MDDM Re: Washington & slavery

[jbor]

Paul wrote:

>> "There are, however, in the vast record of his correspondence no explicit
>> statements by Washington that blacks were innately inferior to whites."
> 
> Is this a statement that can be accepted as true? (not sure who said it, but
> no
> matter)

It was from that essay/talk by Peter Henriques. I haven't read GW's
correspondence and papers so I couldn't say if it is true or not. I'm
assuming that Henriques had read the primary sources.

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/henriques/hist615/gwslav.htm

> In other words he was calling his black household staff lazy and shiftless
> because
> they happened to BE  lazy and shiftless, not because of their race.

Yes, that's the gist. Sometimes GW is talking about individuals being lazy,
dishonest etc. At other times I get the impression that it's the institution
of slavery itself which GW believes has made slaves *in general* shiftless
and untrustworthy.

> None of this has anything much to do with Pynchon's GW that I can see.

It certainly supports attribution of the line at 572.26 to George.


David wrote:

> But how, exactly is it that some see
> BF as portrayed unfavorably.

We first meet Franklin railing against Penn, and calling his family
"crypto-Jesuit" (slander + religious discrimination). He is wearing
sunglasses inside (pretentious), in the "dim back reaches" of a chemist shop
(266). Then he does a bit of a sales pitch for locally-concocted
laudanum-based drugs (267: capitalist + product endorsement, perhaps for a
kickback).

In the coffee-house he is backhanded and condescending in his show of praise
for those Europeans who play his Glass Armonica (eg. "The Mozart child"),
making him out to be both egotistical and a dissembler. As soon as Dixon
goes out to the bog he is on at Mason about Jere's "Calvert connections" and
relation to the Jesuits (268). He even offers Mason a bribe ("Ben's
Universal Balm") to spy on Jere. When Dixon returns he mentions how he had
been accosted by a "lad named Lewis" who tried to sell him a watch and
quoted Ben as a referee. (269)

When Mason goes outside Ben similarly tries to pump Dixon for info about
Mason's "East India Company Connections". When he fails in getting any info
from either of them he gets quite snitty and puts them both down (270:
"should've just asked them at the Royal Society, being a member after all").

He is scathing in his opinion of all British academics, businessmen and
politicians, casting himself as a "Schoolmaster for Idiots" (arrogant,
egotistical), and he is a sleaze-bucket with Molly and Dolly ("examine",
"grope"). Mason describes him as less "[o]rganized" than his reputation had
led them to believe, while Dixon calls him "[u]nfoahcused" (271-2).

Even without comparing him to GW, who we see at Mt Vernon with Gersh and
Martha in the very next chapter, I found the portrait of BF to be thoroughly
unflattering. The subsequent depiction of Ben's crazy cabaret act -
"Philadelphia's own *Poor Richard*, in the part of Death", leading his
unwitting acolytes out into the thunderstorm, and the future, with a Scythe
in his hand (294-5) - is just the icing on the cake.

There's apparently another appearance of BF in the novel which we haven't
got to yet, so perhaps we do get another perspective on him.

best