Thomas Jefferson’s Thoughts on Blacks

 

Jefferson stated that blacks were inferior to Whites in both mind and body. “Their inferiority is not the effect merely of the condition of their life…It is not their condition…but nature, which has produced the distinction.” He noted that “besides differences in color and hair, black people secreted less by the kidneys and more by the glands of the skin,which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor.” Jefferson continued: “negros are more ardent after their female, but love seems to them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their greifs are transient…their exsistence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection.”