Wednesday, November 1, 2017

The Three-Fifths Compromise And Roland Martin


Tuesday on MSNBC “Velshi & Ruhle,” discussing White House chief of staff John Kelly’s comments on Fox News about Confederate monuments, host of “News One Now” Roland Martin said “too many people in this country who are white” didn’t know history and wanted to “somehow glorify these Confederate leaders.” Martin said, “I’m not going to allow four stars stuck on stupid to simply go on. Here’s a man who’s utterly clueless. For him to say, ‘Well, we could have compromised’—really? We did compromise. It was a thing called United States Constitution, and you know what that said? If you’re a black, you’re three-fifths of a human.” He continued, ”I need John Kelly to actually go back and read a history book that my 12-year-old nieces are reading right now, because clearly, he fell asleep in history.” Source.

In this spiel, Roland Martin demonstrated his own lack of understanding of history. The three-fifths compromise did not make a slave three-fifths of a human; it diluted the South’s power in the House of Representatives by not allowing slaves to count as a whole person when determining how many representatives each state could send to Congress. Had they been counted as whole persons, which is what the South wanted, the South would have many more representatives. The Northen states did not want the slaves to count as persons when determining how many representatives each state could send to Congress. The three-fifths of a person was the compromise made between the Southern and Northen states to get the Constitution ratified by both the Northern and Southern states.

So, Roland Martin, go back and study a little more history, and what the meaning and conditions that brought these events into existence. And, consider that no black slave came to North America that was not sold into slavery by other blacks

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