Originally Posted By: The Pun-isher
Where should conversation on race start?


The article you linked to states the following:
  • We live by a Constitution that began, "We the People," but declared black slaves worth only three-fifths as much as whites. From the Lincoln-Douglas faceoffs of 1858, which focused largely on what to do about slavery, to the most recent debate over renewing the Voting Rights Act, the rift over race and what to do about it has defined us.


Not only is this editorializing, it is historically obtuse. The Constitution's three-fifths provision, which applied to the decennial census, was not an evaluation of the "worth" of enslaved blacks. It was a compromise between representatives of slave states, who wanted to count slaves as full persons, and those from free states, who didn't want to count slaves at all.

This obviously was not because slavers had a greater appreciation for the humanity of slaves. It was because they wanted to increase their representation in Congress by using slaves to inflate their states' official populations. Had they prevailed, it would have been even harder than it was to abolish slavery.

So, perhaps, the conversation on race should start with some historical accuracy, and not biased editorializing.