Ignorance In Frederick Douglass 'Narrative'

Frederick Douglass’s narrative shows how slaveholders perpetuate slavery by keeping their slaves ignorant. At the time Douglass was writing, many people believed that slavery was a natural state of being. They thought that black people were inherently unable to participate in civil society and thus should be kept as workers for white people. The Narrative explains the strategies and procedures used by whites to gain and keep power over blacks from their birth onward. Slave owners keep slaves ignorant of basic facts about themselves, such as their birth date or their parents. This imposed ignorance, which robs children of their natural sense of individuality. As these grew older, slave owners prevent them from learning how to read and write,

Slaves remaining ignorant is all a part of the slave master's plan to keep slaves lower in society, essentially making them obedient and submissive. First of all, starting from a very young age, slave children are already subject to slave owners plans to keep them ignorant. “The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it,” (page 1). When Frederick Douglass was a child, he noticed that white children were able to know their birthdays, and he wasn’t. Right off the bat, this just shows that there is a difference racially between African Americans. Keeping information from slaves starting at a young age ensures that the slaves will grow up to believe whatever they knew at that age. In this case, they didn’t know their ages at a young age, so that they wouldn’t know what it was when they grew up. Slave owners keeping the knowledge of the slaves birthdays away from them is an example of how slaves were stripped of their individuality. Since Frederick didn’t know his exact age, he is similar to most other slaves since they didn’t know their ages as well. It seems that the slaves