“Hot light-skinned girl.”
That is how Tina Fey referred to Sally Hemings, the woman Thomas Jefferson, our nation’s third president, kept as a slave. Among the other terrible jokes made that night, this phrase has been looked over. The headlines about the skit are mostly focused on how Fey suggested we eat cake instead of addressing the growth of the Neo-Nazi movement in the United States. And I don’t blame the news outlets. That, too, was hard to stomach. But I can’t stop thinking about how damaging, and ahistorical, the comment about Sally Hemings really was.
If anyone is confused about the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, I almost don’t blame them. There have been too many gross attempts to paint the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings as a consensual one, where both parties were of equal standing and equal ability to refuse. One television movie series, titled Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, is described as exploring a “38 year love affair.” In a tweet about her living quarters, NBC News referred to Sally as a “mistress.” On Shonda Rhimes’ popular show Scandal, there’s even an episode where Olivia Pope yells at President Fitzgerald Grant that she is not Sally Hemings in the relationship.
These odd depictions of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings have always baffled me. I don’t know why lengths are being made to paint their relationship as being sexy or scandalous. In reality, it was very traumatizing and dehumanizing to be both enslaved and sexually abused.
Is it our refusal to acknowledge that this nation’s founding fathers were bad people? Are we having trouble reconciling Thomas Jefferson’s words about freedom and equality with his very real participation in the institution of slavery? Are we unable to realize the frequent sexual abuse that took place in slave-holding households?
But if I had to think about why Tina Fey, or anyone else, has made light of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, it would have to come down to the sheer lack of understanding the majority of people have about the institution of slavery.
This past month, I have been reading a non-fictional slave narrative titled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs. It’s hard to read. Harriet Jacobs, an enslaved woman, is essentially pursued by her master Dr. Flint as soon as she becomes a teenager. In the narrative, Jacobs horrifyingly details how demeaning it was to receive abusive advances from a man she could not decline.
In another chapter, she details how she not only faced sexual exploitation from Dr. Flint, but also jealousy and anger from his white wife, who clearly refused to see the abuse another woman was enduring under the hands of her husband. The narrative continues on and Jacob devises many plans to escape, one including offering herself up to be purchased by another white man by birthing two of his children.
While in the end she managed to escape, the narrative is desperate and eye-opening for many reasons. Mainly, it draws attention to what we may be refusing to see when it comes to the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Essentially, that enslaved women had no choice in the matter. If a relationship existed, it was not a consensual one. It could not be. Black enslaved women had no rights to refuse, had no rights to seek aid, and had no rights to choose when and where a relationship could occur.
If it hasn’t been made clear, I’ll put it bluntly: Enslaved women were property.
Joke or not, when Tina Fey referred to Sally Hemings as the “hot light-skinned girl” that Thomas Jefferson had an eye for, it delegitimatizes the sexual abuse many enslaved black women went through at the hands of white masters. It paints a false picture that suggests Sally and Thomas had equal footing, when really the law didn’t even recognize Hemings as human in her own right. It paints Jefferson’s pursuit as one of love, and not of power and domination. And lastly, it becomes another instance of white women failing to see the real experiences of black women.
And yet, on Twitter, those who were shocked are being told by white women to take a joke. Is this what white feminism is? The requirement that I, as a black woman, put aside history and my experiences for another white woman to make a joke about it. If so, something needs to change. People of color cannot be expected to put aside their history and their legitimate feelings for liberal white people to make offensive jokes about it, whether it be Tina Fey or Bill Maher.
And if anyone is confused about what slavery is or what the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson looked like, I encourage you to pick up a slave narrative and read about slavery from real people who went through it. Or read this article.