An African-American staffer for one of the Republican leaders of the House of Representatives reports that while having Christmas dinner with his family after the Florida election drama concluded, his twelve-year-old niece asked: "Now that Bush has been elected President, am I going to be treated as three-fifths of a human being?"

Eric Cohen of the Weekly Standard reports taking a group of black fourth and fifth graders from a Washington housing project to an outing in the nation's capital, a few days after a man had been arrested for firing shots at the White House. Cohen asked the children what they thought of their new president. Some of the responses:

"When I heard about the shooting I was pretty happy... I thought Bush might have got shot."

"President Bush is going to put us all back in slavery."

"He's going to round up all the black people and kill them."

[Ed.: A little-known historical fact: While denying slaves basic rights, Southerners attending the Constitutional Convention still wanted them counted as full persons for the purpose of representation. Northerners devoted to the goal of limiting or abolishing slavery didn't want slaves counted—not because they didn't acknowledge slaves were really people, but simply as a means to diminish the electoral power of the South. The three-fifths formula was a compromise.]

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