Thomas Jefferson

While reading about Thomas Jefferson, I had a little trouble with trying to understand how he truly felt about people of different race. It seemed to me that he talked so openly about this subject, and that he used words to describe the natives and African American people that seemed very harsh to us, but weren't to Jefferson as he wrote them. In class we talked a lot about how raciest Jefferson was, but I see it differently.
On page 35 and 36, Jefferson wrote about his feelings towards the native Americans. At first, I thought that Jefferson thought very little of the natives, especially when he referred to the natives as, "barbarous," and referred to the whites as, "civilized." But he also wrote that he was a defender and a critic of the native land, recognizing the many differences between the whites and natives. He also wrote that he cited many positive attributes of American Indian culture. I don't think that Jefferson was trying to speak about the natives in a bad way, I feel that he just used the word "barbarous" to point out the differences between how the whites lived and how the natives lived, the whites being far more advanced in their way of living than the natives were.
When Jefferson wrote about the African American people, it seemed to me that he had mixed feelings about them. Jefferson's writings were a little confusing to me on page 36, but I interrupted as him not truly knowing how he felt about slavery. He seemed to want everyone to be free, but because there was so much prejudice against African American people in that time, along with so much hatred, he didn't know if freeing slaves was the right thing to do, being afraid of race wars.
On page 47 and 48, Jefferson compared the white and African American people. At first I couldn't believe how he talked about the African Americans. He wrote, "They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more
tolerate of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites." It seemed very harsh to me and made me a little angry, but after I read on I felt differently. I don't think that he meant anything negative about the African American people in that statement. I believe that he was just trying to compare the two different races the best way that he could. Which is why he also talked about the positive things about African American people. If he had so much hatred about them, why would he even bother to write anything good about them. Plus, when he used the word "disagreeable" to represent their odour, I felt that he was trying to think of a nicer way to say that they had a bad odour (I believed that was mentioned in class). But he didn't take into consideration why their physical appearance was like that, which was due to them working so hard as slaves.
The one thing that I couldn't understand is why Jefferson hated Phyllis Whately so much. It seemed to me that Jefferson couldn't even criticize her poems because he thought she wasn't worthy enough. Was it only because she was black? Maybe he was more raciest then I originally thought.