American Thoughts on Race 
by Mumia Abu-Jamal, 1998 

The President's Commission on Race has come and gone, in a time when segments of the Nation are still gripped in a profound antipathy, a deep and abiding hatred that has its expression in the mutilations and violence as recently seen in Jasper, TX. 

The Commission, chaired by the able historian John Hope Franklin, is seen as a polite political tool of the White House; a relatively cheap solution to an intractable problem; a talk-fest that barely satisfies; a rational discussion of that which is, at base, irrational: Race. 

Let us play a game. 

What follows are the words of prominent Americans, who give their thoughts on race. Can you tell who is speaking? At the end their signatures will be given (no fair peeking!) Here goes. 

1. That the first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin an scarf-skin, on in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan (Orangutan) for the black woman over those of his own species…./ advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in the endowment of both of body and mind. 
2. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think you race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated… There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. 
3. I could wish their numbers were increased [said of white immigration], And while we are, as I may call it, scouring our planet, by clearing America of woods,, and so making these side of our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we…darken its people? Why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in America, were we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red? 

Now, before we give the answers please take a moment; re-read the 3 sections, and write down your answers. 

They are  
1) Thomas Jefferson (3rd US President); 
2) Abraham Lincoln (16th US President) 
3) Benjamin Franklin (Signer US Declaration of Independence) 

Surprised? 

Americans have been talking about race for centuries, but it is not what we say, but what we do that matters. 
© MAJ 1998 
 

Sources: 
1 Jefferson, T., Notes on the State of Virginia (1781) 
2 Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858) 
3 Moses, W.J., Classical Black Nationalism (1996); 
Gould, S.J., The Mismeasure of Man (1984)