Yesterday I had mentioned that another philosophy came up that caused an explosion within USA culture. Remember that I mentioned a philosopher named Kuhn? His book was published in the 1960’s, in the midst of the cultural explosions that did not begin in the 1960’s as most people think, but began in the 1950’s (well, just slightly before) when the civil rights movement exploded. You see, there were many black servicemen who had returned from World War II only to face the same old Jim Crow. But, these servicemen were not satisfied with the status quo. They had fought for this country and they were not ready to be treated like “boys”. In 1946 there was literally a takeover in Athens, TN. You should Google™ the McMinn County War. Interestingly enough, this incident is cited by many in the militia movement as their justification for having a militia that is completely independent of any government oversight. Among other events, a black citizen was shot by a white deputy simply for the reason of trying to vote. That was the last straw in a long set of events. And, 10% of the population of that county were World War II soldiers. And, they had had enough. Both white and black servicemen came together and literally led an armed revolt that forcibly took over. None of them were ever prosecuted. In effect, the USA government recognized that what had happened in that county was so far over the top that the people were justified in rising up.
Why do I bring that up? Well, the post-World War II period was a time of extreme change. It was not only the 1960’s, the seeds were set in the 1950’s. People who had fought two evil empires for the right of all people to be free were not about to allow themselves (or their sons and daughters) to be limited by simple pronouncements from people in “authority”. From the McMinn County War to the March from Selma to Birmingham, to Rosa Parks sitting in the front of a bus in violation of the law of the State of Alabama, there was a massive paradigm shift taking place. And that paradigm shift challenged not only the way in which people looked at life, but also challenged the basic structure of reality. From “Scriptural” interpretations which argued that whites had watchcare over non-white races (trust me that I can give you multiple citations on this subject) to supposedly “evolutionary” arguments that supposedly showed that whites were superior, the whole structure was about to fall, and most heavily based on the experience of GI’s who knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that black GI’s were no different from white GI’s.
Over 16,000,000 Americans served in World War II. And they came back to the USA with vast experience in other cultures. And they knew that whatever their prior experience had been, what they had experienced in Europe and the Pacific changed their approach towards the culture of the USA. Now, not all of them changed, but certainly enough of them that the Athens, TN incident was just the beginning of a drive towards the true full equality which the Founding Fathers of the USA fought for. The irony is that the very Founding Fathers of the USA did not fully and finally vote for full equality in the Constitution. For all those who argue that we need to be faithful to the Founding Father, I am one of those who say that in no way should we be faithful to the Founding Fathers who were willing to compromise and allow slavery and allow slaves to be counted as only 3/5 ths of an “actual” citizen. It took the 14th Amendment and various civil rights rulings by the Supreme Court to finally establish the full American ideal of full equality between the races.
So, what does all this have to do with Kuhn?
===MORE TO COME===
The 3/5 Compromise was even worse than that. If it were only a declaration that the slaves were 3/5 human, while still having no vote, it would have been merely disrespectful and racist; and as slaves already they would have overlooked that additional insult as irrelevant. But the 3/5 Compromise in fact gave additional representation to the white voters in the slave states. Which meant that, rather than merely depreciating the slaves, the whites received voting status as if they were 8/5 of a person. So not only were the slaves disrespected, their own “representation” worked further against them. It also worked against the northern states. An unbelievable legal decision that had to be eliminated.
In other words, it would have been better for them if they had remained counted as nothing, or 0/5 of a person. And 5/5 status, or a “whole person”, would have been the worst case scenario, as they still would have had no vote and the whites would each have had two votes, effectively as 10/5 persons.
Interesting, I had not processed what it meant that there was a 3/5 rule. It meant that not only did the South have the right to hold people as slaves, but they were even electorally rewarded for having slaves. What a sick situation!
Actually, the 3/5 rule dates from a fight during the drafting of the Constitution, a fight so intense that it almost sabotaged the convention. Since Congressmen were to be proportioned between states on the basis of population, how to count that population meant the clout each state would have in Congress.
And the states were already choosing sides into two main groups, based on the colonial culture of those states — the Northern states without slavery, and the Southern states dependent on slavery at a very deep level. Northerners wanted only free men counted (not slaves), to reduce the clout of the South and increase that of the North. The Southern delegations wanted all slaves included in the population count to reduce the clout of the North and increase that of the South. The 3/5 rule was an attempt to balance the Northern and Southern clout in Congress, so that neither of the two colonial cultural blocs could dominate the other. (Irony was, the pro-slavery delegations wanted the slaves counted on a one-to-one with free men and the anti-slavery delegations wanted the slaves not counted at all.)
This balancing act continued for the next 70 years as additional states were added, trying to balance Free and Slave states through the westward expansion, Louisiana Purchase (and subsequent settlement), Bleeding Kansas, Arkansas Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers, until everything finally blew up in 1861. (Lincoln was elected without winning any Slave state; this meant through demographics the South had finally lost its clout, and feared the North would do as it pleased to them — majority rule!)
The battle cry of the Revolution, “No taxation without representation!” only applied to whites.