Jefferson’s earliest memory associated slavery with comfort and security.

Evidence

While Thomas was raised on the common sight of distinguished Native American visitors, he commonly saw African people as house workers tending to his every need as well as field workers tending to tobacco. In 1745, someone brought a two-year-old Thomas Jefferson out of Shadwell’s big house. Thomas was held up to a woman on horseback who placed him on a pillow secured to the horse. The rider, who was a slave, took the boy for a ride to a relative’s plantation. This was Thomas Jefferson’s earliest childhood memory. It associated slavery with comfort. The slave was entrusted with looking after him, and on his soft saddle he felt safe and secure, later recalling the woman as “kind and gentle.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 215

Categorization

• SEED: The sensory-precise detail that comfort itself — a soft saddle, a safe ride — was the earliest visceral association with slaveholding is a striking counterweight to later rationalized justifications.
• QUESTION: Does this comfort-memory undercut or support Kendi’s claim that self-interest (here, comfort) precedes racial ideology in Jefferson’s life?