This passage highlights Jefferson’s paradoxical way of thinking about Black people. Indeed, it brings to mind the rhetorical question W. E. B. Du Bois will ask of Black people in his 1903 book,
The Souls of Black Folk: “How does it feel to be a problem?” Of course, Kendi emphasizes throughout that Black people themselves—both enslaved and free—are not the “problem” at all. The problem exists only in the minds of white racists like Jefferson.