Chapter 2267 Sally Hemings

Joan knocked on the door lightly, and the door opened after a while, and a pretty girl in a maid uniform stood opposite.

"Excuse me, are you... Dr. Vader?"

The maid asked tentatively.

Joan nodded her head, her gaze stayed on the maid's face for a long time, and a look of surprise could not help but appear in her eyes.

The maid seemed to have gotten used to the strange eyes of strangers, so she pretended to smile calmly.

"Dr. Vader, please come in and sit down. The master is receiving guests. Please wait a moment in the waiting room. If you want something to drink, just ask me, tea or coffee?"

"Coffee will be fine, thank you."

Joan sat on the sofa next to the coffee table and looked at the maid again. When the other party brought coffee, she finally couldn't help asking her in person.

"Excuse me, what's your name, Miss?"

"Sally Hemings." The maid replied straightforwardly, "I'm not a lady, you can just call me Sally."

Joan nodded and asked tentatively, "Sally, are you white?"

"Of course not, Dr. Vader, I'm obviously black." The maid smiled wryly, with a little helplessness on her brows, as if she had answered the same question countless times.

"I can see some black features on your face, but overall your complexion is fair, and you really look more like a white girl."

Joan commented seriously.

Sally Hemings seemed to be amused by his stubbornness, the corners of her lips raised slightly, but she quickly suppressed her smile, lest she offend the distinguished guests.

"Dr. Vader, since you care so much about this matter, I can only tell the truth. I hope you will forget what I am going to say next. If someone asks me for proof in the future, I will not admit that I said it With these words, can you understand my difficulties?"

The girl's earnest expression made Qiao An feel deeply guilty, and felt that she shouldn't pry into other people's privacy just to satisfy her own curiosity.

"Sally, if it's inconvenient to say, forget it."

The girl shook her head lightly, her expression sad.

"It's okay, Dr. Vader, this kind of thing can't be hidden. Others will understand when they see my skin color."

"So... you are actually a mulatto?" Joan asked in a low voice.

Sally nodded: "My grandmother is black."

Grandpa was of course white, but she dared not and could not say what his last name was.

Joan was born and raised in Alfheim. He is very familiar with the customs of rural society in the South. Black and white marriages are regarded as treasonous by many conservatives, let alone the illegitimate daughter of black and white, so he fully understands Sally Hay Mings' difficulties.

"When Madam married our master, my grandmother and mother were the dowry maids. There are many people like us." Sally smiled, quite proud, "Because of my skin color, in the master's manor He was treated very favorably, did not do much heavy work, and learned a lot of elegant crafts that only young ladies can come into contact with."

Joan was puzzled by her complacent attitude, and the questions she asked inadvertently became particularly sharp.

"Sally, your father is white too, right?"

"Of course!"

The girl raised her head proudly. Compared with the noble blood of Caucasians flowing in her body, the identity of an illegitimate daughter seemed less unbearable.

"You're three-quarters white and one-quarter black, why do you call yourself black?"

Joan's blunt question made the girl a little embarrassed.

After rubbing the apron with both hands, Sally Hemings replied in a low voice: "Of course I would rather be white! But I was told that as long as there is a drop of black slave blood flowing in my veins, I am black. Future generations will always be black too..."

"Who said that? It's nonsense!" Joan scoffed at this fallacy.

Sally glanced at him cautiously, and replied hesitantly: "Our master said it."

Joan was dumbfounded.

This time it was his turn to be embarrassed.

In fact, thinking about it carefully, it is not surprising that Mr. Jefferson said such a thing.

Joan had read a prose work by Mr. Principal, called "Yalfheim Notes", the main purpose was to introduce foreign friends to the customs and scenic spots in the south of the New World, and also talked about some political ideas by the way.

What impressed Joan most about this book was not the beautiful writing, nor the rich knowledge of humanities, geography, and history, but a basic belief that Mr. Jefferson repeatedly emphasized in the book-whites and blacks in the New World must never be harmonious live together!

Mr. Rector has already explained his reasons for this conclusion in the "Yarfheim Notes":

"The deep-seated prejudices of the white man; the myriad memories of the black man's wounds; new acts of provocation; real differences created by nature, and a host of other circumstances that will divide us into factions and create unrest...

"Unless one race (blacks) or the other (whites) becomes extinct, these unrests will probably never stop."

In addition, Jefferson insisted that black slaves and their descendants were mentally inferior to whites.

In principle, he was not opposed to the emancipation of black slaves, but he explicitly opposed intermarriage between blacks and whites, claiming that it was a "biological farce that violated the real distinctions already made by nature".

From Mr. Jefferson's point of view, it will inevitably lead to such a conclusion:

Slavery was morally wrong, but apartheid was morally right.

That being the case, why did Mr. Jefferson have a mulatto slave girl in his own family?

Joan was deeply puzzled by this.

Over the years, Qiao An has spent the most time on scientific research, and his way of thinking is also a typical "science student thinking", which in a word is "integration of knowledge and action".

When you put forward a point of view, you have the responsibility to prove or falsify it in the experiment.

If you advocate a certain philosophy or political opinion, you should practice it in real life.

You have the freedom to oppose slavery, and you also have the freedom to support slavery, but you cannot practice double standards, make high-profile speeches, use morality as a weapon to attack others, and what you do in private is another way.

This is called "hypocrisy"!

Just because Joan hates hypocrisy so much, he was puzzled when he found that the words and deeds of the principal whom he had always respected very much contradicted, but he was too embarrassed to ask Sally Hemings about his master’s privacy, so he had to hide this question for the time being. in the heart.

At this moment, the door of the office next door opened, and Mr. Jefferson came out accompanied by a middle-aged man wearing a top hat. After a few polite words, he shook hands and said goodbye.

After seeing off the guests, Mr. Jefferson walked towards Joan with a smile.

"Dr. Vader, welcome back to your alma mater! You are the pride of our Leiden College!"

...

PS: This chapter involves the discussion of "racial segregation", which is quoted from Thomas Jefferson's work "Virginia Notes"