What Were We, If Not Whole? Rethinking the 3/5ths Compromise

Rethinking the 3/5ths Compromise and the Invention of Black Inferiority

If you’ve heard the phrase “3/5ths of a person,” you know it’s one of the most haunting footnotes in American history. But what’s often left unsaid is this: if Black people were legally considered just 3/5ths of a person, what did white lawmakers believe the other 2/5ths was?

And more importantly, why were we the only people in American law treated this way?

3/5ths Wasn’t About Humanity. It Was About Power.

The Three-Fifths Compromise, included in the original U.S. Constitution in 1787, was not designed to define the humanity of Black people—it was designed to give white slaveholders more political power.

Southern states wanted to count the people they enslaved as part of the population—not to give them rights, but to gain more congressional seats and electoral votes. Northern states pushed back, knowing this would tilt national power toward states that profited from slavery. The compromise: each enslaved person would count as 3/5ths of a person for representation and taxation purposes.

It wasn’t science. It wasn’t philosophy. It was math to maintain white control.

But here’s where it gets even more twisted.

White People Claimed to Own Us—But Not All of Us

Think about this: white enslavers claimed ownership of Black people the same way they owned livestock. A cow was 100% a cow. A sheep, 100% a sheep. Their offspring? Also owned. Fully. Legally. Categorically.

But we were the only people counted as less than whole—just 3/5ths of a person—not to make room for our humanity, but to remove us from it. There was never a serious explanation for what the "missing" 2/5ths represented. It wasn’t ignorance. It was convenience.

They needed a loophole that allowed them to say:

“You’re human enough to count for power, but not human enough for rights.”

Chattel Slavery: A System Unlike Any Other

Sometimes white people say, “Everyone was a slave at some point.” That’s an attempt to flatten history—and it’s dangerously misleading.

Yes, slavery existed in many societies across time, but what happened to Black people in the Americas was something entirely different.

Chattel slavery—the system used in the U.S., the Caribbean, and Latin America—was:

• Permanent – You could not buy your freedom or earn your way out.

• Inherited – If your mother was enslaved, so were you. So were your children.

• Racialized – Your skin color was your status. Being Black meant being property.

• Legally codified – Laws ensured that Black people were not just enslaved, but also considered less than human under the law.

No other enslaved group in history was systematically defined as less than human by law and custom. No other group had a status passed down through generations, for 400 years, across multiple nations, for the economic benefit of those who enslaved them.

This wasn’t just slavery. It was a carefully engineered system of dehumanization and economic theft on a scale the world had never seen.

The 2/5ths They Stole

So what did the “2/5ths” they left out represent?
It represented:

• Our stolen freedom

• Our erased voices

• Our denied humanity

• Our vanishing futures

And it served a purpose: to keep us in our place while boosting theirs. To legally shrink our presence while magnifying their political control.

It was never about measurement. It was about justifying an economy and a society built on the backs of Black people, while pretending it was noble, legal, and natural.

And Yet… We Were Always Whole

The most remarkable thing is that our ancestors survived this system. Not 3/5ths of them. All of them.

We loved, created, raised families, worshipped, rebelled, and held on to our dignity—all while the law said we were just a fraction. The truth is, we were always whole. The fraction was their lie, not our identity.

The math was never broken. The morality was.

Why This Still Matters

Even today, the legacy of being "partially counted" is alive in:

• Gerrymandering

• Voter suppression

• Mass incarceration

• Underfunded schools and communities

• Media portrayals that ignore our full humanity

The system still tries to extract value from our presence—our culture, our labor, our votes—while resisting our full power.

But we are no longer asking to be counted. We are claiming our whole selves, and calling out the lies that were designed to make us feel less than.

Final Thought

Next time you hear someone say, “Well, everyone was a slave at some point,” remind them:

Only Black people in the Americas were enslaved for centuries under a system designed to erase their humanity and pass that status on to their children. That’s not history repeating itself—that’s history being invented.

And we’re still dismantling it—piece by piece.