Americans glorified liberty radiating outward more than receiving the oppressed

Evidence

Benjamin Franklin had spent years across the water lobbying English power for a relaxation of its colonial policies. He was arguing that England was enslaving Americans, and regularly using the analogy that England was making “American whites black.” All along, Samuel Johnson hated this racist analogy. As Franklin sailed back to America at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, Johnson released Taxation No Tyranny. He defended the Coercive Acts, judged Americans as inferior to the British, and advocated the arming of enslaved Africans. “How is it,” Johnson asked, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” Someone in the colonies had to officially answer the great Samuel Johnson. That someone was Thomas Jefferson. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 269 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

See F. Nwabueze Okoye, “Chattel Slavery as the Nightmare of the American Revolutionaries,” William and Mary Quarterly 37, no. 1 (January 1980): 3-28, for a most acute discussion of the paradoxes that bemuddled American nationalists whose outrage “stemmed from their conviction that only black people in America were deserving of servile status” (p. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1974 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The truth is that we might never have revolted against Britain if some of the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so; nor if they had not believed that independence was required in order to ensure that the institution would continue unmolested. For this duplicity—claiming they were fighting for freedom while enslaving a fifth of the people—the Patriots faced burning criticism both at home and abroad. As Samuel Johnson, an English writer opposed to American independence, quipped, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 103 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Revolutionary Americans’ liberty rhetoric contradicted their enslaved-holding practice — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 269; America’s founding freedoms were written to exclude Black, female, and lower-class subjects. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 275; Slavery contradicted America’s founding ideology of equality from its birth — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 928 (+4 more)

Related

• Revolutionary Americans’ liberty rhetoric contradicted their enslaved-holding practice (similarity 0.91)
• Contemporary critics denounced the Patriots’ freedom rhetoric as hypocritical while they enslaved people (similarity 0.85)
• America’s founding freedoms were written to exclude Black, female, and lower-class subjects. (similarity 0.79)
• American revolutionaries opposed their own enslavement while judging only blacks deserving of it (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Revolutionary Americans’ liberty rhetoric contradicted their enslaved-holding practice #corroborates (0.85) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 269
• American revolutionaries opposed their own enslavement while judging only blacks deserving of it #corroborates (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1974
• Contemporary critics denounced the Patriots’ freedom rhetoric as hypocritical while they enslaved people #corroborates (0.82) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 103
• Slavery contradicted America’s founding ideology of equality from its birth #corroborates (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 928
• US anti-colonial rhetoric was selective, serving economic access over genuine liberation #corroborates (0.75)
• America’s founding freedoms were written to exclude Black, female, and lower-class subjects. #qualifies (0.72) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 275