364 Douglass, Frederick
into question as a result of this incident as well, for
Douglass does not comment on Mr. Giles Hicks’s
response to his baby being neglected on that night
or allude to his subsequent prevention of or response
to his wife’s act of murder. The white community
does hear about the crime, and there is a “warrant
issued for her arrest,” Douglass notes, however “it
was never served.”
In Douglass’s text, then, we can see how the
dual cancers of slavery and sexism create a society
in which no one but the white male has control over
his own identity, and very human desires and needs
of both whites and blacks often result in tragedy.
Patrice Natalie Delevante
race in Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave, Written by
Himself
Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave, illustrates how the idea
of race is created and maintained by white southern-
ers on plantations worked by slaves. Southern whites
regard Africans as subhumans. Blacks are treated
as “mere chattel,” nothing more and nothing less,
because there is nothing less at the time. According
to the rationalization for slavery, the thousands of
blacks taken from Africa were best used as slaves,
toiling as domestic and field labor on plantations.
They were treated as animals and were physically,
spiritually, socially, and psychologically “broken,” as
Douglass describes, witnesses, and experiences for
himself. Ideas about race within southern planta-
tions limited Douglass’s and his fellow slaves’ ability
to become fully realized human beings with authen-
tic family heritages, individual liberty, and choices
and responsibilities.
Douglass experiences the effects of being born
and raised black in a racist environment. He knows
he was born about 1835, in Tuckahoe, Maryland, but
because he is black he does not, as white children do,
know the date of his birth. Douglass resents having
“no accurate knowledge of his age” or the ability to
obtain such knowledge because of his slave status.
Such (forbidden) knowledge or the lack thereof
becomes a major source of frustration and “unhap-
piness” for Douglass the slave. Douglass’s status as a
slave also prevents him from knowing his biological
father. He suspects that his father is also his child-
hood master, but by law he is not allowed to inves-
tigate his suspicion. Furthermore, it is important to
note that because Douglass suspects that he might
be a mulatto (i.e., born of mixed racial parentage),
he understands that public knowledge of his biracial
status would undermine how race was viewed on
southern plantations. People of mixed race were
most threatening to a slave system so firmly based
on factors meant to sharply divide blacks and whites.
Race during slavery, then, is predicated on white
purity and superiority in general; anything less is
black. Douglass’s race, or, worse, his possible mixed
race, does not allow him to claim to his patrilineage.
He is simply black.
Douglass’s race also prevents him from staying
with his mother. He is separated from her as an
infant when he is sold to another planter, as was not
uncommon. Douglass is put under the supervision
of an elder female house slave. He deduces that sep-
arating black families is necessary to maintain exist-
ing race relations. Preventing slaves from building
familial connections made them less likely to revolt.
Douglass states: “For what this separation is done, I
do not know, unless it be to hinder the development
of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to
blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother
for the child. This is the inevitable result.” However,
Douglass’s mother circumnavigates the system to
some degree, sometimes walking for hours at night
so that she may spend a few minutes putting him to
bed or sleeping beside him.
Race relations during slavery also prevent blacks
from entering into other long-term familial rela-
tionships. Mothers and grandmothers die alone and
miserable from a lifetime cut short by slavery. Slaves
were prevented from returning to their families after
being sold, even if only to visit. And escape carried
with it the pain of never seeing family again. Race
relations also granted whites rights to break up
local black community gatherings and events such
as the communal reading of the Bible on Sundays.
It is under the guise of such reading that Douglass
attempts to teach his fellow slaves to read. Instead,
whites wish for blacks to engage in demoralizing
activities, such as wrestling, boxing, and drunken-
ness, because racial codes classified them as inferiors.