"Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!"
- Thomas Jefferson
“Thomas Jefferson, the quintessential white American.” I mean that in so many ways. His pen crafted the words that form our founding creed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” These words launched a great experiment in self-government that many have tried to emulate since. But, these words belonged to a slaveholder head over heels in debt. But isn’t this the contradiction of white America? The poet of the Declaration was also the slave-dependent hypocrite. Essentially isn’t this still who we are? In so many ways Jefferson embodies the earth shattering year of 1776 but he continued to live in the dark shadows of 1619.
Like Jefferson, many of us carry-on the spirit of 1776. We embody the revolution Jefferson defended in the Declaration. That revolution sought a new day for common people by overthrowing the yoke of tyranny (or at least potential tyranny) and then establishing a government that championed equality, liberty and the welfare of the common man. This system created opportunities for those that lacked a noble birth to rise...and rise they did. Fireworks punctuate the celebration of this event yearly and with great cause. We see the progress around us towards the goals of the revolution. We bathe in the prosperity of a free society often taking it for granted, but nonetheless the heirs to 1776.
But, unfortunately, we are also like Jefferson in that we dwell in the dark attitudes of 1619. We still wallow in the attitudes that allowed African slaves to be hauled onto the shore at Jamestown, Virginia on that fateful day of 1619. We are still partially a product of an economic endeavor between three continents (North America, Africa, and Europe) in the 17th and 18th century that produced wealth for Europeans while stripping it from those of color. Like those colonists who lustfully lived off other men’s labor, we continue to consume and turn a blind eye to those who the system exploits. For these European colonists this system set in motion a dependent economy that blossomed into a society and tradition that championed white supremacy. Of course, it took a bloody war to eradicate the horrible institution of slavery in the 1860s in which this society was economically built on. To this day we still suffer the crippling effect of racism. There was a reckoning in 1861. Maybe more reckoning is around the corner.
So like Jefferson, we wallow in our hypocrisy. Like Jefferson, we are not exceptional in all of our actions. But, there is hope. The timeless ideas of equality and the American quest to create government and society to affirm it, remain a goal worthy of toiling towards. Like Jefferson we must express this hope. We must wrestle with ourselves, in an effort to find the ultimate good, much like Jefferson. But, we also must rise above Jefferson. He wrote the words, wrestled a little, but never was able to live up to the words or emerge victorious in his wrestling match with morality. We can do better. Maybe 100 years from now we can have a new quintessential American without the qualifier of white because we would have achieved equality. At that point we can depart from Jefferson’s trembling and fulfill the great promise the Declaration lays-out.