Wood, Slavery Post

As we learned through our reading of Frederick Douglass, it is very important that we as readers observe the moral dilemma that is most obvious when it comes to the topic of slavery. In Frederick Douglass, we saw that an education is what separates the wealthy from the poor, and this takes the phrase “knowledge is power” to the next level. In this narrative, we saw the ways that slavery destroys both the slave and the enslaver because it is dehumanizing for both in every aspect. For instance, in Frederick Douglass, Douglass makes a point to mention the idea that slave owners would not think twice about raping their female slaves. Many times after doing this, the female slaves would birth a mulatto child who clearly possessed the traits of his/her African-American mother and also those of the Caucasian father. Douglass makes a point to mention this aspect of slavery because it violates the importance of keeping the family together. This act of adultery not only caused many problems between the slave-owner’s wife who was most likely aware of her husband’s infidelity but also, between the new “family” between the slave owner, his slave girlfriend and their newborn child. The moral issue here is that the slave owner most commonly did not claim the “bastard” child to be his own and also did not usually develop a relationship with the child or the mother, therefore, not upholding the moral obligations associated with that of a stable family.

There are many ways that people have control over others still in our society today. The first that came to mind was the idea of abusive relationships. If you were to look through the lens of domestic violence victims, abusive relationships are always about power and control of one person on another. This example connects to Frederick Douglass because even though there now are, for the most part, equal opportunities for both men and women (despite cultural demographics) in terms of education, abusive relationships can tend to get in the way of that. These abusive relationships also mirror the same problem of respecting the family that we see in Frederick Douglass - that same manipulation and control that occurs in abusive relationships is definitely strong enough to overpower another person. However, knowledge is always power.