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Frederick Douglass was one of the greatest Americans who ever lived. This man began life as an illiterate slave — nearly all slave owners prevented slaves from learning to read — and rose from slavery to become, along with Abraham Lincoln, the greatest orator of his time, and one of the wisest and most eloquent writers in American history.
He became the great black leader of his day, honored by multiple American presidents who frequently sought his counsel. If you read his autobiography, “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,” you will experience English language writing that has few peers in any nonfiction writing in American history.
Every American child and adult should read this book for many reasons. First, it should be read to appreciate the inhumanity of slavery. The physical abuse, and perhaps worst of all, the human degradation inherent to slavery are depicted in understated yet riveting language. Second, it should be read as a document of history. Third, it should be read for its wisdom about the human condition.
Frederick Douglass may be one of the few figures in American history revered by Left and Right, and by nearly all blacks and all whites.
In light of that, it is worth pondering the question: Are Frederick Douglass’ views more consonant with today’s Left or today’s conservatives? It is fair to say that nearly every leftist believes that Frederick Douglass is one of them. But if you read his “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,” you will discover a man who, with regard to race, the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln and related matters has virtually nothing in common with today’s Left. In fact, leftists would identify every one of the following quotes from Douglass’s autobiography as “white supremacist” and/or “racist.”
Frederick Douglass: “When an unknown man is spoken of in their presence, the first question that arises in the average American mind concerning him and which must be answered is, Of what color is he? and he rises or falls in estimation by the answer given. It is not whether he is a good man or a bad man. That does not seem of primary importance.”
This Douglass quote runs completely counter to the virtually universal left-wing (not liberal, left-wing) claim that race is important and that to ignore it — to attempt to be color-blind — is racist.
The Atlantic, Sept. 13, 2013: From an article titled, “Color Blindness Is Counterproductive”: “How many times have you heard someone say that they ‘don’t see color,’ ‘are color-blind,’ or ‘don’t have a racist bone in their body’? Maybe you’ve even said this yourself. Many sociologists, though, are extremely critical of color blindness as an ideology.”
“The language of explicit racism has given way to a discourse of color blindness.”
“It is no longer socially acceptable in many quarters to identify oneself as racist. Instead, many Americans purport not to see color.”
TED Talk by Heather McGhee, chair of the board of Color of Change, “the country’s largest online racial justice organization”: “Why saying ‘I don’t see race at all’ just makes racism worse.”
American Psychological Association: “Has The United States Really Moved Beyond Race?”
“In this collection, scholars in psychology, education, sociology, and related fields provide a probing analysis deconstructing racial color blindness; all of the contributors point out the problems with … racial color blindness, point out major flaws in the myth of racial color blindness, and reveal its harmful impact on the lives of people of color.”
Southern Poverty Law Center: “Colorblindness: The New Racism?”
Forbes, September 28, 2022: “Color-Blindness Perpetuates Structural Racism” by Maia Niguel Hoskin. Frederick Douglass: “Races, like individuals, must stand or fall by their own merits.”
Advocating that individuals rise or fall “by their merits” is derided on the Left as racist.
Wikipedia: “‘Myth of meritocracy’ is a phrase arguing that meritocracy, or achieving upward social mobility through one’s own merits regardless of one’s social position, is not widely attainable in capitalist societies because of inherent contradictions.”
Toronto Metropolitan University: “Meritocracy is one of the beliefs that sustains systems of inequity and supremacy.”
Douglass: “The downfall of slavery under British power meant the downfall of slavery, ultimately, under American power, and the downfall of negro slavery everywhere.”
According to the Left, anyone who credits whites with ending worldwide slavery is a white supremacist. And anyone who credits British colonialism with almost any moral achievement is a defender and supporter of imperialism and colonialism.
Douglass: “Had he (Abraham Lincoln) put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably … rendered resistance to [Southern] rebellion impossible.”
Here is New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow citing Douglass on Lincoln: “In 1861, after Abraham Lincoln defended the Fugitive Slave Act as an attempt to assuage Southern slavers, Douglass called him an ‘excellent slave hound’ and the ‘most dangerous advocate of slave-hunting and slave-catching in the land.'”
Both citations are accurate. But the one I cite is from much later in Douglass’s life when he could better judge Lincoln.
Douglass: “The Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery, but, on the contrary, was in its letter and spirit an anti-slavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition of its own existence as the supreme law of the land.”
The left generally holds the Constitution in contempt — at the very least, as a slavery-defending document.
Suggestion: Copy these Frederick Douglass statements into a document and ask any leftist in your life what he or she thinks of them.
He would never have approved of BLM and their Riots and Looting and he would never have approved of Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam nor would he have approved of Sharpton the Riot Instigator or Jessie Jackson either
All,
How do we regard today’s “left”?
An even better question might be ‘What would Douglas think of corrupt prosecutors, endless stealing from stores, fatherless homes, drugs, welfare and the general degradation of the Black family?’ All of the other maladies, BLM, the rioting, etc. come from the former.
Exactly. Leftist policies of Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, Sustainability are designed to KEEP blacks on the government plantation, beholden to politicians who exploit and gaslight them for political power and monetary gain.
Douglass was acutely aware of color prejudice and the impact of slavery; he was born to the awareness of them both. Lincoln, on the other hand, was a User, was color prejudiced himself, was an admitted White Nationalist and Supremacist, thought that the solution to slavery in a United States was to remove Negroes to “other climes,” primarily South America (see the Lincoln/Douglas Debate #2), and found the issue useful politically both nationally and inter-nationally. He used it to gear up support for the war his advisors urged him to declare and for enticing European nations to join the U.S. blockade of the Confederate coast. That was the purpose of an Emancipation Proclamation he had no power to declare and applied only to the Confederacy.
Lincoln’s war was declared not for the purpose of freeing slaves but for putting an end to the agrarian economy of the Republic as founded. He, along with all his advisors, many of them long-time Whigs, was an advocate of the economic and political model of Mercantilism in that century, and that model could not be achieved within an agrarian economy such as had been established by the founders because it required a strong central national government. For that reason alone the Confederacy had to be destroyed. Mercantilism called for a strong central government to partner with industry of this .and other nations for the creation of national wealth. That’s why, when the Reconstruction Act was imposed by Republicans over the veto of a president and which proclaimed the nation’s government sovereign over states, Republicans celebrated in late night parties chanting and singing, “Federalism is dead, Federalism is dead, Federalism is dead,” and why a year later the Republican Party imposed a Fourteenth Amendment that could not be ratified constitutionally. The United States Government has not been legitimate since those years. It became a fraud and a sham in 1867 and 1868 and remains a fraud and a sham.
The evidence in historical data for this correct interpretation of Lincoln’s war is overwhelming.
You’re unfairly, and, frankly, foolishly, judging Lincoln according to contemporary racial attitudes and standards. That’s myopic, as well as inherently asinine.
Lincoln’s moral greatness lies in his preservation of the Union, his issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, and, the fact that, however imperfect were his racial attitudes, he did understand that slavery was a moral evil that couldn’t be sustained or justified in the U.S.
Lincoln also prophesied the coming of war. See his ‘House Divided’ speech. But in the late 1850’s, the issue wasn’t so much slavery as it was the failure of the central government to stop the spread of slavery into the new, western territories. Dred Scott and the Kansas-Nebraska Act made it all but impossible, which is why pro-slavery Missourians violently “colonized” Kansas after Congress passed that Act.
The Civil War didn’t’ start at Ft Sumter SC in 1861. By then, it was well underway in the west just as Lincoln predicted. And In 1861, the issue was the preservation of the Union, not slavery. With the EP, Lincoln gave the war a higher purpose.
It’s nothing but your twisted opinion. In short, you’re FOS.
Every Black child should be required to learn about this man!
There is no excuse for those young people to be illiterate.
The only person that is holding them back is themselves.
He would regard them as the Destroyers of Freedom which is so dear!
Today, Douglas might implore young blacks to learn to read, learn to write, and learn some decent vocabulary. Then he might warn them that they’re not going to get any of that in school. Then he could add something Frank Zappa said back in 1966: “Go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts.”
Many black abolitionists, including the morally great and sage Douglass, were also rightly wary and concerned of persistent and corrosive paternalism by white abolitionists:
““Everybody has asked the question. . .”What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”