I don’t think anybody can say for sure, but we can guess from the quote:
He subscribed to an early racist theory that held Anglo-Saxons to be a “pure, white race” and everyone else
to be “swarthy.” All personal observations to this purported fact were confirmation bias on his part, rather than
scientific. Not to say that modern racial theories are all that scientific either.
He looked at the German-settling farmers, who worked in the hot and radiant Pennsylvanian summers, saw
that they tanned well and considered them “swarthy.” Furthermore, since the German-settlers came from the
Palatinate (which is in Western/Southwestern Germany) they might have had a higher proportion of dark-haired
or featured persons than the English. While there were English farmers as well, there were also English doing
other occupations where they were less exposed to the sun. With an 18th century understanding of science, it is
not clear whether or not Franklin knew too much about how any of this worked.
He had political motivations to create a theory of non-White Germans and Swedes (he was anti-immigrant)
and in racist 18th century Anglo-dominated America, being White or not mattered politically (heck, even today it matters politically.)
But the interesting thing is that Franklin was wrong, not just about the race thing (who really cares?), but his first
paragraph. By the 1790’s, Pennsylvania was a majority “Palatine Boor” state, and right after the First World War
the “Palatine Boors” stopped teaching their children their native language and much of their culture to the point
that it is practically extinct for all except the Amish. So much for “who will shortly be so numerous as to
Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than
they can acquire our Complexion.”
It is funny how these old arguments still persist today, but with different groups.
Attached: 1645633441813.png (241x266, 128.75K)
