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Was Benjamin Franklin high on drugs when he said tihs

Mister Apoc

Demigod of Troll Threads
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Swedes are Swarthy? wat......................................................Germans?
 
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TaySan

Banned
Anything less than Anglo Saxon English wasn't considered "white" in America during that time. I could only imagine the struggles my Irish/Jewish immigrant ancestors faced in America for something they have no control over.
 

kittoo

Cretinously credulous
Swedes, Russians and Germans not white? what are you nigh on bro?
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Anything less than Anglo Saxon English wasn't considered "white" in America during that time. I could only imagine the struggles my Irish/Jewish immigrant ancestors faced in America for something they have no control over.

And it still isn't thanks to the new IdPol victim hierarchy special olympics. It's almost as if the party of Jim Crow, just changed their tactics, but deliver the same message in a new way.

:pie_thinking:
 

badblue

Member
The quote in the op is cut from a larger paragraph. This is what Franklin wrote. (full essay this quote is from section 24)
Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.

Hard to believe that people in 1751 were kinda racist. It's not like they were buying and selling people then like it wasn't a big deal.
Franklin did have a change of heart a few years later and became a abolitionist. Eventually he became president of The Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. He also freed his two slaves.

Like most people of his period, Franklin initially believed that African slaves and their offspring were inferior to white Europeans and that they couldn't be educated. He began to question his beliefs when he visited a school where young African children were being taught. In 1763, he wrote a letter to an English friend where he stated, "I was on the whole much pleased, and from what I then saw, have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race, than I had ever before entertained. Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory as strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children."
 
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