Arguments Against The Three-Fifths Compromise
On the Three-Fifths Compromise: True, the written law about this practice of counting each black man as only three fifths of a whole person didn’t attempt to completely lay out congress’ beliefs about just what a black man was. But it gave us clear hints that, the definition of a black man in the minds of the general population, as compared to that of a white man, were vastly different. The Negro was deemed as almost subhuman. Indeed, this compromise would never have been struck if blacks had been universally regarded as people rather than property.
Since we can’t fully quantify the worth of a human being or to precisely define what a human being is, and since doing so was not necessary in order to maintain the collars of oppression around the neck of the black man, congress narrowed the focus of the law. They wrote this Three-Fifths Compromise in sheer economic terms (tax distribution and congressional districting, and representation). This clearly denied the black man full human regard, as well as the inalienable rights reserved for all Americans except for blacks at the time. While the Three-Fifths Compromise represented a big step toward black equality with whites, it still oppressed blacks, just as the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy combated discrimination against gays in the military but still contained highly oppressive elements.
Would the Three-Fifths Compromise have been struck if people on both sides (north and south) truly believed that a black man was unworthy of fighting for, that the Negro was less smart and so, less worthy of all the liberties that white Americans enjoyed? The compromise would have never become law if much of the population didn’t feel that blacks were less-than-whole men. The basic motivations that perpetuated such a law were very much fueled by the widespread, almost superstitious belief that blacks were only partly human.
Most any social policy that expands the rights of one class of people while curtailing them for another devalues the latter; just as the Three-Fifths Compromise devalued the blacks back then, and as opponents are attempting to do today to the LBGT community, Muslims, et al.
Since freedom from oppression is a basic tenant of healthy humanity (part of the definition of a modern, healthy human being in fact), then I would argue that restricting freedoms means that the definition of the human beings being denied, in the minds of those doing the denying, is why they deny said rights. They think of them as less worthy of rights. So, the laws, while they do not say it out loud, are about what people perceive the definition of various classes of human beings to be, at which the laws are targeted. When they deem a man as lesser than themselves, they pass laws to pen him in. I’m pleased that the Civil War ended the Three-Fifths Compromise.