Douglass: Defying Biology one Narrative at a Time

Frederick Douglass was clearly a manifestation of all a slave was not supposed to be: clever, educated, brave. According to southerners, these traits were somehow absent in the slaves’ genetic code. The slave loving Southerns, trapped in their own egotistical circle of things had deduced that slaves were incompatible with intelligence. While Douglass may be able to Describe his predicament as such:"You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave!” (Douglass, page 82) .  However this was the exception rather than the rule. This shows the importance of being able to write with a register that is not familiar. Douglass is able to write in a register that would be applicable to the upper class.

          Douglass shows that it is just as painful for one with knowledge, regardless of race. If one becomes aware of how life may be outside of bondage then it doesn't matter if that man was white or black or blue or yellow. It is not the race which determines how a man suffers or how he will cope with freedom, but it is experience and knowledge which all races are equally able to comprehend. Some masters comprehended this and yet they feared to give slaves this knowledge as they knew it would serve them well: “As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish.” However, when Douglass published his narrative, it became pitifully obvious that slaves, were not incompatible with knowledge because they could not comprehend it but instead, because it would provide them with the spark that would cause them to look for a freedom, and long for a freedom which the slaveholders wanted to deny at all costs to the slaves.

And to guide the thinking process of those on the fence in terms of slavery, slaveholders would attempt to bend the minds of those who were more malleable by introducing false notions implying that slaves were somehow biologically inferior to white men. They would come up with lies such as, the negro has a primitive mind due to years living in African jungles or that somehow they were created for the sole purpose of intense labor and would come up with some sort of insane scientific proof out of thin air. In fact there were scientists who specifically searched for nonexistent differences between blacks and whites to prove their supposed inferiority.

However there were those like Douglass who made their jobs a bit trickier in regards to justifying slavery. For if all men with African lineage were intellectually challenged then how was Douglass, a black man, capable  of such deep thoughts, such brilliant ideas. With writing that matched and even surpassed that of white writers. It was texts such as this one that helped swing people to the abolitionist side of things as they realized through reading that maybe this man was similar to himself.