I included the response I would have sent, were the thread not locked. This is how coward libs argue. They’re calling the well-known study by Purdue demonstrating that the US is a oligarchy a “far left news source”, for context.
Well, Sally Hemmings was only 1/4 black and 3/4 white, and her children were 1/8 black and 7/8 white, but because of America’s racist laws and cultural attitudes, they were all seen as “black” and all were enslaved. Jefferson was publicly against slavery, but also did nothing to actively fight against it, unlike Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, who were both part of the Pennsylvania abolitionist society. (Pennsylvania had a lot of anti-slavery Quakers even before 1776.) Jefferson viewed himself as a progressive liberal, much like the French Jacobins. He even started a nailery at Monticello and pitted slaves against each other in a “free market” competition. Slaves who made more nails there were rewarded with nice clothes, management positions at the plantation, etc. Slaves who made less nails were whipped. By the way, most of the slaves who worked in the nailery were children! Here’s a link for more reading: https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/nailery/
