On Douglass and Dialectics

Abstract

Biology afforded African-American slaves who could racially pass for white a unilateral means toward attaining freedom. These individuals could exploit a majoritarian precept, what Frantz Fanon terms the “racial epidermal schema” (112), for their own ends. Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–1895), although of mixed race—“My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark,” he recalls in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845). “My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage” (15)—could not play on this majoritarian principle; he simply was not white enough to pass masterly inspection. Douglass had to employ another strategy if he was to escape from bondage. Literacy would aid the type of passing he had in mind. “I wished to learn how to write,” recounts Douglass, “as I might have occasion to write my own pass” (44), the document supposedly written by his master that would allow Douglass freedom of movement within the South. Thanks initially went to Sophia Auld, wife of his owner Thomas Auld, for teaching Douglass “the A, B, C.” Sophia’s husband, however, soon discovered this illegal practice. He “at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further,” reports Douglass, “telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.” In Thomas Auld’s own words, as Douglass documents, “if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (37; emphasis original).

In 1845, Douglass’ autobiography made its first appearance, destined to run through endless editions up until the last in 1893.

—W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Negro in Literature and Art” (864)