Dehumanizing Practices In Narrative Of The Life Of Fredrick Douglass?

During the time of slavery, slaves were put to work on plantation, fields, and farms. They were considered property to their slave-owners and put under unfair living conditions. Growing up in this era, we can see the injustice between white and colored people. And one slave by the name of Fredrick Douglass witnessed this unjust tension. And because of this tension, dehumanizing practices became prominent among the slaves and in slave society. The most prominent of these injustices is the desire of slave owners to keep their slaves ignorant. This practice sought to deprive the slaves of their human characteristics and made them less valued. Fredrick Douglass was able to endure and confront this issue by asserting his own humanity. He achieved

It was at this time, that Fredrick did not even know his own age. As mentioned in Fredrick Douglass’s memoir, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, Douglass states “it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slave this ignorant” (Douglass, 15). This is the first scenario in which we noticed the dehumanizing practices of slavery to occur. During the time of Fredrick’s childhood, he noticed that white children could tell their age, and he himself was not able to. He was not able to make any inquiries of it to his master because slaves were not given that right. The act of a slave owner to keep their slave ignorant shows one example of how slaves were dehumanized. They were stripped of knowing themselves as people because they were designed to be property to their owners. The fact that he could not have information and knowledge of simple things made him unhappy and led him to believe that the dehumanization process occurs when the slave owner tries to keep the slave ignorant. It was something shocking for Fredrick to hear about the nature of slavery, but in hearing so, helped him establish a stronger mindset to