Word: 18th
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...suspicion" that although racial intermixture improved them, blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. Although he qualified his disparaging remarks because he hadn't observed blacks in their natural state of freedom in Africa, Jefferson's presentation leaves no doubt that he, like a typical white person of the 18th century, believed in white supremacy. Consider Abigail Adams, who upon seeing Othello expressed her "disgust and horror" at the thought of a black man touching a white woman. And the Jefferson-Hemings connection places Jefferson firmly within the world of Southern plantation society, where the rules of the game featured public...
...fact, these 18th century figures were extraordinary men, products of a peculiar moment in our history when the forces of aristocracy and democracy were nicely balanced. Although almost all of them were men of relatively modest origins, they were unabashed elitists who had a contempt for electioneering and popular politics. They rejected blood and family as sources of status, however, and were eager to establish themselves by principles that could be acquired through learning and education. They struggled to internalize the new, Enlightened Man--made standards that had come to define what Jefferson called the "natural aristocracy"--politeness, sociability, compassion...
...these 18th century heroes, Jefferson has been the most important. No one has been more identified with our democratic heritage. Even into our own time, politicians want to get right with the third President. William Jefferson Clinton began his Administration by invoking the memory of Jefferson in his Inaugural Address. Ronald Reagan repeatedly called on Jefferson in order to justify his attempts to reduce the size of the Federal Government, urging us all to "pluck a flower from Thomas Jefferson's life and wear it in our soul forever...
...telling us over the past four decades, Jefferson was a deeply flawed human being. Not only was he sometimes deceitful and duplicitous, but he was also a racist slaveholder who never freed most of his slaves. Certainly, however, we should be able to admit these flaws in this timebound 18th century figure without denigrating the democratic ideals he set forth...
...word literally means "father." This was a bit dismaying to Vashti McKenzie when she arrived in Africa four years ago. After all, McKenzie, now 57, had just been elected the first female bishop in the history of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church and been posted to its 18th district, which includes the churches of Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and Mozambique. Friends had warned that the African church was particularly patriarchal, and here was linguistic proof...