Science versus ‘Science’: Exploring the Life of Benjamin Banneker in the Context of Thomas Jefferson’s Views in Notes on the State of Virginia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite substantive research being conducted on the interaction between Thomas Jefferson’s views on race and the life of Benjamin Banneker, recent interpretations of Jefferson’s influence on constructing modern American racism suggest this relationship should be re-examined. New understandings of Jefferson interpret him as a key instigator of a modern American racism, as he was a leader of his time who distinctly incorporated claims of science in the justification for racial inferiority. This new analysis of Jefferson’s influence suggests a new interpretation of his interaction with Benjamin Banneker should occur, as the approach taken when comparing the two men has been one which represented Jefferson as a symbol for the common southern American slave owner. With new research challenging this view, new studies into Banneker should follow suit. This paper seeks to build upon the work of Jordan Winthrop, Robert Pierce Forbes, Bruno Carvalho, LaGarrett King, and Angela G Ray and conducts this reassessment of the dynamic between Banneker and Jefferson with new research included to evaluate Banneker’s significance on discussion of race accordingly. This paper argues that comparing Banneker to Jefferson in this novel context heightens Banneker’s significance, as he becomes one of the first African Americans to challenge this new racism and hence sets critical precedents for addressing similar rhetoric. Banneker’s role transforms from one of many individuals who challenged slavery into a man who framed a template for social action against racist dogma guised by science.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.044 | 0.034 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.015 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".