An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

It is interesting to note that Jefferson would assume that Black folks
might revolt and remember their oppression. The next fear he raised related
to miscegenation. Because of Black peoples’ skin color, he asked, “Is it not
the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races?” As a
comparison, he wrote on the mixing of whites and Native peoples,
remarking, “Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of
every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable
to that eternal monotony, which reign in the countenances, that immovable
veil of black which covers all emotions of the other race?” He even
suggested that Black people prefer whites over their own kind. 16
Jefferson, while at times seeming to want an end to slavery, supported it
when convenient. He believed that Black people required less sleep and
only sought fun. “A black, after hard labour through the day,” he wrote,
“will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later,
though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning.” 17
Jefferson ignored the necessary moments of pleasure that enslaved Africans
surely needed beyond the family and social responsibilities they had to
attend to. Finally, Jefferson believed Black folks were inferior in intellect to
whites. 18
Blacks lived among and alongside whites but, according to Jefferson,
didn’t learn much from them. Because he apparently learned nothing from
Black people, he found it necessary to compare Black and Native people
and see if Native people were better in some way. While Black folks “all
lived in countries where arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable
degree,” Native people, Jefferson argued, “with no advantages of this kind,
will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit.” He
also commented on Native peoples’ rhetorical ability: “They astonish you
with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and
sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated.” However, in
regard to Black folks, “never yet could I find that a black had uttered a
thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary
trait of painting or sculpture.” He even had time to comment on Phillis
Wheatley, noting, “Religion indeed has produced a Phillis Wheatley; but it
could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are
below the dignity of criticism.” 19 Wheatley never met Jefferson, and it is
not known whether she responded to him. Nonetheless, as Henry Louis
Gates Jr. notes, “no encounter with a Founding Father would prove more