Welcome to the Conversations. That Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris.

So we're going to talk a little bit about the Three Fifths compromise today.

It's gotten a little bit of attention.

Now it's, I guess, a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago.

There's been some debates in various states

about the teaching of critical race theory.

And in Tennessee one of the representatives Jim Lafferty

made a speech that was trending on Twitter and then it got into the mainstream news

he was criticized for this he's a

Republican for basically saying that the three-fifths compromise was a strategy by

which to end slavery.

And so because that was the strategy

was to try to somehow reduce the number of slaves. And you'll hear this from other conservatives too I'll just kind of give you the the spiel it's kind of maybe it's older than I realize but I've only heard this maybe in the last few years that the three-fifths compromise was an effort by people in the north

Representatives in the north to

diminish the representation in the South and if they could do that then it

opened the door for them to be able to end slavery eventually and so there's this kind of it's kind of the way that they view the founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution really is that these are these are documents that their purpose was to somehow overturn the views of those who actually

were the authors of them. That they were going to become kind of like these egalitarian engines for social change and then you know Lincoln was the first

one to really pick up that baton and enact what the founders really wanted and as we go

through history we just keep getting better and better.

You know women get the right to vote and I don't know you could probably put so many issues

into this category and child labor laws education

uh federal funded compulsory education

...