It’s Okay to Be a Founding Father and a Racist!

Written by Frank Li

The Killing of George Floyd was a wake-up call for America on [systemic] racism.

To seriously address the issue, we must go all the way back to the Founding Fathers: most of them were racists, because they owned slaves. Let’s simply accept this fact, without [further] denying them being racists or [systemic] racism in America!

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1. Who are the Founding Fathers?

Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia – Founding Fathers of the United States.

The Founding Fathers of the United States, or simply the Founding Fathers, were a group of American leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, led the war for independence from Great Britain, and built a frame of government for the new United States of America upon republican principles during the latter decades of the 18th century.

Historian Richard B. Morris in 1973 identified the following seven figures as key Founding Fathers: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington based on the critical and substantive roles they played in the formation of the country’s new government.[2][3]

The image below highlights the seven key Founding Fathers.

2. What is racism?

Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia – Racism.

Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.[1][2][3][4] It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity.[2][3] Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities.[2][3][5]

Given this definition, a slave-owner is obviously a racist.

3. Founding Fathers and racists

Two facts:

1. Of the seven key Founding Fathers, five were racists, as they owned slaves. John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were not slave-owners. So, they might, or might not, be racists.
2. Of the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence, 41 were racists, as they were slave-owners. The rest, like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, might, or might not, be racists.

Bottom line: Most of the Founding Fathers were racists!

4. Discussion

It’s Okay to be a Founding Father and a racist. Two main reasons:

1. America inherited slavery from Britain.
2. The American Revolution was by/of/for the rich, who simply did not want to pay more taxes to the mother country! Being “rich” then meant being a slave-owner, mostly.

What about righting the wrongs by Britain, such as slavery?

Not a priority, at least!

More problematically, the American Revolutionary leaders wanted to expand British colonialism further to the South and West, on their own, without Britain!

As a result, the indigenous people were much better off under the British rule, because “independent” Americans turned out to be totally brutal. One prominent example: Trail of Tears.

So were the slaves – Their life became much more miserable without the British for the same reason. Additionally, slave trade exacerbated after 1789, because of the huge desire for more “free labor” as a result of the surge in cotton (vs. sugar) production! It was for this reason, chiefly, that many slaves actually fought for the British throughout the War of 1812, as the British promised to free them, if they won the war (but they did not)!

5. Closing

Most Founding Fathers were racists, and that is Okay, for their time!

In other words, let’s focus on what they did as the Founding Fathers, instead of [further] denying them being racists or systemic racism in America.

Three informative readings:

1. What is the American Revolution, Anyway (Version 2)?
2. America: What Did Our Founding Fathers Do, Actually?
3. Racism in America.

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