If you are American, you probably know what the 3/5 compromise is, but Ill give a brief explanation for anyone who may be unfamiliar. This is a part of the original constitution that came about when states’ representatives couldn’t decide how to count slaves when rallying the population of a state for purposes of apportioning representation and tax burden. Free states without slaves wanted slaves to count in the population when determining tax burden, but not for representation in Congress. Slave states wanted slaves to count for representation, but not for taxes. The compromise reached reads as follows:
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
If you learned about this in school, it was probably held up to you as an example of racism in the original constitutions. And something along the lines of “the founders thought slaves were only 3/5 of a person” or some other implication that this statement indicates slaves as less valuable or less of a person than free white people. I think it’s important to note the actual language used, which explicitly states that black slaves are people. “Three fifths of all other persons” directly and explicitly recognizes full personhood for slaves. It’s not about each slave being 3/5 if a person, rather it’s 3/5 the number of slaves counts is added to the free population. While the slave owners certainly didn’t see it that way, this part of the original constitution is not a reflection of that racist view that slave owners held.
I think the clearest example of why this isn’t racist is to look at which states were on which side of the argument. If this was about racism, we’d expect that the slave owning states would be in favor of slaves not counting at all. But that’s not the case. Slave States wanted the full number of slaves to count towards the population so that they would have higher representation in Congress. It was the free states that wanted slaves not to count in rallying the population.
Furthermore, the 3/5 compromise ended slavery faster in this country than if it hadn’t been reached (assuming the union still is created in the first place without such a compromise). The states with slaves had less representation in Congress because much of their population were slaves, thus limiting their representation. If more seats in Congress go to slave states, that makes it harder to pass abolitionist legislation. Even better, if your goal is to end slavery, would be to not count slaves at all when determining representatives because that would even further limit the representation of slave states.
So that’s how I understand it and how I’ve come to conclusion that the 3/5 compromise was a good thing and it is not an example of racism.
Edit: I don’t think I made this clear in the original post. People claim the 3/5C is racist because it only counts slaves as 3/5 of a person or as 3/5 the value of a free person. This implies that the solution is to count slaves in full. However, this would actually give more power to the slave states.