A conservative student organization has flagged a quiz at Vanderbilt University where students were asked “Was the Constitution designed to perpetuate white supremacy and protect the institution of slavery?” A student who answered “false” was marked wrong by the professor. The class is taught by Professors Josh Clinton, Eunji Kim, Jon Meacham, and Dean John Geer entitled PSCI 1150: U. S. ELECTIONS 2020. Meacham is a regular guest on MSNBC and CNN and other networks as well as a contributing editor for The New York Times Book Review.
The question posed to students is shown below: “Was the Constitution designed to perpetuate white supremacy and protect the institutional of slavery?
The faculty would only accept “true” as the answer.
The statement is wrong on a number of levels. There is no question the Constitution did not end our deeply shameful history of slavery. However, even with the Declaration of Independence figures like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson sought to address slavery. The decision was made to accommodate slave states to secure the Declaration. The same political calculus was behind the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise found in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution.
Thus, the Constitution did indeed perpetuate and protect the institution of slavery with its inherent white supremacy values. However, that was not the “design” of the Constitution. The Three-Fifths Compromise was a fight over representation and taxation. The decision to leave slavery unaddressed was based on the same political expediency. It was wrong. It is no excuse to secure the independence of most citizens at the cost of leaving enslaved others. It was and remains the original sin of our nation. The design of our Constitution should have guaranteed freedom for all men and women.
Yet, the actual design of the Constitution was the Madisonian vision of shared and limited government. It was founded on the philosophical work of figures ranging from John Locke to Montesquieu. The assertion that the design was to perpetuate slavery is revisionist and wrong.
Notably, one can teach the transcendent issue over slavery — and its perpetuation under the Constitution — without rewriting history to fit this narrative. It is also troubling that these professors would penalize students who hold an alternative view. Even if this were arguably correct, it would be at best a question upon which many would disagree. The question comes across as a reinforced group think or orthodoxy — a rising concern for many of us in higher education.
Indeed, Meacham has previously stated that the Constitution was designed to achieve democratic change and evolution:
“It’s about openness to changing circumstances and data. If you can’t recognize that circumstances have shifted and a preexisting opinion is worth revising, you can’t be an heir of 1776. Woodrow Wilson said the Constitution was supposed to be Newtonian, but was in fact Darwinian. Its genius was to change and evolve. If we can’t change and evolve as citizens and leaders, then we are undoing the American Revolution. The road to totalitarianism lies in unquestioning certitude.”
Meacham has repeatedly stressed that the design was meant to institutionalize gradual democratic change. He agreed with the assertion that “America’s Founders wrote a Constitution designed to make change a slow and deliberative process.” He stated “Yes, they did, and it has served us rather well over time—not perfectly, God knows, but it has enabled us to muddle along for well over two centuries, always expanding, not contracting, individual liberty under law.”
Indeed, Meacham stressed equality as the design of the Constitution, even if unachieved:
“This shift found its fullest expression in what became the most important sentence in the English language: ‘We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ I think that sentence has changed more lives around the world than any other. The eras we commemorate and want to emulate are the ones when we’ve more generously applied the implications of that sentence.”
Meacham has previously defined the Constitution’s purpose in other ways like resisting figures like Trump: “the Founders would have been stunned that it took this long to get a president like this. They designed this document for demagogues.”
That Meacham would have failed this question.
I reached out to the professors and the university about this story. The faculty did not respond. Vanderbilt sent the following opaque response that did not expressly deny the facts of this story:
“Consistent with our commitment to the principles of free speech and academic freedom, Vanderbilt has long fostered an environment in which diverse ideas and opinions can be expressed in our efforts to both model, and teach, the principles of civil discourse. The question was posed to stimulate discussion. Students were in fact not rewarded or penalized for their answers. It is unfortunate that the intent behind and purpose of the academic exercise have been misconstrued. We appreciate that our students, faculty and staff have historically engaged in respectful dialogue and we hope this continues.”
It is not clear what is meant by students not being “rewarded or penalized for their answers” when this student was marked off for answering “false.” For that student, there was not a “dialogue” but a decision that the student was wrong for believing that the design of the Constitution was developed to perpetuate slavery and white privilege. For some of us, that is like telling students that they are wrong in believing that the United Nations charter was designed to perpetuate colonialism or capitalism. That is the start more of a diatribe than a dialogue.
That’s not a conservative position it’s the position of Constitiutonalists and opposed only by the socialist fringe foreign ideologists. Try using the correct words and quit calling citizens what they are not and start calling non citizens what they are. A progressive or more accurately regressive liberal cannot be a constitutionalist and a Democrat cannot be Socialist. The two are 180 degrees opposed. All this reframing and renaming is just pigspeak oinking and changes nothing but the breed of the pig.
Professor,
the problem is that the vast majority of the stories you post about from the progressive side rest on the faulty proposition that the founders, institutions, Constitution, etc. were inherently stained with slavery and therefore are incurably corrupted so must be torn down and thrown aside. those who disagree are part of the problem in this view so there views not only should be disregarded but the individuals themselves need to be confronted.
The question should have been. DID America live up to the principles laid out in the constitution? The answer then would have been no. The follow up question would be, was the costitution amended to directly address the issue of slavery. Why would a nation believing in white supremecy ever allow th 13th amendment to be added to the constitution. Adding the amendment gave birth to the struggle for equal rights. The question about the test question is whether it is designed to lead the student to a conclusion that the ideas in the founding document of our nation were actually without merit and if you do not believe so you to are white supremisist. This is how and what you should think.
What Glenn Reynolds said: people will get tired of paying for this, and the higher ed apparat will attribute that to ‘anti-intellectualism’.
This is being promoted by AG Sulzberger, a legacy hire and not a particularly educated man, making use of N. Hannah-Jones as his instrument. N. Hannah-Jones (in re there is evidence has been a lunatic racial particularist since her college days 25 years ago) is also someone who has little in the way of intellectual assets (but an interesting family history).
Of course, it doesn’t benefit blacks to be selling social and historical fiction to feed the idea that the whole world has revolved around their collective a**.
Absolutely. Dancing around words, the framers of the Constitution perpetuated white supremacy and condemned Black Americans to slavery.
Yep Rudy, I still see black slaves everywhere! We had one in the White House for 8 years, my goodness!
Hey Rudy, What about the millions of slaves that your Spanish ancestors brought to Mexico, to Central and South America, to Cuba and the Caribbean countries? I bet they had a rollicking good time, right? And that your Hispanic brethren made it all up to them with affirmative action laws and that they are now at the top tier of the Hispanic social and economic world, right? Not like in the big, bad U.S., tsk, tsk, tsk.
Another reasonable post by Mr. Turley being (very poorly) debated by idiot leftists. No, the Constitution was not designed to perpetuate white supremacy. Only an imbecile (or an overly-fed, ivory tower professor, but I repeat myself–the latter is a subset of the former) would think otherwise. Simple consideration of the phrase “[] in order to form a more perfect union []” in the parlance of the day settles such a buffoonish question. To paraphrase the Framers: No, our union is not prefect now, nor will it ever be–it is an institution formed by and composed of imperfect beings–but that will not prevent us from seeking, constantly, to make it as perfect as possible through future increments, whether large or small.
I’m sorry that leftists can not accept reality or history, and thus are compelled to substitute each with their own delusions. If you’re so very dissatisfied by the state of our Union, run for public office and change it. Similarly since you never (with one rare exception in the case of By the Book) never agree with the blog’s author, start your own blog and write all the fantasy you want. Please let me know your Patreon handle and I’ll glad help subsidies your start up costs, if it’ll buy some relief from your droning here.
Else wise, bugger off and keep your delusions between you and your therapist/therapy group. Rational people don’t need to be burdened by your inane, incorrect, and imbecilic ramblings.
A central thing we got rid of in the revolution was rule by king and queeny. To view our constitution now is to look at the improvements made since the original framers wrote the original one. 13th,14th, 25th and other amendments. Always look to the “intentions” of those later framers. Also look at statutes passed by Congress to effectuate the amendments. Give honor to LBJ.
I found a definition of “white supremacy.” – ” the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the black race, and should therefore dominate society..”
Sooo, I don’t feel superior to Asians or even Hispanics. But do I feel superior to American blacks??? Yes, I do. I don’t feel superior to African Blacks, or even Jamaican blacks. But I do feel superior to a majority of American blacks. Why wouldn’t I??? I mean look at what they have done to Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. A good chunk of them would starve if not for food stamps. 80% of their kids are born out of wedlock. They have high rates of criminal records, and a difficulty speaking English.
If American blacks want me to stop feeling superior to them, then maybe they need to quit acting inferior. I just posted a video of Women of Color in Baton Rouge doing what black women do, but it was moderated out for some reason. Maybe instead of condemning feelings of racial superiority, we should be examining what causes these feelings, namely lousy behavior by a majority of American blacks.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
A good chunk of them would starve if not for food stamps.
They did not prior to the program’s creation in 1965 and they would not now. About 1/4 of the SNAP programs beneficiaries are black and about 22% of the black population is enrolled in SNAP. About 17% of all those enrolled in SNAP are elderly or disabled and living alone. They’d be better off if you added a small increment to their Social Security check and discontinued the SNAP program. About 49% of the whole live in households with wage and salary income. The benefit amounts to about $130 per person per month. It’s an income supplement. Take it away, and people rebalance their spending
80% of their kids are born out of wedlock
70%. Again, most first born children are born out of wedlock these days, though about 30% are legitimized later.
So yes, them starving was hyperbole to some degree. But better stats seem to be here:
https://www.cbpp.org/research/facts-about-african-americans-in-the-food-stamp-program
As far as the 77.3% (80% for ease), that number is correct. The 70% you cited includes non-American blacks, who only have a 30% illegitimate birth rate, or about the same as white girls. Among American Blacks, it is 77.3%. I have given you a link to this before.
I think you need to get out more.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Are you now or have you ever been a racist? We have ways of making you talk comrade.
Wrongthink is thoughtcrime.
Report all deplorable kulak untermenschen to your local CPUSA kommissar, comrade.
Is Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter a bitter, clinging deplorable?
Yes, I am.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky is primarily an admirer of Squeeky Fromm who attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford.
White Supremacy White Privilege just keep pushing the lie.
The Constitution tolerated slavery.
The Constitution also tolerated states prohibiting dissent, prohibiting peaceful possession of firearms, arbitrary searches and seizures by police, and racial discrimination.
That does not mean it was designed for these ends.
and let’s not forget that england enslaved them. the usa freed them in under 100 yrs from its inception as a country. sooner would have been better, but govt stuff always takes time.
Better yet would have been emancipation through compensation like every other country that eventually outlawed slavery. The U.S. is the only country that suffered a horrific war between its own citizens to end slavery. The slave owners should have been compensated and the slaves repatriated to Africa or sent to a Caribbean island. Keeping them here obviously hasn’t worked out well and continues to be a social and economic drain on this country 155 years after emancipation.
Shame on you to believe that Blacks are a “social and economic drain on this country.” Black Americans have contributed in so many important ways throughout our history. The country’s wealth was built on their labor; black soldiers have been important throughout our history, starting with helping us win independence from England; there are many significant Black musicians, artists, writers, scientists, civil rights leaders, …
Hogwash. They are a drain as a group. They have torn up every place they live in large numbers, and no, they did not build our country. They picked cotton, and they hoed turnip greens. After they were freed, they made some pretty good progress until the mid 1960’s when the Great Society Programs clobbered them back down.
But, if you think them sooo wonderful, then by all means move to Detroit, or Baltimore, or East St. Louis where you can bask in their reflected glory.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Commit, if we wondered why the GOP is shrinking and is now the lily white party, the opinions of Sadie Mae and TIN remind us of how.
Yes, those Remarkable People of Color are doing a wonderful job building Kenosha right now! And Rochester, New York!
oh… wait. . .
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Yes, slavery brought us Michael Jackson and assorted basketball players, but also a veritable crime wave for almost two centuries, where 6% of the U.S. population of black males are convicted of more than 50% of violent crimes. The human suffering of crime victims and their families, taken together with the staggering costs of police, court, and prison resources, as well as the costs of generations of welfare payments and the affirmative action industry, make it all decidedly not worth having a group of people in this country that will never, ever be able to fit in and make a go of it without enormous government handholding and financial support.
Well, it’s comforting how many of the right wing Trumpsters here have denounced the overt racism of TIN and Sadie Mae Glutz. No wonder so many blacks are supporting the ticket.
But hey, I’m sure TIN regrets us letting in so many Italians and Sicilians like JT and Mespo’s ancestors, what with that crime wave. They did bring good cooking, some great baseball players, and Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennet. Then the drunk Irishmen who in the 19th century were often shown as monkeys in political cartoons. Too bad blacks didn’t also bring better music than jazz with Louie, Duke, Miles, the Count, and Coltrane – you know, the stuff Frank and Tony sang – or better food than all that southern barbecue with side vegetables, cornbread and chicken, or better sportsmen and gentlemen than Jackie, Kareem, Lebron, Herschel and Emmit, Yeah, cut that stuff and just give me some of that good ole white boy boiled potatoes, boiled meat, and Yorkshire pudding like in England, or that renowned German cuisine and put on the Lawrence Welk and Pat Boone. That’s the stuff that makes America famous and the envy of the world – oh yeah, and Chinese food.
We can debate the merits of various immigrant groups. Well, people who are willing to accept valid factually based social generalizations can debate it. Because a lot of apologists for unlimited mass migration, pretend that every group is as desirable as another. When, in fact, that is preposterous. Obviously, more orderly, intelligent, healthy, and well educated groups will add to the national stew more than groups that are poor, sick, chaotic, and illiterate. I unreservedly desire a stronger and better America than a weaker one, and I prefer more valuable groups over less valuable ones. Personally I would welcome a lot more Chinese famed for their industry, thrift, intelligence, and law abiding good natures, but you can keep the Somalis like Ilhan Omar. Keep them all over there in Somalia, please!
That being said, in every generation of America right back to the war of independence and before, it was ever the desire of the living plutocrats of the day, to have more cheap labor from abroad–
At times these plutocrats were rich planters from Virginia like Washington or Jefferson who may have wanted more slaves from africa.
At times they were railroad tycoons who wanted more Chinese labor to do the dangerous dynamite work on the railroads.
At times they were Yankee industrialists who wanted more Irishmen to fight the war against the South or die in unsafe steel plants.
Maybe they were garment industry buyers who wanted more Jews from Germany or Poland, coming before the war, to swell the ranks of piece garment manufacturing workers.
Maybe more agricultural tycoons who want the Mexicans to pick cherries or pluck chickens or whatever. You get the idea.
As a native born American, I claim my right to legitimately and lawfully act in my own economic interests, just like any union worker would. I advocate that natives resist further efforts to bring in overseas cheap labor at the expense of native born Americans. Whether this means gobs more illegal Hondurans, or new h1b workers writing code for Microsoft, we have a our own economic interests and we will not be deterred from acting on them because of names and insults.
Google “world IQ map.” Not a pretty picture. At the top are Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan & China. At the bottom are many African countries. The average IQ in Equatorial Guiana is 49 points below that in Hong Kong!
Yes, and another great contribution of blacks to the U.S. is their inability to get along with anyone, including themselves, so now you can go to a historically worthless college, and spend about $100,000 on a historically worthless degree, taking classes in black-white problems, black-Hispanic problems, black-Asian problems, black-Jewish problems, black-gay problems, black-police problems, and black on black violence. And hopefully that will parlay you into an Affirmative Action government job where you can spend your career grousing about how you never had a chance and filing EEO complaints. Only in America!
JT protests too much. Designed? How did those words get in the constitution otherwise. “It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest” isn’t just a Fugs album from the 60’s it turns out.
Apparently , Vanderbilt is Ill equipped to teach about the Constitution.. They must lose any and all Federal Funds.
Agreed that “the Constitution did indeed perpetuate and protect the institution of slavery with its inherent white supremacy values.”
Agreed that “The design of our Constitution should have been freedom [for] all men and women.” But that wasn’t the design of our Constitution. And not only was it based on “inherent white supremacy values,” but on inherent sexism (e.g., allowing the disenfranchisement of women).
Frederick Douglass:
“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. …”
He goes on to address the abolition of slavery, but his words apply to other injustices as well. Indeed, they can be considered in relation to the American Revolution and the ongoing struggle for a truly just country. That said, I prefer injustice to be resisted with words rather than blows.
Vanderbilt should change its name to “Animal Farm” University, because that test would be perfect there. Napoleon the pig will hand out the diplomas.
Is Turley hung up on the word “designed?” Because perpetuating white supremacy and protecting slavery is exactly what it did. Yes, there are many good things in the Constitution but there are also multiple compromises to assure slaveholding states that slavery wouldn’t be voted out. That’s why we got the three-fifth’s clause and the Electoral College. Preventing the end of the international slave trade was never about gradually ending slavery, it was about giving South Carolina and others twenty years to get ready for the transition to a completely domestic slave trade. America would provide its own slaves that were often the product of forcible rape. Turley talks about Jefferson (who was the worst) as “wanting to address slavery” and lumping him in with Adams who didn’t own slaves and found the practice of slavery abhorrent. Jefferson got rich off his slaves, only freed two during his lifetime (one of which paid him $200) and most of them were sold after his death to pay off his debt from the monuments to himself in Monticello and Charlottesville. The primary purpose of the Constitution might not have been to protect white supremacy (actually white, male, landowners) but one of it’s purposes was exactly that.
https://medium.com/discourse/thomas-jefferson-did-more-to-promote-domestic-slavery-and-slave-breeding-than-any-other-president-363d02e2fae7?source=friends_link&sk=a35f76345264d383fdc0fd0914c68cd9
So using the logic that because Jefferson owned slaves he could not authentically advocate for equality is the same as person saying that James Hansen did not really believe that CO2 emissions were a global problem since he drove a car and flew on jets. The flaw in that logic is to believe someone is blind to the desired direction of the future, and that their ends justify the means of using their influence, which requires utilizing the tools available to their success.
Jefferson wasn’t blind to the consequences, he was the architect and he personally fulfilled part of the plan, enriching himself and other Virginia and <Maryland slaveowners.
As were the blacks in Western Africa who are still plying their trade in black people as slaves. Perhaps nitpicking about Jefferson is time that should be spent cleaning up the true source of black enslavement to this day.
Slave breeding farms is “nitpicking?”
https://democracyguardian.com/edwin-betts-the-man-who-literally-changed-history-d5e9674ad6fd?source=friends_link&sk=8d2e1da005e3b00e86f2658f8a8cee17
Yes, he’s hung up on the word “designed” because it’s an integral term in how the question is phrased. Turley’s reasoning is sound because it’s based on historical reality.
Another historical fact that often goes overlooked is that slavery was a ENGLISH institution in THEIR American colonies, and the US ended it within 4 decades after separating from England. This was not something the newly formed nation dreamed up, but rather it was a terrible problem for them to solve.
NO ONE is disputing that the Constitution enabled slavery to persist in the south after it was ratified. That was a consequence of the design but not the motivation for it, and if you have ever done any actual research into the decision of how the Constitution was ratified this way, you’d learn that it was a choice among two unappealing choices.
Choice 1 was to let the issue of slavery divide the fledgling nation into 2 or more nations and keep it from becoming strong enough to defend itself. England was not only still a very strong nation, but it also fought the US again the War of 1812, a war where crucial victories happened in the south. Had the US become multiple and separate nations, a divide and conquer strategy would have been much easier for a strong nation like England.
Choice 2 was to create an imperfect union that allowed slavery, but the expectation in the north was that it would need to end and as soon as possible. That expectation was ultimately fulfilled when the Civil War began 71 years later (and ended 156 years ago) where thousands of white Americans fought to keep the union together.
Again, no one disputes that slavery was terrible and that it had long term consequences. The dispute today is whether the CURRENT problems facing many black communities are primarily the product of that history, or from much more recent events.
Nonsense like the 1619 project is pure historical revisionism that preys on those who are both ignorant of a more fully contextualized version of history, AND who gain by playing people against each other in these identity politics. THEY are the ones promoting racism in America. They want a return to tribalism where people are divided and hate each other over contrived claims that past misdeeds require a restructuring of society.
Real history is absolutely littered with small and large instances of tribalism being used to gain power. The REAL DESIGN of the constitution was to provide an alternative to tribalism, a mechanism that favored one’s effort going forward instead of their grievances looking backward.
Lorenzo, your claim that “the US ended it [i.e., slavery] within 4 decades after separating from England” is false. Not only did slavery continue through the Civil War, but the 13th Amendment still makes felony slavery legal: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Are you aware that slave prison labor is still used in some states?
I recommend the documentary 13th
Commit, I’m going to differ with you on “prison slavery”, though maybe you know something about instances that I don’t. This was recently an issue in our community as the city and then county ended decades of getting deals on highway landscape maintenance from the DOC. It turns out that working on that was a privilege for inmates who had behaved and typically on the edge of release and received some small compensation for it. The cry here was “prison slavery”, which this wasn’t, and a sentiment which seems to ignore the concept of repaying ones debt to society. It is also used as a means to earlier release.
It varies a lot by locality. It may be that the situation in your community involved a “privilege,” but in other places, it doesn’t.
If you do an internet search on [prison labor] or [prison slavery], it will pull up a lot of relevant discussion. I do recommend the documentary 13th, but don’t have a particular news article to suggest, though here’s one set of links you could scroll to see what interests you: https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/764-prison-labor
I’ll check it out when I have more time, but as long as people are in prison for actual offenses – see comment below – they are being held against their will and otherwise expected to do things which people who are not incarcerated are not required to do. Repaying their debt to society seems to me to include doing useful work without compensation – other than pocket change and/or commissary and other benefits – as long as it is not under conditions otherwise dangerous or cruel.
During Jim Crow days in the south, it was common to arrest blacks and then send them to farmers, manufacturers, and construction companies to work. Charges were not necessarily serious nor sentences reasonable, the point being literal slave labor. In a similar manner, black women were often “mistresses” to powerful whites for reward, and a point of shame for the white wives that had to live with it. Recommend this book for a personal recounting of this latter practice in her own family around Columbus Georgia by a DC based journalist who grew up there and went to UGA.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Family-Tree/Karen-Branan/9781476717197
Commit, if you are drawn to that book, the writer has a web site where she recounts in a blog numerous interactions she had with small town Georgia residents on her tour promoting the book, much of it moving. No one old enough to remember the specific event she describes, but old enough to remember Jim Crow and relatives who did live back then..
https://www.karenbranan.com/
Enigma, you may find it of particular interest as well.
BtB, thanks for the recommendation. I don’t know that I’ll get to it soon, but will add it to my list of books to check out.
And the prisoners received compounded time for those daily work duties. Meant earlier release for those.Working by a prisoner on cleaning up public roadways is not slavery.
I agree.
I think the reference is to ending the importation of persons for the purpose of enslavement, which did end before the Civil War.
mistressadams, that may have been what Lorenzo intended to write, but what he actually wrote was “slavery was a ENGLISH institution in THEIR American colonies, and the US ended it within 4 decades after separating from England,” which is false.
And if Lorenzo meant “the US ended [the importation of slaves] within 4 decades after separating from England,” the unspoken end of the sentence is “while maintaining the institution of domestic slavery for several more decades.”
Seriously? We’re talking about slavery in one context and you quibble about it in another edge case scenario? Can’t you add anything meaningful???
The Constitution was designed to do muultiple things, among them was to perpetuate white supremacy and promote slavery. You don’t get to decide what the real dispute was, you foolishly assert that the North wanted to end slavery when many of them benefitted as well from the practice and wanted to continue it. You have an apparent need for the history of this nation to be something it wasn’t.
What date are you using for when America separated itself from Britain” The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, the Civil War ended in 1865, that sounds like over 8 decades to me. You presume to tell me I’ve done no research on how the Constitution was written, you would be wrong.
How did the Constitution designed actually perpetuate white supremacy?
We’ll start with only white people being able to vote. Since it excluded women as well that would introduce misogyny but two terms might be too much to deal with.
Women were willing to step back and trade their ability to vote for black men being able to vote. Remember, only black men could vote. See the problem there?
Women didn’t step back, they also sold out their sisters in the suffrage movement once they no longer needed them, I’m not the one here rewriting history.
Yup, as a white woman, I’m ashamed that many white suffragists were racists, when they should have joined with suffragists of color to work for the enfranchisement of all women.
Look pal, you have lost all credibility because you obviously don’t read your actual history and simply interpret your limited understanding of history to fit your narrative. To even suggest that the goal of the Constitution was to perpetuate white supremacy is intellectually disgusting.
Enigma, you ask “Is Turley hung up on the word ‘designed?’”
The answer is yes, Turley is clear that he’s debating what the Constitution was/wasn’t “designed” to do rather than what it effectively did:
“the Constitution did indeed perpetuate and protect the institution of slavery with its inherent white supremacy values. However, that was not the “design” of the Constitution. … The design of our Constitution should have been freedom from all men and women. Yet, the actual design of the Constitution was the Madisonian vision of shared and limited government. … The assertion that the design was to perpetuate slavery is revisionist and wrong.”
However, his argument about the “design” is a bit muddied. He admits that “The design of our Constitution should have been freedom [for] all men and women,” but that wasn’t the design of our Constitution. “Should have been” =/= “was.”
Suppose the Constitution had never been ratified…speculate as to where we’d be now. Listen to Chapter 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdRBCFaslbo&t=3s
Have you read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers? Your NARRATIVE is bullying not informational.
Yes I’ve read them, there’s plenty of factual information in the article I wrote and posted, you just aren’t ready to receive it.
“I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm, what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.” Thomas Jefferson
I think we can assume from their response that Vanderbilt is lying. If a student is not marked either way, then it is a discussion point. When it is marked wrong, even for the purposes of the exercise, it is not longer a discussion point, unless the student makes it one.
Professor Turley seems to make Meacham out as a hypocrite by quoting him:
(Turley) “Indeed, Meacham stressed equality as the design of the Constitution, even if unachieved:
(Meacham) This shift found its fullest expression in what became the most important sentence in the English language: ‘We hold these Truths to be
self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty,
and the Pursuit of Happiness.’
But that quotation used by Meacham is from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, right? So not really on point to Meacham’s view of the design of the Constitution.
Both the Constitution’s purpose was to preserve the country that the Declaration created, based on individual liberty and limited government, revolutionary ideas at a time where all powerful kings and white supremacy were the norms. Though the US was born out of colonialism, actually because the US was born flawed, it sought to create a system to chart a path to further enlightenment and equality.
The question suggests instructors who are not all that serious. History is not a black and white matter; it is complex. To understand the past is to put events and historical actors (individuals and groups) in context. To understand the Constitution, it is useful to know something about the Articles of Confederation, and to understand those, it is useful to know something about the course of the rebellion against the British parliament (the King was a symbol, not a cause; he had no real power). It is also useful to know something of the era — of the philosophes and the psychology of the late 1700s. The 1619 project is an execise in demagoguery, not history. The place to start is not the New York Times, which is a newspaper, not a university or a historical society, but The Federalist Papers, which offer the opinions and reasoned arguments of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay. That is how a historian should encourage students to approach history. What the instructors/professors at Vanderbilt are about is anybody’s guess.