You want to talk about silly observations. You just basically said that this nation was founded upon establishment of white christian supremacy. So then, if that what we were? Is that what is we should remain? The man credited with writing that most famous and elegant phrase in our Declaration of Independence; "We believe that all men are created equal" was a white slave owner from Virginia named Thomas Jefferson. But I think we would be wrong in assuming that he wasn't aware of the inherent hypocrisy of what he wrote. Jefferson's relationship with slavery was a complex one. While he did own many slaves, many of them inherited, he worked passionately, albeit quietly, behind the scenes to bring the practice of slavery to an end. That is not to say that Jefferson was not a racist. He definitely was one. He believed that the black slaves were inherently inferior "in mind and body" and would never be able to make the successful transformation to becoming 'freemen' in this country because they were not intellectually equipped to be able to do so.
Jefferson's voice on slavery went largely silent in the late 1780s and 1790s. Likewise when it came to what to do about the Indians Jefferson didn't appear to have any answer for it. Jefferson was also forced to come to the realization through his enormous debt being primarily offset by the wealth associated with his owning of slaves. Which were a valued property asset just like any other business or personal asset of the time. That he could reasonably suspect that such was probably the case with many southern slave owners and for the South in general whose economy relied heavily on slave labor. Also many in South were fearful that continued talk of the immorality of slavery would lead to slave revolts. This Jefferson knew was an issue that could threaten the union of our then very young nation and Jefferson believed that for our union to hold together that an appeasement or compromise on the issue would be necessary for the nation to survive the challenges facing it.
This compromise became reality in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 with the Three Fifths Compromise. Which allowed for 3 out of 5 slaves to be counted as 1 person toward the population of each state for the purpose of determining it's representation in the House. The effect of which was to give the "southern states a third more seats in Congress and a third more electoral votes than if slaves had been ignored, but fewer than if slaves and free persons had been counted equally, thus allowing the slaveholder interests to largely dominate the government of the United States until 1861" -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise
Now that would appear to a shameful chapter in our nation's history and on a certain level it was indeed shameful. But the reality is that without that compromise there would almost certainly not be a United States of America now. Many of our founding fathers, including Jefferson would go on later in their lives express their clear disdain for the practice and the industry of slavery. But there was the business of founding a nation that could survive that had to come first before we would be able to move on to becoming our better selves. And that is what those golden words in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were really about. Which is not what we were at that particular juncture in time. But instead what we could and should become and continuously strive to become. That was the American experiment and it continues on till this day in our constant if sometimes stumbling march forward to becoming our better selves in the hope that one day we can say we fulfilled the greater promises of our forefathers to betterment of not only ourselves. but for the rest of the world as well.
