welcome to the blog

come on down. scroll down.

WHITENESS THEORY AS LENS TO VIEW TJ

WHITENESS THEORIES CAN BE USED TO ANALYZE JEFFERSON'S CLAIMS MADE IN NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA

Cheryl Harris “Whiteness as Property” http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/white02.htm

The legal legacy of slavery and of the seizure of land from Native American peoples is not merely a regime of property law that is (mis)informed by racist and ethnocentric themes. Rather, the law has established and protected an actual property interest in whiteness itself, which shares the critical characteristics of property and accords with the many and varied theoretical descriptions of property.

The legal legacy of slavery and of the seizure of land from Native American peoples is not merely a regime of property law that is (mis)informed by racist and ethnocentric themes. Rather, the law has established and protected an actual property interest in whiteness itself, which shares the critical characteristics of property and accords with the many and varied theoretical descriptions of property.

Although by popular usage property describes "things" owned by persons, or the rights of persons with respect to a thing, the concept of property prevalent among most theorists, even prior to the twentieth century, is that property may "consist[] of rights in 'things' that are intangible, or whose existence is a matter of legal definition." Property is thus said to be a right, not a thing, characterized as metaphysical, not physical. The theoretical bases and conceptual descriptions of property rights are varied, ranging from first possessor rules, to creation of value, to Lockean labor theory, to personality theory, to utilitarian theory. However disparate, these formulations of property clearly illustrate the extent to which property rights and interests embrace much more than land and personalty. Thus, the fact that whiteness is not a "physical" entity does not remove it from the realm of property.

Whiteness is not simply and solely a legally recognized property interest. It is simultaneously an aspect of self-identity and of personhood, and its relation to the law of property is complex. Whiteness has functioned as self- identity in the domain of the intrinsic, personal, and psychological; as reputation in the interstices between internal and external identity; and, as property in the extrinsic, public, and legal realms. According whiteness actual legal status converted an aspect of identity into an external object of property, moving whiteness from privileged identity to a vested interest. The law's construction of whiteness defined and affirmed critical aspects of identity (who is white); of privilege (what benefits accrue to that status); and, of property (what legal entitlements arise from that status). Whiteness at various times signifies and is deployed as identity, status, and property, sometimes singularly, sometimes in tandem.

1. Whiteness as a Traditional Form of Property. - Whiteness fits the broad historical concept of property described by classical theorists. In James Madison's view, for example, property "embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right," referring to all of a person's legal rights. Property as conceived in the founding era included not only external objects and people's relationships to them, but also all of those human rights, liberties, powers, and immunities that are important for human well-being, including: freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom from bodily harm, and free and equal opportunities to use personal faculties.

Whiteness defined the legal status of a person as slave or free. White identity conferred tangible and economically valuable benefits and was jealously guarded as a valued possession, allowed only to those who met a strict standard of proof. Whiteness - the right to white identity as embraced by the law - is property if by property one means all of a person's legal rights. . . .

The law's interpretation of those encounters between whites and Native Americans not only inflicted vastly different results on them, but also established a pattern - a custom - of valorizing whiteness. As the forms of racialized property were perfected, the value and protection extended to whiteness increased. Regardless of which theory of property one adopts, the concept of whiteness - established by centuries of custom (illegitimate custom, but custom nonetheless) and codified by law - may be understood as a property interest.

2. Modern Views of Property as Defining Social Relations. - Although property in the classical sense refers to everything that is valued and to which a person has a right, the modern concept of property focuses on its function and the social relations reflected therein. In this sense, modern property doctrine emphasizes the more contingent nature of property and has been the basis for the argument that property rights should be expanded.

Modern theories of property reject the assumption that property is "objectively definable or identifiable, apart from social context.". . . Property in this broader sense encompassed jobs, entitlements, occupational licenses, contracts, subsidies, and indeed a whole host of intangibles that are the product of labor, time, and creativity, such as intellectual property, business goodwill, and enhanced earning potential from graduate degrees. Notwithstanding the dilution of new property since Goldberg v. Kelly and its progeny as well as continued attacks on the concept, the legacy of new property infuses the concept of property with questions of power, selection, and allocation. Reich's argument that property is not a natural right but a construction by society resonates in current theories of property that describe the allocation of property rights as a series of choices. This construction directs attention toward issues of relative power and social relations inherent in any definition of property.

3. Property and Expectations. - "Property is nothing but the basis of expectation," according to Bentham, "consist[ing] in an established expectation, in the persuasion of being able to draw such and such advantage from the thing possessed." The relationship between expectations and property remains highly significant, as the law "has recognized and protected even the expectation of rights as actual legal property." This theory does not suggest that all value or all expectations give rise to property, but those expectations in tangible or intangible things that are valued and protected by the law are property.. . .

In a society structured on racial subordination, white privilege became an expectation and, to apply Margaret Radin's concept, whiteness became the quintessential property for personhood. The law constructed "whiteness" as an objective fact, although in reality it is an ideological proposition imposed through subordination. This move is the central feature of "reification": "Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a 'phantom objectivity,' an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the relation between people." Whiteness was an "object" over which continued control was - and is - expected. The protection of these expectations is central because, as Radin notes: "If an object you now control is bound up in your future plans or in your anticipation of your future self, and it is partly these plans for your own continuity that make you a person, then your personhood depends on the realization of these expectations."

Because the law recognized and protected expectations grounded in white privilege (albeit not explicitly in all instances), these expectations became tantamount to property that could not permissibly be intruded upon without consent. As the law explicitly ratified those expectations in continued privilege or extended ongoing protection to those illegitimate expectations by failing to expose or to radically disturb them, the dominant and subordinate positions within the racial hierarchy were reified in law. When the law recognizes, either implicitly or explicitly, the settled expectations of whites built on the privileges and benefits produced by white supremacy, it acknowledges and reinforces a property interest in whiteness that reproduces Black subordination.

4. The Property Functions of Whiteness. - In addition to the theoretical descriptions of property, whiteness also meets the functional criteria of property. Specifically, the law has accorded "holders" of whiteness the same privileges and benefits accorded holders of other types of property. The liberal view of property is that it includes the exclusive rights of possession, use, and disposition. Its attributes are the right to transfer or alienability, the right to use and enjoyment, and the right to exclude others. Even when examined against this limited view, whiteness conforms to the general contours of property. It may be a "bad" form of property, but it is property nonetheless.

(a) Rights of Disposition. - Property rights are traditionally described as fully alienable. Because fundamental personal rights are commonly understood to be inalienable, it is problematic to view them as property interests. However, as Margaret Radin notes, "inalienability" is not a transparent term; it has multiple meanings that refer to interests that are non-salable, non-transferable, or non-market-alienable. The common core of inalienability is the negation of the possibility of separation of an entitlement, right, or attribute from its holder.

Classical theories of property identified alienability as a requisite aspect of property; thus, that which is inalienable cannot be property. As the major exponent of this view, Mill argued that public offices, monopoly privileges, and human beings - all of which were or should have been inalienable - should not be considered property at all. Under this account, if inalienability inheres in the concept of property, then whiteness, incapable of being transferred or alienated either inside or outside the market, would fail to meet a criterion of property.

As Radin notes, however, even under the classical view, alienability of certain property was limited. Mill also advocated certain restraints on alienation in connection with property rights in land and probably other natural resources. In fact, the law has recognized various kinds of inalienable property. For example, entitlements of the regulatory and welfare states, such as transfer payments and government licenses, are inalienable; yet they have been conceptualized and treated as property by law. Although this "new property" has been criticized as being improper - that is, not appropriately cast as property - the principal objection has been based on its alleged lack of productive capacity, not its inalienability.

The law has also acknowledged forms of inalienable property derived from nongovernmental sources. In the context of divorce, courts have held that professional degrees or licenses held by one party and financed by the labor of the other is marital property whose value is subject to allocation by the court. A medical or law degree is not alienable either in the market or by voluntary transfer. Nevertheless, it is included as property when dissolving a legal relationship.

Indeed, Radin argues that, as a deterrent to the dehumanization of universal commodification, market-inalienability may be justified to protect property important to the person and to safeguard human flourishing. She suggests that non-commodification or market-inalienability of personal property or those things essential to human flourishing is necessary to guard against the objectification of human beings. To avoid that danger, "we must cease thinking that market alienability is inherent in the concept of property." Following this logic, then, the inalienability of whiteness should not preclude the consideration of whiteness as property. Paradoxically, its inalienability may be more indicative of its perceived enhanced value, rather than its disqualification as property.

(b) Right to Use and Enjoyment. - Possession of property includes the rights of use and enjoyment. If these rights are essential aspects of property, it is because "the problem of property in political philosophy dissolves into ... questions of the will and the way in which we use the things of this world." As whiteness is simultaneously an aspect of identity and a property interest, it is something that can both be experienced and deployed as a resource. Whiteness can move from being a passive characteristic as an aspect of identity to an active entity that - like other types of property - is used to fulfill the will and to exercise power. The state's official recognition of a racial identity that subordinated Blacks and of privileged rights in property based on race elevated whiteness from a passive attribute to an object of law and a resource deployable at the social, political, and institutional level to maintain control. Thus, a white person "used and enjoyed" whiteness whenever she took advantage of the privileges accorded white people simply by virtue of their whiteness - when she exercised any number of rights reserved for the holders of whiteness. Whiteness as the embodiment of white privilege transcended mere belief or preference; it became usable property, the subject of the law's regard and protection. In this respect whiteness, as an active property, has been used and enjoyed.

(c) Reputation and Status Property. - In constructing whiteness as property, the ideological move was to conceptualize white racial identity as an external thing in a constitutive sense - an "object[] or resource[] necessary to be a person." This move was accomplished in large measure by recognizing the reputational interest in being regarded as white as a thing of significant value, which like other reputational interests, was intrinsically bound up with identity and personhood. The reputation of being white was treated as a species of property, or something in which a property interest could be asserted. In this context, whiteness was a form of status property.

The conception of reputation as property found its origins in early concepts of property that encompassed things (such as land and personalty), income (such as revenues from leases, mortgages, and patent monopolies), and one's life, liberty, and labor. Thus, Locke's famous pronouncement, "every man has a 'property' in his own 'person,"' undergirded the assertion that one's physical self was one's property. From this premise, one's labor, "the work of his hands," combined with those things found in the common to form property over which one could exercise ownership, control, and dominion. The idea of self-ownership, then, was particularly fertile ground for the idea that reputation, as an aspect of identity earned through effort, was similarly property. Moreover, the loss of reputation was capable of being valued in the market.

The direct manifestation of the law's legitimation of whiteness as reputation is revealed in the well-established doctrine that to call a white person "Black" is to defame her. Although many of the cases were decided in an era when the social and legal stratification of whites and Blacks was more absolute, as late as 1957 the principle was reaffirmed, notwithstanding significant changes in the legal and political status of Blacks. As one court noted, "there is still to be considered the social distinction existing between the races," and the allegation was likely to cause injury. A Black person, however, could not sue for defamation if she was called "white." Because the law expressed and reinforced the social hierarchy as it existed, it was presumed that no harm could flow from such a reversal.

Private identity based on racial hierarchy was legitimated as public identity in law, even after the end of slavery and the formal end of legal race segregation. Whiteness as interpersonal hierarchy was recognized externally as race reputation. Thus, whiteness as public reputation and personal property was affirmed.

(d) The Absolute Right to Exclude. - Many theorists have traditionally conceptualized property to include the exclusive rights of use, disposition, and possession, with possession embracing the absolute right to exclude. The right to exclude was the central principle, too, of whiteness as identity, for mainly whiteness has been characterized, not by an inherent unifying characteristic, but by the exclusion of others deemed to be "not white." The possessors of whiteness were granted the legal right to exclude others from the privileges inhering in whiteness; whiteness became an exclusive club whose membership was closely and grudgingly guarded. The courts played an active role in enforcing this right to exclude - determining who was or was not white enough to enjoy the privileges accompanying whiteness. In that sense, the courts protected whiteness as any other form of property.

Moreover, as it emerged, the concept of whiteness was premised on white supremacy rather than mere difference. "White" was defined and constructed in ways that increased its value by reinforcing its exclusivity. Indeed, just as whiteness as property embraced the right to exclude, whiteness as a theoretical construct evolved for the very purpose of racial exclusion. Thus, the concept of whiteness is built on both exclusion and racial subjugation. This fact was particularly evident during the period of the most rigid racial exclusion, as whiteness signified racial privilege and took the form of status property.

At the individual level, recognizing oneself as "white" necessarily assumes premises based on white supremacy: It assumes that Black ancestry in any degree, extending to generations far removed, automatically disqualifies claims to white identity, thereby privileging "white" as unadulterated, exclusive, and rare. Inherent in the concept of "being white" was the right to own or hold whiteness to the exclusion and subordination of Blacks. Because "[i]dentity is ... continuously being constituted through social interactions," the assigned political, economic, and social inferiority of Blacks necessarily shaped white identity. In the commonly held popular view, the presence of Black "blood" - including the infamous "one-drop" - consigned a person to being "Black" and evoked the "metaphor ... of purity and contamination" in which Black blood is a contaminant and white racial identity is pure. Recognizing or identifying oneself as white is thus a claim of racial purity, an assertion that one is free of any taint of Black blood. The law has played a critical role in legitimating this claim.

more critical commentary on TJ

Thomas Jefferson on Race, Revolution, and Morality - History Revisited and Revised
By Edwin S. Gaustad

• Three Areas:
  • Jefferson and race, or more narrowly, Jefferson and slavery
  • His attitude toward the revolution that erupted in France in 1789
  • Jefferson and morality and his alleged affair
• Let us revisit each item.
  • On slavery and race
  • On Jefferson’s fanatical defense of the French Revolution
  • Was Jefferson a moral man, or a hypocritical lecher and consummate deceiver?

Dr. Edwin S. Gaustad is Professor Emeritus, The University of California, Riverside. A graduate of Baylor University, 1947, and Brown University, Ph.D. in 1951, he is the author of a dozen books in America’s religious history, the latest of which is Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson published by Eerdmans in 1996 for $15. He is the recipient of Baylor’s Distinguished Alumnus Award.

The textbook Thomas Jefferson lingers in our minds: author of the Declaration of Independence, third president of the United States, and a man of wide-ranging scientific and architectural interests. If the textbook writer still had a few lines to spare, one might learn something of Jefferson’s strong dedication to religious freedom: on his tombstone he ranked his writing of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom with his composition of the Declaration of Independence. And that’s about all that the textbooks told us; we perhaps feel lucky to remember that much as we wander around the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D. C.

But historians have been busy of late, re-examining many facets of Jefferson’s life and suggesting that major re-evaluations are in order. Some have even gone so far as to argue that the Jefferson Memorial is a mistake and the profile on Mount Rushmore an embarrassment. Other historians strongly disagree, and so the books, articles, talk shows, and PBS specials pour forth. So, what is the fuss all about? Contention has been largely concentrated in three areas, each of which will be examined in turn.

1. First, Jefferson and race, or more narrowly, Jefferson and slavery. That Jefferson was, along with his Virginia land-owning neighbors, a slaveholder has long been duly acknowledged. But especially in the last two decades, far more attention has been given to this fact and to the inconsistencies or contradictions in the Jeffersonian character suggested by this circumstance, along with several others that are closely related. For example, Jefferson (unlike Washington) did not free most of his slaves during his lifetime, nor in his will did he provide for any general emancipation. Moreover, while he condemned slavery as a brutal and inhumane institution, he did little, particularly in his later years, to threaten or overturn the system. And finally, in his Notes on the State of Virginia (published in 1787), Jefferson on the basis of limited observation advanced the notion, “as a suspicion only, that the blacks...are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” This moved Jefferson beyond the status of just a slaveholder to that of a racist.

In 1977 John Chester Miller published The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery; here he recounted with both fairness and thoroughness the racist assumptions of the Anglo-Saxon society of which Jefferson was all too much a part. Even other Enlightenment figures (David Hume, for example) made presumably “scientific” observations regarding the denizens of tropical climes as opposed to those who lived in the temperate zones. And, as Miller notes, only by thinking of blacks as inherently inferior could Jefferson soften the haunting guilt with which the institution of slavery filled him. Since 1977, several other historians have gone beyond Miller in finding little if anything to redeem Jefferson from the stigma of slaveholder and racist. In the words of Paul Finkelman, while Jefferson spoke as “a liberty-loving man of the Enlightenment,” he acted as “a self-indulgent and negrophobic Virginia planter.”

2. Revisions regarding Jefferson and revolution concern not his activity in the American Revolution but his attitude toward the revolution that erupted in France in 1789. The major reviser here is Conor Cruise O’Brien who in a recent book (The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, published in 1996) sees Jefferson’s dedication to liberty as being one without rational limits or sensible discriminations. Jefferson, O’Brien writes, would continue to have faith in the French Revolution, no matter what atrocities had been or would be committed. For this revolution had become, for Jefferson, not an historical movement to weigh and analyze, but a mystical article of faith impervious to actual events.

Because Jefferson’s support of France did not waver in the early 1790s, O’Brien is willing to see him as even the patron saint of terrorism in general. The author takes as his sacred text a portion of a letter that Jefferson wrote in 1793 to his sometime private secretary, William Short, regarding the excesses of the French Revolution: “My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated.” O’Brien’s entire book can be understood as a thundering exposition of that text. And in his Epilogue he concluded that Jefferson embraced “a wild liberty, absolute, untrammeled, universal.” Since any violence committed in the name of liberty is justifiable, O’Brien asserts, “We cannot even say categorically that Jefferson would have condemned the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City and the destruction of its occupants.” Here history may not be revisited, but it is certainly revised.

3. Any attention to the subject of Jefferson and morality leads, sooner or later, to a consideration of the alleged affair between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, his slave and house servant both in Paris and back in Monticello. In 1802, a political operative named James Callender produced a campaign document designed to advance the fortunes of John Adams’s Federalist Party and dash the prospects of Thomas Jefferson’s Republican Party. The Sally Hemings story was tailored and designed to do the trick. And so, by means of tabloid journalism, “Black Sally” entered into the pages of American history, kept alive through the election of Jefferson to a second term as president in 1804, but largely dropped from view thereafter.

Then in 1974, Fawn Brodie published Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, the centerpiece of which was a more sustained effort to elevate the Hemings affair to the level of historical truth. Brodie’s technique drew much from the psychohistorical methods current at the time. And though she adduced no new historical data regarding “Black Sally,” she wrote well and her book proved to be enormously popular. So popular, in fact, that a leading author and newspaper editor, Virginius Dabney, took up the implied challenge to the third president’s honor by writing in 1981 The Jefferson Scandals: A Rebuttal. Dabney considered Brodie’s central thesis to be “unproved and unprovable,” a position that he defended at some length. And there, one might be tempted to say, the matter rests. But, in fact, this titillating matter does not rest, as every new biography must deal in some way with the alleged affair. Most recently, Annette Gordon-Read has written Thomas Jefferson and Sallv Hemings: An American Controversy (1997), offering further proof, should any be needed, that the story stays alive.

After much revisiting and revising, where do we stand on these three issues in Jefferson’s life and thought? Let us revisit each item.

1. On slavery and race, it must certainly be acknowledged that the consciousness of historians in general has been markedly raised (though not very generally raised with respect to Jefferson and feminism). One cannot and must not gloss over either his words or his deeds with respect to African Americans and to slavery. Nor, on the other hand, should one forget that his words in his draft of the Declaration of Independence condemning the slave trade were too strong for the Continental Congress to accept. Thus, they were deleted. Also, his draft of the Northwest Ordinance called for the exclusion of slavery in lands both north and south of the Ohio River. His proscription on territory south of the Ohio was deleted. And as president in his second term, Jefferson moved to abolish the slave trade on January 1, 1808, the earliest date that the Constitution allowed. He thought—or allowed himself to hope—that abolition of the slave trade would gradually lead to the abolition of slavery itself, a hope that tragically proved to be in vain.

It is true that in his later years, Jefferson pulled back from some of his more radical, abolition-sounding rhetoric with respect to slavery. And in 1820 he sadly wrote that “We have the wolf by the ears: and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” The wonder is not that slavery and racism had its defenders in late 18th or early 19th century America, and that Jefferson is among them. The more startling wonder is that at the end of the 20th century, racism still pervades the American scene. Something about beams and motes comes to mind.

2. On Jefferson’s fanatical defense of the French Revolution, O’Brien appears to be engaging in that bit of revisionism largely alone. Jefferson did feel strongly about liberty, a fact for which most Americans are profoundly grateful. He did shock both Abigail and John Adams when he took Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786 more calmly than they. He even justified the behavior of the rebels, noting that no country preserves its liberties unless rulers are warned “from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance.” To Abigail Adams he wrote in 1787 that “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.” Then he added, “I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.”

That kind of talk surely unsettled Conor Cruise O’Brien, and it may unsettle many others as well. In any political campaign where the sides arrayed against each other are “law and order” on the one hand versus “freedom and reform” on the other, one need not doubt where Jefferson would stand. But to equate his love of liberty and of popular democracy with mindless acts of terrorism and destruction is itself a mindless act. Jefferson believed in human possibilities, in civilization’s steady advance, and in an “empire of liberty.” To him, the obstacles to such a progression were kings, priests, and nobles: that is, a state and a society where resistance was never possible, where freedom was always treasonable. “A little rebellion now and then” could remind Americans of their roots in revolution, even as it could remind them of democracy’s ugly alternative.

3. Was Jefferson a moral man, or a hypocritical lecher and consummate deceiver? First, let it be noted that Jefferson took moral matters very seriously. His so-called “Bible” consisted chiefly in the ethical teachings of Jesus; cutting away all miracle and metaphysical subtlety, the pure “diamonds” of moral instruction and inspiration remained. Denominations disagreed and fought over dogma—not over morality, Jefferson observed. And for him religion’s moral dimension was what mattered; all rational human beings, whatever denomination, could unite on these essential precepts. God has implanted a sure moral instinct into every human breast, Jefferson argued, even as He has granted the ability to hear, taste, smell, and see. To encounter the occasional moral midget or moral deviant no more disproved nature’s prevailing gifts than encountering a blind man suggested that God withheld the blessings of sight from humanity at large.

With respect more specifically to the alleged liaison with Sally Hemings which resulted, according to the true believers, in five children born of this union, one need recall that Jefferson had a horror of miscegenation. As he wrote to his neighbor Edward Coles in 1814, “The amalgamation of white with blacks produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent.” If and when blacks were to be freed, they needed to construct their own society somewhere else, perhaps in the Caribbean or in Africa. In addition to the moral question of an illicit relationship with a slave, one can add the political question of the ultimate fate of a nation where miscegenation routinely prevailed.

So what is the historical evidence for a sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings? Simply put, history cannot answer this question. One must answer it on other grounds: the character of Thomas Jefferson (about which we know a great deal), the character of Sally Hemings (about which we know virtually nothing), the logical probabilities of the circumstances, and the political realities of the time. In this welter of uncertainties, I find the most helpful resolution to lie in the character of Jefferson himself. A man of great discipline and self-restraint, he was not a member of the “if it feels good, do it” school of thoughtless action. He calculated carefully the paths ahead, measuring his behavior almost as precisely as he measured the rooms of the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg. Furthermore, Jefferson in this realm was, if anything, a prude. He advised married women against dancing because of the possible “ambiguity of issue” that might result. He advised young men not to go to Paris until at least thirty years of age, lest their morals be corrupted. This is the man who supposedly had a thirty-eight-year relationship with his enslaved concubine? It boggles the mind.

Finally, in all the revisiting and revising of Jeffersonian scholarship, it is certainly not the case that we are left right back where we started from. Far from it. Rather, we are left with a Jefferson far more complex and nuanced, far more human and fallible, than we would have ever suspected from the text book accounts. Neither saint nor sinner, Jefferson—like the rest of us—is a puzzling and paradoxical mixture of the two.

Edwin S. Gaustad, author of Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson, Eerdmans, 1996

Updated Tuesday, April 17, 2001

critical commentary on TJ from Encyclodpedia Brittanica

Thomas Jefferson
Slavery and racism

Encyclopædia Britannica Article

			Page 5 of 20

Slavery and racism

Even before his departure from France, Jefferson had overseen the publication of Notes on the State of Virginia. This book, the only one Jefferson ever published, was part travel guide, part scientific treatise, and part philosophical meditation. Jefferson had written it in the fall of 1781 and had agreed to a French edition only after learning that an unauthorized version was already in press. Notes contained an extensive discussion of slavery, including a graphic description of its horrific effects on both blacks and whites, a strong assertion that it violated the principles on which the American Revolution was based, and an apocalyptic prediction that failure to end slavery would lead to “convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other race.” It also contained the most explicit assessment that Jefferson ever wrote of what he believed were the biological differences between blacks and whites, an assessment that exposed the deep-rooted racism that he, like most Americans and almost all Virginians of his day, harboured throughout his life.

Get full coverage on this topic and more
with a FREE trial

To his critics in later generations, Jefferson's views on race seemed particularly virulent because of his purported relationship with Sally Hemings, who bore several children obviously fathered by a white man and some of whom had features resembling those of Jefferson. The public assertion of this relationship was originally made in 1802 by a disreputable journalist interested in injuring Jefferson's political career. His claim was corroborated, however, by one of Hemings's children in an 1873 newspaper interview and then again in a 1968 book by Winthrop Jordan revealing that Hemings became pregnant only when Jefferson was present at Monticello. Finally, in 1998, DNA samples were gathered from living descendants of Jefferson and Hemings. Tests revealed that Jefferson was almost certainly the father of some of Hemings's children. What remained unclear was the character of the relationship—consensual or coercive, a matter of love or rape, or a mutually satisfactory arrangement. Jefferson's admirers preferred to consider it a love affair and to see Jefferson and Hemings as America's preeminent biracial couple. His critics, on the other hand, considered Jefferson a sexual predator whose eloquent statements about human freedom and equality were hypocritical.

In any case, coming as it did at the midpoint of Jefferson's career, the publication of Notes affords the opportunity to review Jefferson's previous and subsequent positions on the most volatile and therefore most forbidden topic in the revolutionary era (see primary source document: On Accommodating African Americans). Early in his career Jefferson had taken a leadership role in pushing slavery onto the political agenda in the Virginia assembly and the federal Congress. In the 1760s and '70s, like most Virginia planters, he endorsed the end of the slave trade. (Virginia's plantations were already well stocked with slaves, so ending the slave trade posed no economic threat and even enhanced the value of the existent slave population.) In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, he included a passage, subsequently deleted by the Continental Congress, blaming both the slave trade and slavery itself on George III. Unlike most of his fellow Virginians, Jefferson was prepared to acknowledge that slavery was an anomaly in the American republic established in 1776. His two most practical proposals came in the early 1780s: a gradual emancipation scheme by which all slaves born after 1800 would be freed and their owners compensated, and a prohibition of slavery in all the territories of the West as a condition for admission to the Union. By the time of the publication of Notes, then, Jefferson's record on slavery placed him among the most progressive elements of southern society. Rather than ask how he could possibly tolerate the persistence of slavery, it is more historically correct to wonder how this member of Virginia's planter class had managed to develop such liberal convictions.

Dating the onset of a long silence is inevitably an imprecise business, but by the time of his return to the United States in 1789 Jefferson had backed away from a leadership position on slavery. The ringing denunciations of slavery presented in Notes had generated controversy, especially within the planter class of Virginia, and Jefferson's deep aversion to controversy made him withdraw from the cutting edge of the antislavery movement once he experienced the sharp feelings it aroused. Moreover, the very logic of his argument in Notes exposed the inherent intractability of his position. Although he believed that slavery was a gross violation of the principles celebrated in the Declaration of Independence, he also believed that people of African descent were biologically inferior to whites and could never live alongside whites in peace and harmony. They would have to be transported elsewhere, back to Africa or perhaps the Caribbean, after emancipation. Because such a massive deportation was a logistical and economic impossibility, the unavoidable conclusion was that, though slavery was wrong, ending it, at least at present, was inconceivable. That became Jefferson's public position throughout the remainder of his life.

It also shaped his personal posture as a slave owner. Jefferson owned, on average, about 200 slaves at any point in time, and slightly over 600 over his lifetime. To protect himself from facing the reality of his problematic status as plantation master, he constructed a paternalistic self-image as a benevolent father caring for what he called “my family.” Believing that he and his slaves were the victims of history's failure to proceed along the enlightened path, he saw himself as the steward for those entrusted to his care until a better future arrived for them all. In the meantime, his own lavish lifestyle and all the incessant and expensive renovations of his Monticello mansion were wholly dependent on slave labour. Whatever silent thoughts he might have harboured about freeing his slaves never found their way into the record. (He freed only five slaves, all members of the Hemings family.) His mounting indebtedness rendered all such thoughts superfluous toward the end, because his slaves, like all his possessions, were mortgaged to his creditors and therefore not really his to free.

A guide to making sense of this mess!!

WHAT DO THOMAS JEFFERSON AND FRANK HAVE IN COMMON? WHY IS FRANK OBSESSED WITH THOMAS JEFFERSON?

ALSO, THE NEWEST LINKS ARE: 1) LINKS ABOUT TJ; 2) A STORY I WROTE AND USED IN A CREATIVE WRITING CLASS THAT COULD SHED LIGHT ON MY CONNECTION TO TJ; 3) SOME LINKS ABOUT MOVIES AND MUSIC.

START POSTING AND I'LL PUT YOU IN YOUR PLACE! HA!!! FRANK

Welcome back Frank

I'm back!!! I haven't posted on this blog in over 8 months, but I'm gonna try to amp it back up. Let me know how I can improve it, or simply critique it. thanks, Frank

Critical literacy: rub two texts together

Please read the 2 texts written by Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States of America. Post your comments! Enjoy!!!

http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html


http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefVirg.html

Thomas Jefferson "American Man of History"

Thomas Jefferson says...........

scroll down to read!

TJ and Sally: Aw, snap!

image taken from www.ibiblio.org/samneill/pictures/sh.


Sam Neill stars as the scandalous Thomas Jefferson in Sally Hemings: An American Scandal. A film for the whole family!!!!

Jefferson's musings on Blacks

To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act. The bill reported by the revisors does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, and further directing, that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expence, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniusses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of houshold and of the handicraft arts, feeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c. to declare them a free and independant people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired strength; and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to induce whom to migrate hither, proper encouragements were to be proposed. It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. -- To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? 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 reigns in the countenances, that immoveable
-265-veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late ingenious 30 experimentalist has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with more of it. They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, 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. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep
-266-of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But 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. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. 31 Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of
-267-the most affecting touches in poetry. -- Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar ;oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and shew how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his stile is easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning: yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived, and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column. This criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life. We know that among the Romans, about the Augustan age especially, the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable than that of the blacks on the continent of America. The two sexes were confined in separate apartments, because to raise a child cost the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted indulgence
-268-to his slaves in this particular, 32 took from them a certain price. But in this country the slaves multiply as fast as the free inhabitants. Their situation and manners place the commerce between the two sexes almost without restraint. -- The same Cato, on a principle of ;oeconomy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves. He gives it as a standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell his old oxen, old waggons, old tools, old and diseased servants, and every thing else become useless. `Vendat boves vetulos, plaustrum vetus, ferramenta vetera, servum senem, servum morbosum, & si quid aliud supersit vendat.' Cato de re rusticâ. c. 2. The American slaves cannot enumerate this among the injuries and insults they receive. It was the common practice to expose in the island
Suet. Claud.25.
of Aesculapius, in the Tyber, diseased slaves, whose cure was like to become tedious. The Emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to such of them as should recover, and first declared, that if any person chose to kill rather than to expose them, it should be deemed homicide. The exposing them is a crime of which no instance has existed with us; and were it to be followed by death, it would be punished capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to his fish, for having broken a glass. With the Romans, the regular method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture. Here it has been thought better never to resort to their evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the same house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise proof is required against him as against a freeman. Yet notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans, their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their master's children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction. -- Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture, that
-269-nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right: that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem which give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one, who has taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to the colour of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago.

self-description

Here are my 8 nouns:

1) provacateur: I have always been curious and loved interacting with people. For whatever reason, I've always enjoyed arguments, jokes, challenges, etc. My mom complains that I pick at people too much.

2) athlete: I've always been active and enjoyed the outdoors. But most specifically, I've enjoyed competing against myself and others. Competitor would be a more generic noun. I love all sports.

3) movie lover: There is something about cinema that I've always loved. My imagination really engages in movies, of all types. Comedies are a favorite. See "Anchorman."

4) family member: I have a large extended family. We are dysfunctional, complicated, but close. There is a lot of love there, and also a sense of connectedness and obligation.

5) seeker: I feel like I'm always looking for something just around the corner. I question things and search for ideas and truth, even when there is no apparent reason.

6) eater: I like to eat. It is enjoyable for me.

7) loyal friend: I appreciate loyal friends, and I am loyal in return. I have never cheated on a girlfriend. I feel that this is crucial to maintaining self-esteem and establishing trust with others. Many of my friends have been unfaithful and disloyal. I try to learn from their experiences.

Thanks, Frank

vesuvius and aria

11-7-99
Uncle L named me straight outta the womb: "Dat boy der gonna overflow, like Vesuvius. " I guess I wailed to bring Lord home. My family believes in two things about births: Lord’s spirit is everywhere, and the baby’s name comes from a sign during birth. Uncle was my messenger. Momma asked a week into my life what Vesuvius even meant anyway. L explained the volcano and Pompey and the people captured in stone like peanuts in chocolate. Mom laughed: "nigga, where you learnin nonsense like dat?"
"School," he replied.
"Don’ t clown me!"
Momma gets sensitive about knowledge. She dropped out at 15; reading holds no appeal. My older brother is a symbol for her fork in life’s road. El Dorado arrived due to a youthful indiscretion in a confined space (our minister Reverend Tonio’s language when he came callin). A local drug dealer used to roll by the house, Uncle L said, usually in broad daylight. Gold ride with silver rims, bass shaking glass in the big tinted back window. Twenty years young, sportin chains, a smile full of gold teeth, and a smiley face tattoo on the side of his neck that said LOOKEY HERE. He almost always held a 40 of malt. He’d drive up, she’d come out (she heard the bass three blocks away). They’d drive to the end of Grandma’s little street down to the grove of trees after the dead end sign. Climb into the backseat. All in broad daylight. During school hours, too. Momma skipped school like it was her job. I s’pose you could look at El Dorado as Momma’s diploma – reward for a backseat education.
Don’t think Grandma ever knew. Not for a skinny, boy. If she woulda found out that Momma was skippin, Momma woulda been on lockdown. 24 hour supervision. Grandma had her spies -- neighbor ladies who had days off during the week would stop over the house. Momma had a way of deceiving people. It also doesn’t help that the biggest thug dealer in North Charleston was comin round all the time. The neighbor’s sense of community and loyalty were thrown off. All that church learnin – the being bold in the Holy Ghost talk --- means nuthin in the face of a gun-bearing thug with a ruthless reputation. When Grandma found out that she would be Grandma, on account of Momma showin a belly, she went straight to the neighbors.
Killer, they mumbled, killer. And wiped their brows. Eyes to the ground.
In her rage, all Grandma could add was, " Deadbeat Dad."
Of course her prediction came true: El’s dad stopped comin round soon as Momma showed. Uncle L told me one time when he was really high that Momma cried for days, shut up in her room. When L went to talk sense to her ("he only wanted one thing"), she exploded in his face:
"Nigga, don’t even talk to me. Yo crippled ass givin me advise about men? Please. Don’t you know they’s all kindsa love. It’s not like in the books."
L wanted to say, Not that you ever read any to find out, but that crippled comment cut him. Imagine dat, he said, my own sister clownin on my injury from an accident at the work where most of her money came from. Supportin her ho-ass. Since the accident, L’s been messed up a lot. I s’pose the only benefit of this has been that he spills his guts all the time. History according to L.
Momma -- sixteen, a new baby, skinny and smokin cigarettes – quit school. During her pregnancy, she’d thought it all out. If she was gonna be a mom, then she needed to act like one. She needed a job to support her child; no school could pay for clothes and food. Took a job at Granny’s, an all-you-can-eat up on Rivers Avenue. Manager told her before he hired her that she may have to take a month or two off before the baby came if she got too big. I guess 15 year old black girls with pregnant bellies don’t mix well with Granny’s corporate image.
I showed up two years later. Dad numba 2, same as numba 1 – nowhere to be found. In a sick way, Uncle L has been my father. Not El Dorado’s, though. El doesn’t pay Uncle L no mind. As if Uncle aint even talkin when El done something wrong. No one tells my brother what to do. In biology, we studied how genes tell how you behave as you grow up. In my brother’s case, I believe it’s true. His daddy never owned up, and if he’d been around, we’d never known it. From the stories, El acts just like im – greedy, proud, stubborn, the epitome of a thug.
That’s where my brother and I have always been different. Grandma never had to lecture me; that wanna-be gangsta shit was not for me. El Dorado couldn’t stand this. Ever since I turned 15, he’d been saying, " you ready for the nines! " He’d flash the signal – five fingers on his left hand pointed sideways at four fingers on his right hand held straight up in the air. The look in his eye was this intense beating, a total commitment to the gang and what if stood for. He had become somethin greater. Me against the world; us against the world. Tupac preached that garbage. All the "nines" preached about how real the message was. Just cause death, destruction, and mayhem are real, do ya have to raise them to an artform and create a buncha black jesuses?
He took me for a walk one day in the fall of 91. We need to talk, no bullshit, straight-up, cause we men now. We walked down the sidewalk on Murray Avenue toward Hanahan High. It was cloudier and cooler than usual. I guessed a hurricane was comin. He was crackin his knuckles and fidgetin with his chains, not sayin anything.
Where we goin?Almost there.
When we turned the corner at Yeaman Hall Road, I knew. I stopped dead.
What you stoppin fo?
I’m not into bangin, man. You know this.
Just take a look, and we’ll walk back.
I did. Against my judgement. I knew it was gonna be gang-related. There couldn’t possibly be anything positive in going to the shack. That’s where they met – at night. We crossed the field where the broken down house sat back in a little wood.
We got in through a back window; every other opening was boarded up. Condemned. Place reeked of weed. The nines called it Da House, but is was a concrete slab with four wood walls, two windows, and two doors. Had some technology though. El turned on an industrial construction lamp, some nigga’s initiation prize, he pointed out.
Then he turned to me, his black body shadowed from the light off the lamp. He was gonna talk, but paused, and that’s when I saw the state of that shack: cigarette butts everywhere, empty 40 bottles, spray paint graffiti art on the floor, good colorful stuff. "V, listen here," he finally said," I brought ya here to tell you straight up that a lotta niggas been talkin bout how you need to own up."
"Own up to what?"
"Own up to the guys you grew with," he growled.
"El, I’m not gonna be a black face on the Live Five news."
"Nigga, ya betta start bein what ya is – a Northside Nigga left of the tracks who’s gonna need his click to survive."
Click, I thought. Lotta good the nines’ll do me in anything other than druggin and killin.
I then said, "What do you want from me?"
"Want you to join up. Like every otha nine’s done. Earn yo way."
"How?"
" B and E," he stated as if he were reading something off the grocery list.
So that’s the first step. Nines are known for secrecy, and I’d never really known what the initiation was. Fear shuts your mouth and ears, I guess. Breaking and entering. Sounds like a fun Friday night activity. I pimped El a bit with the obvious: " I gotta steal something?"
"Over a hundred dollars worth." El wasn’t playing; his tone was all business. His face had this menacing shine from the light behind him. He stared me down. He continued: " And if ya get caught, you’re cut loose. On your own. But you won’t. The goods go to the Nines."
"And if I don’t do it?"
"You wanna dis me in front of the crew? I’ll be out. Then they’ll watch me; all the time. If they don’t cap me straight away." He walked to the door. His tone became quieter and pleading, a 180 from his earlier demands.
"Drama, man, please," I said. " Ron and Q aint gonna do nuthin; they wouldn’t let that happen to you."
He turned back toward me, silhouetted in the open door. "You sure been blind, blowin that horn all those years. Member Stevie? Whodya think killed him?"
I watched El’s face –fear. His eyes flared and the muscles of his shoulders knotted up beneath his tank t-shirt.
"Ron. Ron killed im. Cause Stevie tol his gal about Nines, and it got back. They were tight, Ron and Stevie. What do you think they’ll do to a faggot horn blower?" This last line came out like slow motion, emphasis on every word.
"Just cause you’re scared, doesn’t give you any right to try to scare me into your same situation." Everyone in the neighborhood thought I was a sissy cause I stuck with Marching Band past middle school. And not only that, I played the clarinet all the time. Especially in the summer, at night, on the porch. I’d improvise for hours. Good jazz and rhythm stuff that I copied from the Marsalis brothers and Motown classics and even Sinatra stuff (luckily no one knew I was playing white boy music). It was my way to stay out, to follow something other than hate.
El looked at me like a hungry coyote, his tongue half-hangin out. "I was told, V. This is the last chance you have before they come after you themselves."
"This faggot’s goin home," I stated and brushed past him.
"Vesuvius, wait." I turned. He grasped the door jams above his head. His face towards the dirt. This was the first time he’d called me Vesuvius in forever.
"They’ll kill me."
He looked down. His Nikes scuffed the flat dirt.
" I’ll think it over, over a pop tart," I said, smiling inside. He’d said that to me one day last year when I begged him to give me a ride to band practice that I was running late to. I began to walk. I heard something behind me after about six strides. From around the corner, a soft sob. I stopped. It was breathless at times, but consistent. I imagined him sitting on the step, head in hands. In my whole life, that was the first time since we were real little that I’d heard him cry. The walk home that day was a long one – got home after dark, got yelled at for missing a good supper that Grandma cooked.
In bed that night, I thought about stealing. Even about jumping somebody and beating them half to death --- could it be that hard to do once? Just enough to get the thing over with. I played out all these scenarios in my mind of catching innocent people off guard, grabbing them, throwing them in the bushes. Kicking. Stealing. One of the last scenarios I remember coming up with was that I was walking down Remount and I past the AME church. A black bum was sitting on the grass. He was clutching a suitcase. I walked over to him and kicked the suitcase really hard. Said, " Got any money in that, pappy." When he rolled over and looked up at me, his gray beard drooping and eyes watery, he just mouthed words, like a fish on the dock. I walked away, thinking, that broke nigga. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized that the man on the ground was my father I never knew. Which spooked me, but made me laugh more than anything. It’s fitting that I have visions of my dad when thinking about stealing, I chuckled.
Just anotha Northside nigga left of the tracks was the last thought in my head before falling asleep that night.
At 9:30 the next morning I woke to the blare of the lawnmower outside. Uncle L was cutting grass I was supposed to cut. Loud, too early. I went into the bathroom, then got dressed. Went to the kitchen and ate a pop tart. From the porch I saw L finishing up the grass. He kept going over the same lines that he’d already cut. Sweating and jerking around the yard, it was quite the spectacle. Already 84 degrees the TV said. L looked like a rubber doll being pulled by an engine, his legs bouncy and awkward-looking.
" I think ya got that spot, " I yelled. The sun hit my feet as I stepped from the shade of the eave.
L jumped. I’d caught him by surprise. He faced me, but his look focused down the street around my shoulder. He shut the mower off.
" I know this," he said, grabbing the oil-stained towel off the porch rail. He mopped sweat from his face and neck. "I don’t know what I was thinkin – she usually walks by every mornin at nine."
"She?"
" Keesh," he stated.
Keesh was a neighborhood woman, three kids, and now, I guessed, the object of L’s obsession. I stepped fully into the sun. Everything sparkled, enough to make your eyes hurt. Great smell – freshly cut grass.
"So," I said," you think she finds your scent of oil and gas sexy?"
He studied me. " Showin yo true stripes now, aint ya? Wouldn’t be a member of dis famly if ya didn’t tear down on ole L." He swung the mower round, and started for the back of the house.
"L, L man I’m jokin," I shouted. " You know that." I followed him for a few steps, but he just ignored me. He disappeared behind the house.
I decided to walk down to Forest Cove Apts to see what was up, which would be nuthin. It was too late to see people go to work, too early to know on the doors of any of my boys’ places. I was usually still sleeping at 9:45, too.
Grandma’s house was only five houses down from Berkeley Street, which ran beside the parking lot of the apartments. You walked down Harmon, our street, to a grove of trees (Momma’s memory lane). It looked like a dead-end, but as you got into the grove, there was a little dirt road to the left that became Berkeley Street.
Slowly I walked, cause of the heat and humidity. L would say that a nigga could sweat the black right off on a day like that. If only it was that easy, I thought as my shoes hit the pavement of the parking lot. The apartments were in three rows of two-story brick buildings, parking spaces between each building. The green trim and doors made it look natural among the trees around it. Sun pooled on the blacktop, making little spider shadows that bled all over. The lot was nearly empty—a few broken down oldsmolbiles and the two custom Honda Civics that two white kids fixed up at the detailing shop where they work. They parked their rides in their mom’s spots, spent thousands on cheap cars with gold rims, tall spoilers, and loud, bass-bumpin stereo systems. They were inside sleeping off another party.
The black Cadillac rolled into the lot. It started at me as I was standing in the middle of the lot daydreaming. It had tinted windows
and silver rims. El would love to drive that, I thought. It pulled into a spot halfway down building two. New York plates. All we needed—more Yankees. A big woman stepped from the car, her large ankles in heels the first part of her I saw. She wore a flowing black dress, fancy sunglasses, and a floppy hat with a flower in it. Pale skin, especially in comparison to the three layers of make-up. She looked up at the apartments, and then glanced over her shoulder at me, smiling as she smoothed her dress. I musta looked like a lawn jockey, skinny, charcoal-colored boy with gaping mouth, motionless, in the middle of boiling asphalt.
There was an awkward pause; a few seconds of watching each other. Then she said: "Hello."
I looked down. "Ma’am," I replied.
"I guess we’re neighbors," she proclaimed. Her voice was deeper than most women’s I’d heard. She ran her fat fingers through her black hair when she said it.
I nodded, squinted at her because the sun was reflecting off her sunglasses, which made it hard to look her in the face.
"Sure is hot," she said as she walked to the trunk. She opened it and stepped back. "Feel like making a few dollars?" She turned, hands on her wide hips. Her half-penciled eyebrows shot above the thick black rim of the sunglasses.
I shrugged. "Depends."
" I really don’t feel up to carrying all my stuff up those stairs after driving most of the night," she sighed.
"Why you drive all night?" This amazed me – that someone would drive all night and not stop to sleep.
" Less traffic. And to tell the truth, less police. Takes less time," she said. " What do you think? Five dollars for carrying my bags and a few boxes. It’ll take maybe ten minutes."
I eyed her car. It shined in the sun, screamed, "Money!" Couldn’t be that many bags in that car. Five bucks? "Ok," I said.
"Good. I’m Aria." She reached out her pudgy hand; the nails were about a foot long.
"V," I mumbled, trying to avoid touching those nails.
"V as in Vernon?"
"Vesuvius," I stated.
She smiled. " Now that is a name fit for this world." She turned to the trunk, chattering about starting a pile of stuff for me to carry. For the first time in my life, a white person likes my name. I looked around the parking lot. What if my boys see me helping this big white woman? What if El drives by on Berkeley…..then it hit me --- El would assume that I was stealing from her.
I hadn’t thought about B and E since last night. This situation laid out nice for what I felt forced to do – carry in her bags, case the place, get a sense for her expensive stuff. Come back that night, rob her. Get it done. I’d have to wear a mask, long sleeve shirt. Not that it wouldn’t be obvious who I was. What other black teenager knew what I would soon know about her apartment?
Later that night, I stared at the ceiling in bed. This would be the easiest way to do it. Gucci leather bags, jewelry hanging off her neck and arms, and a bag that chinked ---had to be full of jewels. From her bits of babbling when I helped her move (I spent the five bucks at Hardees for dinner), she’d come from a nice place in New York, and wasn’t "accostumed" to not having her own furniture. El had ridden by with some of the Nines about half an hour earlier, goin real slow, music blasting. When Grandma went to shout him down, the crew started chanting V, and then barked like mad dogs. That’s what I want to be when I grow up, a dog. Thought about it most of the night. If I didn’t steal, I guessed El could be in danger from those thugs. If I did, I became a Nine. I compromised with myself that night – I’d break in this one time, give the Nines their trophies, and then figure how to sidestep those boys.
I tried to sleep that night by sayin to myself that B and E was like learnin to swim -- scary the first time, but easier and easier each time you did it. Which wasn’t a good example since I was a one-time offender-to-be. Finally, I got out the clarinet, and blew softly on it for a few minutes, and that calmed me enough to put me to sleep.
---------- ------------------ ---------------------


I walked zombie-like around the apartments the next day. Woke up at 10:30, and her Cadillac wasn’t around in the morning. Still gone at dinner time. For better or worse, I worked a plan: borrow a gun from El so he would know that I was going through with it (unload it before going to the door); right after sundown, if she came back at all that night, I’d go up there and do it ---- steal some of her jewelry and run like hell. Wouldn’t say a word; just go to her closet where I saw her put the bag.
Couldn’t eat much all day. Mostly walked around in the sun and sweated. The clarinet was useless – couldn’t focus enough to get the notes right. The sun rose and fell slowly. Every ten minutes I put up my hands to see if it was setting faster. By dinnertime, I was knotted up. Couldn’t put it off too much longer. Luckily, I hadn’t seen El all day – he was probably busy performing community service for the Nines. At dusk, I started pacing between buildings B and C. Her place was on the second floor in B. Not making myself too obvious, I thought during the twenty or so back and forths under her bedroom window. Black had almost fallen when I heard the first note. A booming woman’s singing voice came down from the second floor. I stopped like a hound with my head crooked to the side, trying to place the sound. You could hear the running water of a shower in between her voice. I never heard anything like the power of that. At first, I thought the voice and the water must’ve been one magical sound, coming from an invisible source. That’s what I thought at the time. Night gathered around as I stared at the white woman’s window. No idea what she was singing – it was foreign, probably Italian. Musta been standing there for ten minutes while she showered and sang her awesome song. And the water shut off. Her song became a hum. And I felt awful and alone. Standing between the buildings, a criminal, a peeper. I’ll never forget that silence – that was truly beautiful. The silence was wonder after that booming, dancing voice hushed. I suppose it was in that feeling of loneliness and all-out amazement that I was born; re-born, I guess. My clarinet never sounded ordinary again to me after that.

Funny how life twists you round. You come out alright after awhile, and for some, it’s a long while. Some, of course, get so twisted up that they suffer, and just pass away. Aria seems like the last way to me. When I heard she’d died a week ago, something in me went away. Just like that. Her daughter’s voice over the phone, dull, almost uncaring: "Mom has this package for you. On her sheet of last wishes she says that you should come down here for her funeral and open the package the day before. Don’t ask me why." It was as if some stranger were informing about a bill I owed. Maria had never been the affectionate daughter Aria woulda liked to have had. I remember her saying that one time when Maria stayed out all night doing God knows what that Maria lacked the capacity to be too affectionate and loving. Now, I’m empty. Like I said, something left me that day. I took a walk on the streets of Brooklyn. I looked up at the lights coming from the apartments that lined ????
People in there, eating meals, watching TV, worrying about tomorrow. And I was there, under her window once again. I was 15 years old. Her voice came up to me from deep, a place I thought memory didn’t recall. It was Italian, or something foreign, and as my step quickened, those tears came fast like an explosion, and I suppose, like an eruption. I’m reminded of that loneliness in the night, and the beauty that filled it, punctured it, and then sent it somewhere inside. On the streets of Brooklyn, Aria resurrected herself, and I still can’t truly figure it.
What about the breaking and entering night? That night I heard Aria sing, I had a real weird time. The singing had been done for probably fifteen minutes. I’m just standing there, in the dark. Something possessed me. After snapping out of the trance, I walked around the building to the parking lot and up the steps to her apartment, B 11. I didn’t even think – just walked right in the door, which was unlocked. Ski mask pulled tightly over my face. She was in the bedroom; the hair dryer was going. I walked through the family room into the bedroom. She stood at her dresser with her back to me, putting on earrings. She only heard me as I entered the doorway, and she jerked around, startled. Until that point, I didn’t even realize that I’d been holding the gun. When she whipped around, the gun got heavy. I pointed at her. The fright in her eyes at first was enough to make me run and run. I shuffled to her closet where she’d put the Gucci bag; reached in to grab it while keeping the gun pointed in her direction.
" I hid it," she stated.
I stood straight. She looked into my eyes. It was then that I realized that she knew things, that I was a stupid-ass kid doing a foolish wrong. The gun began to shake as I matched her look.
" You’re an artist as well as a thief?"
Artist? My eyes asked the question. I wasn’t about to speak, not as if I hadn’t already given myself away with my crappy burglar skills.
" Your hands," she nodded.
I looked at my hand holding the gun. The question was in my eyes.
She continued, " One who is committed to the arts can recognize artistry in another, even in the subtlest things. For a singer, it could be the quality of her speaking voice. A writer, the way he looks at you when you speak, or walk – he listens, absorbs. You strike me as a painter though, because of your hands."
I chuckled at this inside. I suppose I forgot at that moment that I was robbing this woman at gunpoint. " Painter?" I scoffed involuntarily at her comment. My voice came out before I could think to stop it.
" Musician then?"
I watched her. The gun became light all of a sudden, as if it was slipping out of my grasp. It dropped to the floor.
She jumped a little. " Ain’t even loaded," I replied.
" Well then," she sighed, turning off the hair dryer, " this is interesting. Live in the big Apple for 15 years, and never get mugged, and I’m in Charleston all of three days, and I get held up in my own place."
I wanted to run. My feet stuck, my mind fled. I looked down at the carpet. " I knew who you were when I put those eyes together with those wonderful hands. What do you play? "
" Clarinet," I said.
"Ah, ever hear of Miles Davis, or John Coltrane."
I shook my head.
"Who’s your favorite artist? Who do you copy?"
I shuffled my feet. " I don’t know. Marsalis, maybe Sinatra."
"Ole blue eyes," she asked. " You like the orchestra that plays on the Sinatra songs?"
I nodded.
" Why don’t you take the mask off?"
Note to finish this scene: Aria will invite V downtown to a performance by the big band orchestra in town. She will sing a solo with them. He accepts. She gives V a few pieces of jewelry that look expensive, in order to satisfy the Nines, to help him off the hook.
Notes: explain the theft scene; V flies down to Charleston; he goes to the address in Mt. Pleasant; he opens the package; remind readers of Aria’s continued influence in V’s life – she helps him get a full music scholarship to Guilliard, helps him with contacts in the NYC music world; when he plays on his first studio jazz album for wynton marsalis, she sends him a card saying It was only a matter of time; V sees uncle L and momma and ole Grandma – he tells them about El Dorado up in Brooklyn; he goes to see Maria after he plays at the funeral; she is holed up in her mom’s house smoking a joint; He has researched the song that Aria was singing – it is an Italian opera entitled ????? ;
V plays it for Maria, tears streaming down his face, so that he cannot even play; "why are you crying? You barely knew her, " Maria says.
" That’s why. I barely knew her, and she knew me," V replies.
HE returns to Brooklyn, and goes to see El in the rehab center. We’re getting a place together when you’re scheduled to get out in a month, he says. I’ll start looking now. "I don’t deserve this, V," El says. "I don’t deserve you bailing me out like this."
"None of us deserves nothin, brother," V says. " Remember that day you asked me to join the Nines. How scared you were when I said I was goin home to eat a pop tart. That I’d think about it. I know you were scared to death, that you cried. I let you down that day—never again. You getting betta, and I’m gonna help. Just think positive."
El looks out the window. "Am I gonna get my own room?"
"You crazy. We’re gonna need room to breathe," V says.
"You right," El says, breathing in and nodding.
More notes 12-10-99 : As V is leaving the rehab center after inviting El to live with him, El stops him. He requests that V play his trumpet out the window so the people will gather on the street below and look up at the sky. V gets home and gets the trumpet out. He walks to the window; the sky is orange and pink. The street below is busy, but not crowded. He plays, improvises nothing specific that he knows. He will play until the dark falls. From this point on, he will forget the past that needs forgetting. Life will what he can do now; what gifts he has will shine. Night falls completely; he stops. He hears clapping below, scattered laughter. An obnoxious guy yells, " Show yo face, music man." V steps back, puts the trumpet in the case. He walks out into the family room. It is pitch dark. He makes his way to the soft, Salvation Army chair. He sinks into into and stares at the floor. Forget, Forget…….then a voice, swelling, filling his body, a rumbling, and life ceases to exist, if only for that moment.