months. But during that time my mother became Mr. Jefferson's concubine, and when he was called home she was enceinte by him. He desired to bring my mother back to Virginia with him but she demurred. She was just beginning to understand the French language well, and in France she was free, while if she returned to Virginia she would be re-enslaved. So she refused to return with him. To induce her to do so he promised her extraordinary privileges, and made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of twenty-one years. In consequence of his promises, on which she implicitly relied, she returned with him to Virginia.
Madison Hemings recollections, Pike County Republican, 13 Mar. 1873.
Annette Gordon-Reed on the nature of Jefferson and Hemings' relationship:
That a black woman in slavery would seek out a relationship with a slave master, or if not seek it out, not run away from it, is not a particularly attractive idea. Some view such a person as a traitor, giving the ultimate aid and comfort to the enemy. Our notions about women and sexuality probably play a major role in our discomfort about these situations. Sex between a slave master and a woman who was a slave has always been seen differently than sex between a slave mistress and a man who was a slave, both by whites and blacks. Whites tolerated the former because it posed no real threat to the established order. They claimed it did, but they did not react against it with the same vehemence that they did to relationships between slave males and white women, which were seen as threatening the social order and could never be tolerated. .... Most blacks probably would consider a slave woman who voluntarily joined a relationship with her master as a collaborator. On the other hand, they might see a black man who had a relationship with a white mistress as a rebel who was striking at the heart of the slave system. These ideas, rooted in our visions of sex roles, may have some validity as far as generalizations go. They do not take into account the differing circumstances and contexts in which such relationships could arise. Therefore, we should not allow them to control any serious consideration of an individual case.
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy.
Comments
At the risk, of junior hosting myself, it seems that a bit of junior hosting is going on.
And to be honest, I’m also not sure how to read your post as anything other than a rhetorical device to support a point you want to make. You started a thread, most of which is made up of long quotes from another source, but nowhere do you suggest what there is to be discussed.
I suggest that's hard to do in this case as the topic has been framed, because either we have to prioritise the first-hand experience of a marginalised person who lived prior to 1820 who it seems left no first-hand accounts, or we have to talk about them in the third person, knowing that none of us are likely to have lived similar experiences.
What is it that we are to talk about? The phenomena of bringing the examples of people from the past into discussions?
With regard to the more general impact of legacies of enslavement today and how we discuss them, the aim would be to make sure we are hearing the voices of those with lived experience of racism and what they think about those legacies.
If the aim however is to discuss how we should discuss or host legacies of chattel enslavement on these forums specifically then that would be a question for the Styx.
If it's to discuss how we discuss legacies of chattel enslavement today in general in our lives and society then that could stay here.
I think there could be a general question about how we talk about chattel enslavement and who we name when we talk about it but let's see how it develops.
Thanks
Louise
Epiphanies host
In relation to Bullfrog's link, I couldn't view that article - I suspect access to the .com version of the website is geo-blocked. In any case, even if we include links to sources, it's the text we include in a post that matters most, that reveals what we think, what we consider germane to a discussion, whether we write it ourselves or (less-revealingly) re-post from elsewhere.
As to what there is to be discussed, which both you and Basketactortale point out, I'm not entirely sure.
In the case of the system of race-based chattel slavery developed in Europe, there are still millions of people living in the world who are descended from enslaved people and who, along with others, continue to experience discrimination arising from the intentionally dehumanising racial ideologies embedded in our societies. We can listen to what they have to say.
I think there's a more general point I have in mind, which is still unclear to me, which might be illustrated by considering the extent to which we, here on these forums, can legislate for respect.
My understanding is that we try to centre the voices and first-hand experience of those with lived experience because that is how we respect them. We look for own-voice accounts in order to see and understand the issue from the point of view of those who suffer discrimination and marginalisation in respect of the issue being discussed.
I don't think that having respect for the people we introduce into a discussion is inconsistent with the Epiphanies guidelines as they stand. (I've more confidence that we should avoid pursuing discussion of Epiphanies topics outside Epiphanies.)
I don't know how other Shipmates or Crew see this.
If someone tries to argue that bureaucrats should not be held responsible for moral wrongs they commit at the behest of superiors, and I reply "Well, that didn't work for Eichmann", am I guilty of using that person's victims as a rhetorical prop?
If I’m being honest, when I see posts with long quotes, or where the majority of the post is quotes rather than the shipmate’s own thoughts, I rarely really read the quotes. At best, I skim the quotes; at worst, I just skip and ignore them.