Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Why I Cannot Say That Hemings-Jefferson Relationship is Romantic

Why I Cannot Say That Hemings-Jefferson Relationship is Romantic(Updated)

I cannot in the whole world say that the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings is one of romance. I'm sorry I'm not buying into mainstream media and pundits history revision. These were the same people who venomously deny that Jefferson coerced and abuse Sally Hemings, let alone an involuntary relationship. There are still many who totally deny the Hemings-Jefferson relationship to this day. Don't these people see before their eyes the many complexions Black Americans are today? They are not the products of recent couplings, but of coerced and abusive relationships between Black women and White men during slavery, segregation, and Jim and Jane Crow. My friendly blogger Ann said in her commentary:

"Until the day comes when an enslaved woman can have a say-so over her body, the children that come from her body, and how and when she can decide herself what she will or will not be able to do with her body, the word mistress will never be used by me in the same sentences with the words slave and master, regardless as to whether it is Thomas Jefferson or any other white slave master."

Not only Black women suffer the indignity of abuse, rape, and sexual exploitation by all men, but they were routinely deny respect and equal protection under the law(read At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle McGuire).  Antimiscegenation laws were a proof of such indignity. Refusing to be called by their last names is showing disrespect. 

While mainstream media and society are very obsessed over the presidency of President Obama, society doesn't want people to discuss about the other racial mixing that is both very coercive and exploitative. Barack Obama is a product of consensual interracial relationship and marriage, that of a Black man and a white woman. America is more sympathetic and comfortable with that combination although they show contempt toward that combination.  Read Richard Cohen's racist article regarding the DeBlasio family this past November. Then again, they don't pose a threat to the structure of American white supremacy because the white woman who marry black men takes his status.

It's time to talk about this shameful, sordid history instead of sweeping it under the ground as usual.

athmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-the-master-and-the-enslaved-black-woman/#comments

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I too see the slave, and master issue of the involuntary relationship.

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