• doctordevice
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    6 months ago

    Look, I don’t think we disagree about racism in this country or how bad slavery is or that Thomas Jefferson was a slaver jackass. But I am tired of people refusing to learn more about the context of that clause and arguing in favor of the slavers, even inadvertantly.

    Counting slaves when they couldn’t vote was bad for slaves while being good for slavers. The South took your stance, that they should count in full. The North took the opposite, largely for political benefit but they happened to also be backing the morally correct position, that slaves shouldn’t count for representation in the House if they can’t vote because it only inflates the power of slavers.

    The North first tried to take the stance that if the South wanted slaves to contribute to their House representation, they also counted towards counts for taxation. This clause was the compromise of the South taking on the tax burden of 3/5 of slaves in exchange for 3/5 of the political representation of slaves.

    You really shouldn’t be arguing semantics when your first comment is just deadass wrong. The clause doesn’t mention race, period. Frederick Douglass points out very clearly why that is ultimately a benefit for the oppressed black population, giving greater power to states that had free black people. Maybe you shouldn’t be taking a stance against a man who himself escaped slavery. I think he knows what he’s talking about.