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This opinion appeared in the Chicago
Tribune on November 29, 1998.
JEFFERSON, PATRIARCHY, PATERNITY, AND THE SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH
by Jane Crosthwaite
Recent speculation about Thomas Jefferson's
paternity record has provoked a range of useful observations about
our country's family values, racial hypocrisies, and common future.
Even the quality of academic scholarship has been challenged by
the DNA evidence that at least some of the children born to Sally
Hemings were fathered by her slave master and older brother-in-law
(husband of her deceased half sister.) The almost invisible, but
still essential background against which the Hemings-Jefferson drama
finds definition in the realm identified by feminists as "the patriarchal
system."
Questions of paternity are crucial in patriarchal systems. Of all
the historical and social references, oddments, and complaints attached
to the ideas of the patriarchy, only one condition is absolutely
required--the ability to trace and establish paternity. Even more
significantly, until our newest scientific test, patriarchy's strength
has rested on its ability not only to claim but to deny paternity.
To be sure, patriarchal conditions have often served women no less
than men as a means of legitimating fatherhood. The marriage system
which binds one (sometimes more than one) woman to one man insures
not only that the wife's children "belong" to the husband, but that
the husband, in turn, owes subsistence and protection to the woman
and her children. Children who fall out of the system are illegitimate
because they are deniable. Without the protection/isolation of women
within a legalized patriarchal system, their children would be fatherless,
illegal, and without rights. Patriarchy is the system, then, which
traces socially that which could not always be traced biologically.
In a world where men hold economic control, the patriarchal system
can be cruel. It may support women and men and their "legitimate"
children, but in sexual politics, men enjoyed a so-called double
standard which allowed them to roam beyond the marriage, all the
while limiting their accountability. Extra marital paternity could
be denied or traced only at the expense of stigmatizing both the
"other" woman and her children. The social and financial claims
borne by the "extra" woman--who would have few resources, at any
rate--reinforced the deniability of the man.
When this gendered story is played out against the racial story
in America, the stakes become even higher. Especially in times of
slavery, one form of submission--women gain support from men by
agreeing to limit their sexual activity--reinforced another--black
women had no reasonable means to agree or to disagree, and male
slaves were denied any paternity rights, at all. Slave owners often
viewed themselves as paternal figures, guarding their chosen women
and tending their slaves, for their own good. The story of Sally
Hemings and her children crystallize these connections all too well.
Late twentieth-century America is still cleaning up the trash and
debris from a decaying patriarchal system. Arguments for social
equality and economic opportunity become especially cogent and clear,
as we see the advances of our new genetic science threatening to
deflect us from the real issues. Establishing DNA markers to trace
paternity back through generations may be an interesting game, but
theses tools are only needed when the ethical and social tools of
responsibility and justice have not been employed. Our pride in
the "advancement of science" is, quite frankly, an embarrassment;
it only shows how deeply our sexism and racism have run. It is time
for a larger view of the family to take to stage-time to reset the
priorities, time to take care of all women's children. Need we know--or
care--who the father is? Legitimacy--understood as the right to
equal opportunity for education, health, food, meaningful work-belongs
to all of us and to all of our children.
In recent days, my colleague at Mount Holyoke College, Joseph Ellis,
has energetically participated in many public debates surrounding
the liaison between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. As the recipient
of the National Book award for his insightful biography of Jefferson
and his many intriguing intellectual puzzles, The American Sphinx,
Joe has had the unusual privilege first of first denying and then
affirming Jefferson's paternity. Certainly Joe would not limit the
riddle of the American Sphinx to the question of which children
Jefferson fathered, however titillating the ambiguities of paternal
deniability. But I wonder of Joe would also extend that riddle to
the legacy of Sally Hemings. After all, a sphinx in an ungendered,
mysterious, yet wise figure, and perhaps Sally Hemings--the child/wife/slave/mistress
of Thomas Jefferson--knew best that the duties and right of motherhood
and the needs of her children were the self-evident truths which
Jefferson, History and the historians would not always be able to
deny.
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