Tennessee lawmaker bizarrely defends the Three-Fifths Compromise as 'ending slavery'
that would ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools, which holds that U.S. institutions are inherently racist since they act to create racial inequity.
But basing his argument on a view that the Three-Fifths Compromise was enacted to restrict the power of southern states has no clear basis in fact. The compromise was agreed to as part of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, allowing for only three-fifths of the enslaved population to be counted for purposes of Congressional apportionment and Electoral College allocation.
It came at the insistence of southern slaveholders, who demanded significant representation as part of joining with largely free northern areas to form the early United States. Most historians agree the goal of the agreement was to uphold white supremacy in the South, with slaveholders gaining a disproportionate amount of power from the counting of large swaths of the population that did not have basic human rights or a right to vote."Do we talk about that? I don't hear that anywhere," Lafferty said of his view the Three-Fifths Compromise.