The latest white supremacist propaganda being pushed by Republicans this week came from Tennessee state Rep. Justin Lafferty, who defended counting slaves as only 3/5ths of a person in remarks on the statehouse floor.
As the GOP continues to pursue voter suppression laws across the country, several Republicans from southern states have made attempts to defend slavery as a “good” thing all while insisting that their party isn’t racist.
Now Republicans are trying to defend the 3/5ths clause in the Constitution by claiming that it was an effort to somehow end slavery.
On Tuesday, Rep. Justin Lafferty delivered the absurd declaration.
“The three-fifths compromise was a direct effort to ensure that Southern states never got the population necessary to continue the practice of slavery everywhere else in the country,” Lafferty said. “What does that mean? Appropriation based on population. We’ve got nine state representatives. By limiting the number of population in the count, they specifically limited the number of representatives that would be available in the slave-owning states, and they did it for the purpose of ending slavery.”
Here’s the video via Twitter:
TN State Rep. Justin Lafferty (R) claims the three-fifths compromise — counting Black people as less than a person — was included in the Constitution “for the purpose of ending slavery.” pic.twitter.com/A6OpfRIwMd
— The Recount (@therecount) May 4, 2021
Yeah, that’s not what the 3/5ths clause did, nor was it the purpose. What it did do is guaranteed that slave states would have the most power in the federal government, which they would wield for the next several decades to entrench the institution of slavery. It took a civil war to end slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment to repeal the 3/5ths clause.
Historians schooled Lafferty on Twitter.
The three-fifths compromise made it possible for southern slaveowners to exercise a great deal of influence over the federal government, which in turn strengthened the institution of slavery during the first half of the nineteenth century. #history101 https://t.co/Y2mwyQlQjW
— Kevin M. Levin (@KevinLevin) May 4, 2021
Next Justin Lafferty will explain how the poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses from the Jim Crow era were really an attempt to end racial discrimination.
— Kevin M. Levin (@KevinLevin) May 4, 2021
One of the ways you convince Americans that racism and white supremacy is not central to our history is by politicizing and distorting it. Lafferty’s comment is on the same trajectory that leads straight back to the Lost Cause argument the slavery itself was a “positive good.”
— Kevin M. Levin (@KevinLevin) May 4, 2021
Remember that the three-fifths compromise wasn’t a compromise about the rights of enslaved people—enslaved people were considered zero fifths of a person under it, not three.
It was about how much extra power slaveowners would be given compared to OTHER WHITE PEOPLE.
— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) May 5, 2021
Nope
The 3/5 Comp. let slaveholding-states count enslaved people–viewed as “property”–people EXCLUDED from their polity–in the count for representation
It didn’t help end slavery. Just the opposite. It gave the S outsized representation & helped them preserve slavery & power https://t.co/MLdz37dKw0
— Dr. Joanne Freeman (@jbf1755) May 4, 2021
Lafferty’s remarks come just a week after Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) claimed that America is not racist in the Republican rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s first address to Congress. Now he has egg on his face.
Featured Image: Screenshot
