The Invisible Chains of Debt and the Catastrophic Loss of African American Wealth Can we finally turn the corner on colorblind racism in 2014?
By Pamela Brown
PamBrown15.wordpress.com / January 4, 2014
Years after Thomas Jefferson’s famous words “all men are created equal”
began to ring as a call to conscience, he himself must have felt every
bit of their hollowness. Polish Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus
Kosciuszko bequeathed Jefferson enough money to free his slaves, as well
as to set them off with land and farming equipment of their own, but
Jefferson refused this gift. Instead, he died with a debt hanging over
Monticello – a kind of debt that he was the first to incur through
monetizing his slaves for use as collateral for the loan to build his
estate (Weincek 2012: 96). The slave families, who resided on
Jefferson’s estate as intact families, were separated and sold to pay
the outstanding debt such that the estate could be passed down to its
rightful heir. In spite of words we have no reason not to believe were
heartfelt, and in spite of fathering six black children, Jefferson was
not able to rise to the call of his words in the end, leaving as mixed a
legacy as the American history that has followed. And in spite of
generations of black descendants, no reparation has ever been paid to
them; they remain a forgotten part of this legacy. As the story is most
commonly told, there is only mention made to a legitimate debt paid with
the bodies, blood and breath of Jefferson slaves, but no mention of any
owing to them. Unfortunately, this telling of Jefferson’s story not
only exposes the power dynamics of the past, but also discloses a
fundamental understanding of the world that continues to rear its ugly
head today.
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