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Louisiana Senator: Our Maternal Death Rates Are Only Bad If You Count Black Women (www.vanityfair.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

I don’t think it’s that “three fifths” is the only bad part per se, it just gets referenced a lot because it is a really indefensible example of how enslaved people were considered less than a person. So much so that here it is codified as a fraction of a person. Very in your face sort of language.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    I think although very vivid language it is quite defensible for the reasons Kuni mentioned: in the only context where slaves were actually defined as 3/5 of a person, all they could do was allow their masters to extract extra value through representation from them, as they did not get representation for being counted towards House representation.

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