From “Rebirth of a Nation: Reparations and Remaking America” by Joel Edward Goza
As Jefferson continues the same paragraph in Notes on the State of Virginia, he begins expanding the encyclopedia of racial folklore and ties Black pain tolerance to Black sloth and then Black sloth to a lack of Black brilliance. In so doing, Jefferson hints that slavery is indeed a positive good. Just as Black people were possessed by a deep love for carnal sex, they also were possessed by a “disposition to sleep.” “An animal whose body is at rest,” Jefferson writes, “and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course.” Comparing Africans to sleepy animals is not sufficient for Jefferson, and so he begins to further dissect Black brilliance. “Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination,” Jefferson writes, “it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites, in reason much inferior…In imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” It seems for Jefferson that since enslaved people’s “reason is inferior” and “nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head,” the sweat of the brow is the best way for them to bless the world. Here is how Jefferson’s logic works: as the slave driver’s whip is unleashed on people who are unable to suffer but who seemingly need motivation to work, the slave driver becomes an essential instrument of industry required to unleash the potential of Black people and help the nation flourish.
Of course, Jefferson was quite aware of the abundant, well-known examples of Black brilliance of his day. But not such evidence debunked myths about Black people’s inferior intellect for Jefferson.