Reaction & Commentary
Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith criticized state Senate Democrats for equating a GOP legislative proposal intended to root out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education to the Three-Fifths Compromise.
“They were saying this is a bad bill because it actually encourages discrimination, just like the Three-Fifths Compromise going all the way back to the foundations of our nation. I would like to share with you the Three-Fifths Compromise is not a pro-discrimination compromise,” Beckwith, a Republican, said in a video shared on X after an emotional floor debate. “It was not a pro-discrimination or a slave-driving compromise that the founders made. It was actually just the opposite.”
“Don’t buy into the DEI radical revisionist history that is happening in today’s culture,” he said. “Know your history. Go back and study the documents. Read them for yourself like I have. Go look them up and you will find that the Three-Fifths Compromise and many other things like that were designed to make sure that justice was equal for all people and equality really meant equality for all.”
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Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith is seen presiding over the Senate on Thursday, April 24, 2025, during the legislative session at the Indiana State Capitol in Indianapolis. (Grace Hollars/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
The legislation in question, Senate Bill 289, ultimately passed both chambers of the state legislature last week and heads to Republican Gov. Mike Braun’s desk. The bill restricts DEI programs at K–12 schools, charter schools, state agencies, and public universities and allows people to sue such institutions if they compel students, teachers or administrators to adopt that one race, sex, ethnicity, religion, or national origin “is inherently superior or inferior” to another, that a person’s moral character is determined by one of those characteristics, or that a person should be blamed for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, sex, ethnicity, religion, or national origin.
The GOP-sponsored bill – titled “unlawful discrimination” – also includes transparency requirements for institutions to post any DEI-related trainings online and repeals provisions concerning university diversity committees, among other reforms. It follows an executive action Braun, a former U.S. senator, issued when he took office as governor in January prioritizing merit over DEI in education and state government.
Critics of the bill in the state Senate last week said the proposal leaves out of consideration a legacy of discrimination in the U.S., citing the Three-Fifths Compromise, Jim Crow laws and real estate redlining.
As for the Three-Fifths Compromise, Beckwith said it was “a compromise that the North made with the South. At the time, there were basically 13 independent nations.”
“They had not really created a Constitution. They were sort of a European Union-esque nation, and they were saying to the pro-slave states, ‘Hey, if you want to count your slaves to have representation, more representation in Congress, we’re not going to let you do that,’ because they knew that that would codify things like slavery into our nation and the North stood up to the South,” Beckwith said.
Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith wears a Make America Healthy Again hat on Tuesday, April 15, 2025, after Indiana Gov. Mike Braun announced the Make Indiana Healthy Again initiative at the Indiana State Library. (Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
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Made during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the Three-Fifths Compromise set forth that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person when counting a state’s population for taxation and congressional representation. While it reduced the influence that slave-holding states initially wanted, it ultimately allowed them more seats in the House of Representatives and more sway in presidential contests in terms of the Electoral College than if free people were only counted.
The Three-Fifths Compromise ended after the Civil War with the adoption of the 13th and 14th Amendments, abolishing slavery and establishing equal protection under the Constitution.
When the Constitution was being written, Beckwith explained, southern states considered slaves as property but still wanted to count slaves as part of their population in the census to get more members of Congress from the South. The North said if the South wanted it to count its “property,” or its slaves, as whole people in the census, the North would in turn count its tables, chairs and all their belongings in their homes as part of their population as well, according to the lieutenant governor.
Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, right. (Grace Hollars/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
“They came up with a Three-Fifths Compromise. They said you will only get three-fifths of a vote when it comes to your slave. And what that did, it actually limited the number of pro-slave representatives in Congress by 40%. This was a great move by the North to make sure that slavery would be eradicated in our nation,” Beckwith said. “They knew what they were doing. But now here you have Senate Democrats in today’s American Republic who do not understand that.”
“They think the Three-Fifths Compromise was something that was a scourge on Black people. That’s not what it was. And how did we get to this place? We got to this because of DEI in education. We got here because you have professors at woke schools that will not teach the history of what actually happened back in the foundations of our nation,” Beckwith continued. “Many, many men and leaders in our nation’s history knew how wicked slavery was. They knew that God had created Black people, White people, red people, all people in his image, and they were fighting for equality for all, but they’re not taught that today, and that’s why you had the Senate Democrats who were getting up talking about the Three-Fifths Compromise like it was some sort of terrible thing in our past it was not it actually was the exact opposite that helped to root out slavery and lead us into a more perfect union that we now see.”
Beckwith said the Three-Fifths Compromise was the beginning of the U.S. later evolving to where all people can have equal representation under the law.
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The anti-DEI state bill passed the state House by a 64-26 vote and the state Senate by a 34-16 vote. It awaits Braun’s signature.
