Thomas Jefferson on slavery

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The legacy is that segregation is still alive and well in both the north and south. I was shocked to find the most segregated city in the US is Chicago. I used to think it was a progressive and dynamic place.

I too have been shocked to learn the truth about a lot of things involving the racism that goes on here in the US.

Why is the population of Massapequa in New York’s Nassau County 98% percent white? Why do almost no Black families live in suburban Levittown, New York? Are we looking at free choices by families or underlying housing patterns that reflect the impact of past and current racist practices?

Newsday exposed racial channeling by Long Island realtors in an investigation that showed how they steered potential home buyers to particular towns based on their race and ethnicity.

NYTSuburban growth on Long Island and other major metropolitan areas exploded after the Second World War as returning veterans pushed to start families and purchase homes. Farmland was converted into housing developments. Federal infrastructure investment like highway construction made commutes to work possible.

Between 1960 and 1964, about half a million white people left New York City for white suburban enclaves. The redlining of areas by banks and real estate agencies designating them for specific racial groups produced community and school segregation patterns in suburbs across the country that continue to exist today.

Between 1946 and 1951, Levitt and Sons constructed 17,447 low-cost two and three bedroom homes on Long Island. Ninety percent of the units were purchased by the families of World War II veterans. Initially, Levitt and Sons included a clause in mortgage and rental agreements that restricted occupancy to “Caucasians,” except for “domestic servants.” Even after the clause was removed, the company still refused to sell or rent to African Americans.

According to the 1960 census, of the 65,276 residents of Levittown, only 57 were Black, less than .1% of the population. In a 1954 interview, William Levitt argued “The plain fact is that most whites prefer not to live in mixed communities. This attitude may be wrong morally, and some day it may change. I hope it will. But as matters now stand, it is unfair to charge an individual with the blame for creating this attitude or saddle him with the sole responsibility for correcting it. The responsibility is society’s. So far society has not been willing to cope with it. Until it does, it is not reasonable to expect that any builder should or could undertake to absorb the entire risk and burden of conducting such a vast experiment.”

An interactive map on the website Mapping Inequality reproduces the redlining maps for American cities created by the FHA Home Owners’ Loan Corporation in the 1930s. Three neighborhoods in southeastern Queens, New York were rated undesirable for issuing federally insured mortgages, two because their population was over thirty percent Black and one because it abutted those communities.

Segregated housing means segregated schools. Long Island, New York’s two counties have 124 mini-school districts that are largely racially, ethnically and economically segregated. The student population in the Garden City school district, which abuts Hempstead, is 92% white and Asian, while the student population of the Hempstead school district is 96% African American and Latino. The student population in the Bellmore-Merrick consolidated high school district is 85% white and Asian while the student population of the neighboring Roosevelt school district is 100% Black and Latino.

The roots of racial segregation in metropolitan area suburbs actually predate the post-War suburban expansion. Federal housing policy dating from the 1930s was overtly racist and contributed to white flight from cities and largely white suburbs and school districts surrounding the nation’s metropolitan areas.

Racist code terms Long Island 2022 style “suburban character”, “the neighborhood is becoming like Queens”. In fairness these can mean a literal desire not to live in a population dense neighborhood, but there should be no denying the more nefarious meanings.

You do realise that large scale extraction equipment can't be deployed in every developing country right? Who pays for it?

The cost of purchasing extracted minerals from child miners like Cobalt is way cheaper than investing in shipping transporting and maintaining hugely expensive large scale equipment. If it wasn't they would already be doing it.

I don't know many geeks who flaunt their iPhones. HTCs with mechanical keyboards were popular in the Bay Area until they stopped making them. I used my Palm Pilot until the screen died, and a flip phone until last year.

Did they stop making them because they were unpopular or did people stop buying them because they just weren't being made?

I often think that what gets made isn't driven purely by popularity and consumer demand.

Jefferson abhorred slavery in theory----but relied upon it economically. There are historians who call him a "sphinx" because of his contradictory views.

Jefferson started raping his 15 year old slave Sally Hemmings when he was in his 40s. It continued for several decades. Hemmings bore his several children of whom her descendants carry Jefferson's DNA.

She was a captive in his house and slept within access of his bedroom. I don't think it matters what he (claimed) to think of slavery, he was a cruel evil man who benefitted from the exploitation of his own slaves.

Yes. That always diagusted me about him too. Not only was he an old pedophile taking advantage of a young girl, but this was a white slave master taking advantage of a young black girl in a world where she would have had zero rights and was in no position to reject his sexual advances for basically her own survival. There were other slaves serving other masters like deranged psychopath Delphine LaLaurie who were tortured and killed for less.

It gives you an idea into just how screwed up society was in those days.

Well on one hand he is a part of our history, but on the other hand if they're going to teach that history they need to be completely honest about him.

Not only Jefferson, but the Founding Fathers in general were slave owners and hypocrites. For most of our history the bad stuff was whitewashed. With the popularity of presentism in many circles this is being corrected. Some people are canceling the founding fathers by tearing down statues, renaming schools and so on. Others look at their racism and hypocrisy and draw a straight line today to define us as a racist to the core country, and any “progress” is just a deflection from this “fact”. In other words replacing seeing only the good with seeing only the bad.

I ask those seeing only the bad to consider that Trump would probably be dictator without the checks and balances the founding fathers help set up. The executive branch went rogue, the legislative branch failed, it has been the courts that blocked Trump at many steps along the way.

Among the members of the courts that have blocked Trump have been Trump appointees. Why, because of loyalty to the constitution. Not only judiciary but many election workers, regular people who stood up to threats and actual violence out of loyalty to the principles in the constitution the founding fathers helped set up.

I think perhaps that shows that we need to stop seeing this country in terms of absolutes. Americans have such a black and white way of thinking (pun not intended) and I think that's part of the problem.

Well on one hand he is a part of our history, but on the other hand if they're going to teach that history they need to be completely honest about him.