Just Us: An American Conversation

In this chapter, Rankine excerpts pieces from Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1782), focusing on the Founding Father’s ideas about people of African descent.

Rankine notes that Jefferson established rules of inheritance that included the right to bequeath and distribute slaves to one’s next of kin. On the subject of emancipation, Jefferson considers what would happen if Black people were incorporated into the state. He concludes that whites’ prejudices, as well as Black people’s long memory of what they had suffered, would divide the state and, ultimately, would end in the extermination of one group or the other.

On the subject of color, Jefferson decides that it is intrinsic in nature and that white skin is more beautiful than that of Black people. Then, using evidence from English scientist Adair Crawford’s pulmonary experiments, Jefferson claims that Black people require less sleep. He also believes that their griefs are fleeting. He surmises that Black people are wedded more to sensation than reflection. Though their memory is equal to that of white, he says, Black people are inferior at reasoning. He concludes that Black people have little facility with language and, thus, their race could never produce a poet.