I'd be cool with him being banned from participating. But then again I've never quite understood the American fascination with the founding fathers.

Furthermore, I would suspect that there were a lot of potential great men and great 'thinkers' amongst the slave population that never got to reach their potential. I'll take my chances that silencing a small subset of racist 'thinkers' will encourage a much larger subset of non-racist 'thinkers' to participate.

How in the world did this country even get founded? I mean, the founders who didn't own slaves must have absolutely hated those who did, right? Like you, they were so disgusted there's no way they would have been friends, respected them enough to help them to participate in a revolution and ask them to write important documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, supported their presidential campaigns, etc. Also lets not forget the millions of people who weren't raping 7-10 year-olds. They were revolted by that, and doing so much better by only raping 12-15 year-olds, such pioneers.

Foldn I'm going to put myself in your shoes, consider that you're from St. Louis, and understand that had I been brought up under those circumstances I might not get it either. You sir are forgiven.

Not so fast. The best part about this white-guy moral relativism is that you still get to pick and choose when and why it's applied. It's not like you have to just shrug your shoulders and saying 'it is what it is' in every circumstance, you can forgive the people you like for things you really don't think are important if that's what you want.

FYP for the irony.

I learned the point you are making in junior high. It's so basic I'm not sure why you have to mention it, but we are dealing with people who get mad that other people use their imagination.

A toast to the benefits of being educated on the topic with a fair sense of reason, rather than a blinding sense of "infallible" moral outrage.

That's racist and anti-intellectual.

That must be some new form of logical super genius irony you got working there. Granted I do have a long history of apologizing for slavery in these pages.

Nah, it's fairly simple.

Poses an interesting question. I wonder how long guys like Jefferson would remain racist if transported to our society today?

Of course not.

Too bad that's the opposite of how things work.

I disagree. Or at least there's a balance. On one end silencing any and all 'offensive' speech would probably stifle debate. On the other end allowing any and all 'offensive' speech also stifles debate (See various internet forums for evidence).

I have no problem believing that silencing the people who believe they can own people and force them to work for them is on the right side of that balance.

What's different? What are the things we know now that we wouldn't expect Jefferson to know in his time?

Seems likely that he'd be able to read the mood of society and at the very least keep his racist opinions to himself. Seems unlikely that adult Jefferson is going to re-evaluate his core beliefs though.

Well, that's true, but the means of silencing them is important. Moderator action can be positive, but shouting at people and smearing them without showing your work is not.

Um, the science of genetics for starters.

This is what I dislike about internet forums. My post was clearly about banning a person and nothing at all about shouting/smearing them with made up evidence.

So you basically responded "Too bad this isn't how things work" based off of a completely made up position you assigned to me, that you only arrived at by dropping the first half of my post.

Yeah, I don't think "The science of genetics" is that important in the slavery debate.

Racists now still claim that we have different genes that make black people inferior (They're black, obviously they have *some* different genes, so why not others too?).

And people without knowledge of "the science of genetics" were still able to determine that black people had all of the same general qualities of white people and so shouldn't be enslaved.

Oh, I'm really interested in your #HotGeneticsTakes. Please elaborate.

Modern genetic research and study certainly has been important in debunking the racist belief any race is more intelligent than another. Jefferson was a man who took great pride in being educated. I think he'd quickly absorb the latest scientific research on the matter and realize he was mistaken. It probably wouldn't have changed his belief whites were better looking.

Well, that's wrong. Most people were still racist, and even freed slaves were often treated horribly, discriminated against, fell into indentured servitude, etc. And you seem to still have the mistaken belief TJ didn't think the slaves should be freed. He preferred they all be sent back to Africa. I think he would see his prediction that freeing them all here would lead to race wars was mistaken. He'd be impressed with decedents of slaves amazing ability to forgive.

Would Jefferson have approved slavery of dumb people? Like if you can't pass a certain test by the time you're 18 you get to be sold off as a slave?

Jefferson transported to modern times would have had a lot of new things to think about, not just modern genetics. He would have to be very closed minded to not reassess his views on race.

"As one of our Founding Fathers, the person who drafted our Declaration of Independence, somebody who not only was an extraordinary political leader but also one of our great scientific and cultural leaders, Thomas Jefferson represents what’s best in America." President Obama, February 10, 2014

Apparently President Obama is another slavery apologist that should not post here. lol

Absolutely but how scummy within the range of human summyness depends on how all others would do in the circumstances. The fact some did so much better counts against him significantly but in itself only moves him significantly away away from least scummy. He could still be average or even better.

DS condemn TJ particularly because we know he knew slavery was evil but I don't give the other educated slave owners any credit for not telling us they knew it was evil.

Disclaimer: i know less about the actual people then you might expect.

Well, if one sentence of platitudes from a politician isn't a definitive historical assessment, I don't know what is.