In today’s episode of If Republicans Don’t Like Being Called White Supremacists, They Should Stop Saying White Supremacist Things, Indiana’s lieutenant governor has become the latest GOP member to make a public attempt at re-whiting — sorry — re-writing history by defending the three-fifths compromise, which, at its core, was an agreement between both slave-owning and non-slave-owning states to keep America running smoothly at the expense of enslaved Black people.
In fact, not only did Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith erroneously claim that the compromise was “a great move” for America that “helped to root out slavery,” but he called any opposing view of the history “DEI, radical revisionist history,” proving, once again, that white conservatives are just tossing the term “DEI” around to mean whatever they need it to mean at any given moment.
According to The Washington Post, on Thursday, Democrats in the Indiana Senate argued against another Republican bill banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs by comparing it to the Three-Fifths Compromise, which was perfectly appropriate considering both the compromise and the anti-DEI movement are both things purported to be good for America even though they’ve literally only benefited white people. Beckwith, however, disagreed that the agreement made at the 1787 Constitutional Convention “was some sort of terrible thing in our past,” so he posted a video of himself offering a revisionist history lecture about how “it was not.”
“It actually was the exact opposite — that helped to root out slavery,” Beckwith claimed, noting that the compromise limited the number of pro-slave representatives in Congress by disallowing Southern states to count enslaved people as whole people.
“Don’t buy into the DEI, radical revisionist history,” Beckwith warned his followers.
Sure, Beckwith, the three-fifths compromise “helped to root out slavery” — which perfectly explains why slavery didn’t end until nearly 100 years after the compromise was enacted, amirite?
Before we get deeper into all the ways Bexkwith doesn’t know what he’s talking about, it’s worth noting that he’s hardly the first caucasity-infused Republican official to make this self-serving, ahistorical argument.
From the Post:
Republican lawmakers in Tennessee, Colorado and Oregon made headlines in recent years for arguing that the Three-Fifths Compromise was an antislavery measure. In 2021, Tennessee state Rep. Justin Lafferty claimed the deal was struck “for the purpose of ending slavery. Well before Abraham Lincoln. Well before Civil War.”
Conservative political commentator and radio host Glenn Beck made a similar argument in 2010, and during President Donald Trump’s first administration, the White House released “The 1776 Report,” which credited the compromise with “set[ting] the stage for abolition.”
Historians largely dismissed the “The 1776 Report” as a politicized project riddled with errors. Historian Staughton Lynd wrote in the 1960s that the compromise “sanctioned slavery more decidedly than any previous action at a national level” because, even though the agreement did not codify slavery into law, it acknowledged a difference between free people and “other Persons.”
But, see, for that interpretation of history to sink in with white conservatives, they themselves would have to view those “other persons” as fully human, which their arguments indicate they do not.
For example, here’s what Colorado state Rep. Ron Hanks (R) argued in 2021:
“Going back to the founding, and going back to the three-fifths, and I heard the comments and I appreciate them, and I respect them. But the Three-Fifths Compromise, of course, was an effort by non-slave states to try to reduce the amount of representation that the slave states had. It was not impugning anybody’s humanity.”
Imagine using the words “slave state” twice and, in the same sentence, claiming nobody’s “humanity” was impugned. (It’s also worth mentioning that he made this remark right after making a lynching “joke.”)
And this, my friends, is why critical race theory has always been necessary.
Beckwith, Hanks and the rest are interpreting the history of the three-fifths compromise from a very white perspective.
There’s not much disagreement on how the three-fifths compromise came about. During the Constitutional Convention, a debate between representatives of slave states and non-slave states broke out regarding how to determine a state’s representation in Congress and how it should affect taxation. The compromise held that for every five enslaved people, three would be counted toward the state’s population. The Post noted that “historians have generally agreed that the 1787 compromise benefited the Southern states and the institution of slavery rather than helping to eliminate it,” because, at the end of the day, it was America’s best alternative to flat-out ending the practice of enslaving Black people.
One would have to be exhaustingly white and racist to view the compromise as a positive thing because it was done for the good of the nation. It’s a point of view that relies on slavery being viewed in the abstract. If one were to view slavery as exactly what it was — Black human beings living and dying as the physical property of white people, having their future generations of children born into life-long servitude, having their heritage stripped away from them, being torn away from their families and working day and night for white people to profit off of their free labor under the threat of physical torture or death — then any compromise at all just looks like a bunch of white supremacists making a deal that, above all, maintained violent racial oppression.
White America suffers from a perpetual need to lie to itself about its true history. Without the whitewashing of that history, MAGA Republicans couldn’t possibly justify its war against CRT, DEI, “wokeness,” or whatever the next thing is that they latch onto in their attempts to re-normalize white nationalism.
It’s pathetic and inherently racist — and it’s exactly what they mean when they say they want to “make America great again.”
SEE ALSO:
Rev. Jamal Bryant Calls For Full Target Boycott Over DEI Concerns
Judge Thwarts Trump’s Attacks On DEI In Public Schools
Indiana Lt. Gov. Claims Three-Fifths Compromise ‘Helped Root Out Slavery.’ Here’s Why He’s Loud, Wrong And Racist
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