Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

by Jason Reynolds

you dumb. News flash: Wheatley was intelligent because she had the opportunity to learn and wasn’t tortured every day of her life. And even people who were tortured every day of their lives and did not have the opportunity to go to school still found ways to think and create. Still found ways to be human in their own way. Although their poetry looked different. Although they did not often have the opportunity to write their poetry.

Wheatley was over in London being trotted around like a superstar. The British would go on to publish her work. Not only would they publish her a year after slavery was abolished in England, they would use her (and Rush’s pamphlet) as a way to condemn American slavery. Let me explain why that was a big deal. It’s basically your mother telling you she’s “not mad, but she’s disappointed in you.” Remember, America was made up of a bunch of Europeans, specifically British people. They still owned America. It was their home away from home (hence New England).

The British disapproval applied pressure to the American slavery system, which was the American economic system, and in order for America to feel comfortable with continuing slavery, they had to get away from, break free of, Britain once and for all.

A QUICK RECAP OF RACIST IDEAS (SO FAR):

1. Africans are savages because Africa is hot, and extreme weather made them that way.

2. Africans are savages because they were cursed through Ham, in the Bible.

3. Africans are savages because they were created as an entirely different species.

4. Africans are savages because there is a natural human hierarchy and they are at the bottom.

5. Africans are savages because dark equals dumb and evil, and light equals smart and… White.

6. Africans are savages because slavery made them so.

7. Africans are savages.

AFRICANS ARE NOT SAVAGES.

Britain had ended slavery

America refused to do so.

and wrote, “All men are created equal.”

Bears repeating. All men are created equal.

And what did it mean that Jefferson, a man who owned nearly two hundred slaves, was writing America’s freedom document?

So, he also wrote into the declaration the antiracist sentiment that slavery was a “cruel war against human nature,” but that part, and parts like it, were edited out by the other, more established delegates.

Over the next five years, the Americans and the British fought the Revolutionary War.

As my mother says, “Don’t throw a stone, then hide your hand.” Jefferson was definitely hiding his hand. But he’d show it shortly after, because while hiding from capture, he decided to answer a series of questions, in writing, from a French diplomat who was basically collecting information about America (because America was becoming AMERICA!). And instead

of just answering the questions, Jefferson decided to flex his muscle. To tell his truth. He titled his book of answers Notes on the State of Virginia. In it, he expressed his real thoughts on Black people. Uh-oh. He said they could never assimilate because they were inferior by nature. Uh-oh. Said they felt love more, but pain less. Uh-oh. That they aren’t reflective, and operate only on instincts. Yikes. That the freedom of slaves would result in the extermination of one of the races, i.e., a race war. Uh-oh. And the answer to “the problem” of slaves was that they

should be sent back to Africa. So much for his “Black friends,” huh? The ones he’d known to be intelligent blacksmiths, shoemakers, bricklayers, coopers, carpenters, engineers, manufacturers, artisans, musicians, farmers, midwives, physicians, overseers, house managers, cooks, and bi- and trilingual translators—all the workers who made his...

He didn’t intend to publish these notes widely, bu...

printer did so without his permission. Surprise, surprise! When it came to Black people, Jefferson’s whole life was one big contradiction, as if he were struggling with what he knew was true and what was supposed to be true. In 1784, Jefferson moved to Paris. His wife had died, and his old Monticello home suddenly felt pretty lonely. He was exhausted from his grief and years of being hunted by the British. So, he did w...

foreign minister, he sent word home to his own slaves to speed up tobacco production in hopes that French merchants could pay back British creditors. On one hand, Jefferson was telling his slaves to work harder, and on the other hand he was telling abolitionists that there was nothing he wanted more than an end to slavery. And while he was busy playing the good guy, promoting, defending, and ensuring that the French knew America was becoming AME...

about the new constitution. Turns out, Jefferson’s declaration resulted in years of violent struggle with the British but, more important, it exposed a weak American government. So, this constitution was supposed to define it and solidify it. But be...

1. The Great Com...

This one created the House and the Senate. Two se...

House of Representatives based on population. The bigger the population, the more representatives each state could have to fight for its interests. This causes issues, specifically between southern states and northern states, be...

The Three-Fifths Compromise:

The South wanted to play both sides of the fence. On one hand, they didn’t want to count slaves as people, but instead wanted to count them as property, because the greater the population, the more taxes you have to pay. But, on the other hand, they needed more population, because the greater the population, the more representation they got, and with more representation came more power. And the North was like, “NOOOOPE! Slaves can’t be human,” because the

North didn’t have (as many) slaves and therefore couldn’t risk letting the South have more power. So, the compromise was to create a fraction. Every five slaves equaled three humans. So, just to do the math, that’s like saying if there were fifte...

A revolt that the Africans in Haiti won. And because of that victory, Haiti would become the Eastern Hemisphere’s symbol of freedom. Not America.

Jefferson had purchased the Louisiana Territory from the French early in his presidency. He’d wanted it to be the safe haven for freed slaves.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820. Congress agreed to go on and admit Missouri as a slave state, but they’d also

admit Maine as a free state to make sure there was still an equal amount of slave states and free states, so that no region, or way of governing, felt disadvantaged. Balance. And also to prohibit the introduction of slavery in the northern section of Jefferson’s vast Louisiana Territory. His experimental land for colonization. An experiment that seemed unlikely.

Garrison wasn’t the only man who felt this way (about abolishing slavery, not sneakers) and was unafraid to speak out against colonization. David Walker was another. Walker was a Black man, and he had written a pamphlet, An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, arguing against the idea that Black people were made to serve White people.

Walker, just thirty-three years old, died of tuberculosis.

But Garrison would buck that trend and start a newspaper, the Liberator. The name alone was a match strike.

Meaning, he used to believe that freedom was incremental. A little bit at a time. A slow walk. Now he believed that freedom should be instant.

So physical freedom now, but social freedom… eventually

Blacks were seen as scary, and it was their responsibility to convince White people that they weren’t. At least, this is what Garrison believed. But this idea was challenged by a man who disagreed with not only the idea of gradual equality but also the idea that Black people needed White people to save them, or that they—Black people—were part of the

problem at all. His name was Nat Turner.

He was a slave and a preacher, and just as slave owners before the Enlightenment era believed slavery was a holy mission, Turner be...

All in the name of liberation. And it did. There was a lot of bloodshed across the state of Virginia, until Turner finally got caught and hanged.

Again, slaveholders got scared. Tightened the yoke.

At the annual meeting of the AASS in May 1835, members decided to rely on the new technology of mass printing and an efficient postal service to overwhelm the nation with twenty to fifty thousand pamphlets a week. Garrison began flooding the market

with new and improved abolitionist information. Social media before social media.

slaveholders had no clue what was coming: a million antislavery pamphlets distribute...

There was a scientist, Samuel Morton, the father of American anthropology, who was measuring the skulls of humans (gross) and determined that White people had