When arguing that the Constitution stems from, and continues to reflect, “systemic racism,” critics point to Article I, Section 2, Clause 3—the “three-fifths compromise.” They do so even though the three-fifths compromise was amended out of the document more than 150 years ago.
By way of illustration, a 2011 Time magazine cover story asserted, “The framers … gave us the idea that a black person was three-fifths of a human being.” In 2021, Time doubled down with a column stating that “the Constitution defined African-Americans as only three-fifths of a person.” Similarly, a Teen Vogue item misinformed its young readers with these words:
“White supremacy is systemic. … It thrives in politics with systems … like the electoral college, a process originally designed to protect the influence of white slave owners, which is still used today to determine presidential elections [because] … [e]nslaved black people … were declared three-fifths of a person in order to strengthen the power of the white men who kept them in bondage.”…
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