Essay on Frederick Douglass. Words3 Pages. Frederick Douglass. On an unknown date in , on a slave plantation in Tuckahoe Maryland, Frederick August Washington Bailey was born. Frederick was raised in a house on the plantation with all the other slave children. At the age of seven, like many other slaves, Frederick was put to work in the fields Jan 11, · Frederick Douglass Essay. Douglass, Frederick. Escape From Slavery, Alfred A. Knopf, Douglass, Frederick. Life And Times Of Frederick Douglass, Rowell-Collier Company, Graves, Charles P. Frederick Douglass, Longmans Canada Limited, Herschler, Mildred. Frederick Douglass, Follett Estimated Reading Time: 8 mins Frederick Douglass Essay Words | 4 Pages. African-American man Frederick Douglass wrote his famous speech, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”, America was in a time of great distress. It was the year , and the view of abolitionists was quickly spreading
frederick douglass Essay examples - Words | Bartleby
The United States of America is engaged in a war, a conflict characterized not by guns and bombs or belligerents wearing distinctive uniforms, but a war of ideas, specifically about the best way to fight racism and improve conditions for American descendants of enslaved Africans. Many people are engaged in this conflict, but the ideas animating the opposing sides are expressed most clearly by two men: Ibram X.
Kendi and Frederick Douglass. Some are intentionally engaged in this conflict; some unknowingly. Their thoughts, essays on frederick douglass, words and actions on matters of race indicate their allegiance more clearly than any insignia ever could.
He has captured kindergarten classrooms and college lecture halls, essays on frederick douglass. His manifesto is read and applied within our media, government, military and major corporations. The American public has been completely taken by his brand of antiracism and sees his worldview as the catalyst for the equality promised in our founding documents.
He also appears to believe that all groups would have proportionately similar outcomes absent any exogenous interference. His proposed amendment would be in line with his broader conception of humanity:.
But policies determine the success of groups. And it is racist power that creates the policies that cause racial inequities. Despite his doctorate and decades of research, his understanding essays on frederick douglass articulation of the myriad issues that influence human behavior and, by extension, observed outcomes, lack both imagination and sophistication. Kendi leaves no room to consider family composition, culture, personality, interests and desires, region or anything else that cannot be attached to policy.
He also cannot explain why Asian Americans dominate elite academic venues, often in the most difficult disciplines. His thesis does not account for higher Asian household incomes and rates of marriage or lower rates of divorce and criminal participation compared to the white people whose interests he claims the country prioritizes. Kendian antiracism is used only to account for disparities in which blacks fare worse than whites. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.
The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. This version of antiracism is a catastrophic reality that, left unchallenged, will hamper progress for future generations because it rests on the premise that black Americans occupy a lesser form of humanity than our fellow essays on frederick douglass. This worldview creates no space for the efficacy of self-determination.
Black people are merely passive recipients of their actions, essays on frederick douglass, confined to a supporting role in our own autobiography. Kendi has become somewhat of a religious figure to many of his followers. Antiracism is life, essays on frederick douglass. Any theory attempting to explain the condition of humanity that is specific to one country, people group, or time period lacks the metaphysical heft needed to stand the test of time.
It is intellectual chaff, destined to be blown away by whatever new ideology gains traction among the elite. Frederick Douglass was a man of a different time. He never shied from criticizing the glaring hypocrisies of a nation rooted in the rhetoric of liberty that needed a civil war to end slavery.
He was an antiracist in the most literal form of the word, but the rhetorical blade he wielded was meant to prune, not destroy. He was not interested in tearing down America or reimagining a country where the government grew bigger essays on frederick douglass more powerful while the individual grew smaller and more powerless. Your doing with us has already played mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall!
And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, essays on frederick douglass, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Douglass spoke these words in a speech to the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in A man who was born into slavery and spent much of his life arguing for abolition had more belief in the humanity of black people still trapped in that barbaric institution than the leading voice on race in He understood that an essential element of being a human being is the capacity for both success and failure.
He is a human being, capable of judging between good and evil, essays on frederick douglass and wrong, liberty and slavery, and is as much a subject of law as any other man; therefore, deal justly with him. He is, like other men, sensible of the motives of reward and punishment. He knows the essays on frederick douglass between fullness and famine, plenty and scarcity.
He is used to it. His hands are already hardened by toil, and he has no dreams of ever getting a living by any other means than by hard work. If men were born in essays on frederick douglass of crutches, essays on frederick douglass of having legs, the fact would be otherwise. We should then be in need of help, and would require outside aid; but according to the wiser and better arrangement of nature, our duty is done better by not hindering than by helping our fellowmen; or, in other words, the best way to help them is just to let them help themselves.
This short passage is what actual antiracism sounds like. It calls for justice — i. Nor does the value of black life today come from the opinions of whites willing to affirm that black lives matter, essays on frederick douglass.
Douglass understood that the dignity of the Negro came from his Creator. This antiracism, recognizing the imago Dei emanating from every created being, affirms a common humanity and provides a foundation on which people from disparate backgrounds can live peaceably with each other.
Racist slave traders considered black people property. Antiracism advocates today consider us pawns. Their respective conceptions have different starting points but they both reach the same conclusion — absent benevolent interventions, the American Negro is without agency, direction or purpose, a vessel of melanated chaos driven by historical trauma and extant oppression.
Both groups see black people as incapable of moral reasoning and bearing no responsibility for our own actions. The former argues the issue is blood and essays on frederick douglass the latter, environment and access to resources. The racist was driven essays on frederick douglass contempt; the antiracist by condescension. One positive sign is that Ibram Kendi actually articulates a perspective that could lead to a real change in the way we discuss race:, essays on frederick douglass.
Whenever the antiracist sees individuals behaving positively or negatively, the antiracist sees exactly that: individuals behaving positively or not representatives of whole races. To be antiracist is to deracialize behavior, to remove essays on frederick douglass tattooed stereotype from every racialized body. Behavior is something humans do, not races do. Essays on frederick douglass behavior is exactly what we should be doing. The way you accomplish that is by refusing to ascribe behavior, whether vice or virtue, to skin color.
This means rejecting racial essentialism and the notion that certain behaviors are inherent to specific groups, not denying that certain behaviors are more prevalent among specific groups. That is an exercise requiring the fine tools of intellectual precision and rhetorical discipline that the ham-handed race scribes of today seem unwilling or unable to wield. Being opposed to racial hatred is completely compatible with American values.
The seeds of freedom planted by the Founders took centuries to bear fruit, essays on frederick douglass, but a country committed through policy, custom and culture to the permanent subjugation of blacks could not produce the most prosperous people of African descent in the world.
Always choose that which speaks to the eternal and universal over that which appeals to the ephemeral and specific. Always choose the side that sees humanity before skin color. Frederick Douglass and the essence of authentic antiracism by Delano Squires July 26,
Third Place Frederick Douglass Video Essay - Rutgers-Newark
, time: 2:41Frederick Douglass Essay | Examples & Papers
Essay on Frederick Douglass. Words3 Pages. Frederick Douglass. On an unknown date in , on a slave plantation in Tuckahoe Maryland, Frederick August Washington Bailey was born. Frederick was raised in a house on the plantation with all the other slave children. At the age of seven, like many other slaves, Frederick was put to work in the fields Frederick Douglass Essay Words | 4 Pages. African-American man Frederick Douglass wrote his famous speech, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”, America was in a time of great distress. It was the year , and the view of abolitionists was quickly spreading A Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass Essay. Frederick Douglass, born the slave Frederick Bailey in ~, details his most incredible biography through first person narration. He moved around from farm to farm and eventually arrived in Baltimore when his latter name and being started to take shape
No comments:
Post a Comment