Tommy Grimes Dehumanization

In the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave, written by himself, the author argues that slaves are treated no better than, sometimes worse, than livestock. Douglass supports his claim by demonstrating how the slaves were forced to eat out of a trough like pigs and second, shows how hard they were working, like animals. The author’s purpose is to show the lifestyle of an American slave in order to appeal to people’s emotions to show people, from a slave’s perspective, what slavery is really like. Based on the harsh descriptions of his life, Douglass is writing to abolitionist and other people that would sympathize and abolish slavery.

Hatred for white society was a strong theme among the African American community during the 1950s. These emotions were conveyed through different platforms of the time, ranging from art and music, to articles and books. But James Baldwin, a popular African American writer during this time period, does not obsess over this subject that was so passionately conveyed by so many people like him. Instead of preaching about his hatred for white America, Baldwin utilizes his story of his childhood as well as his early adulthood to illustrate the destructive nature of the African Americans society’s hatred for white society in the very well known essay, “Notes of a Native Son.”

In the book titled The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, author John Blassingame’s theme, focused on the history of African slave experience throughout the American South. After much research, the author said in the preface that most historians focused more on the planter instead of the slave. He also pointed out that most of the research on slaves by previous historians was based on stereotypes, and do not tell the real history of slave life and a slave’s inner self. Most of these historians, who focused on antebellum southern history, left out the African-American slave experience on purpose. Through much gathering of research, Blassingame hoped to correct this injustice to the history of African-American slaves, and show how slavery affected slaves, but also American life, culture, and thought.

Throughout American history, minority groups were victims of American governmental policies, and these policies made them vulnerable to barbaric and inhumane treatment at the hands of white Americans. American slavery is a telling example of a government sanctioned institution that victimized and oppressed a race of people by indoctrinating and encouraging enslavement, racism and abuse. This institution is injurious to slaves and slave holders alike because American society, especially in the south, underwent a dehumanization process in order to implement the harsh and inhumane doctrine. In the episodic autobiography Narrative of the

Slavery and discrimination have been apart of America’s history for a very long time. It is something people have fought for and something that remains a vital part of how this country came to be. Many articles have been written by former slaves about their experiences throughout their struggle to obtain their freedom. One of these is Resurrection by Frederick Douglass. This autobiography uses pathos, imagery, and diction, in order to effectively explain the challenges African Americans faced while living as a slave.

African American individuals still faced inhumane discrimination and were often not looked at as people, let alone cared for or acknowledged. To anyone else, their opinions did not matter and their lives were not valued. The 1930?s was also a time in which America was being rebuilt after the detrimental effects of the Great Depression. Furthermore, there was a greater presence of African Americans in northern states, which brought about racial tension from powerful white figures who did not want African Americans in what they believed to be ?their cities?. The struggle to find jobs was present all over, and African Americans found it even more difficult to support themselves. The narrator faced all these obstacles throughout the course of this novel.

James Baldwin’s short story gruesomely paints the picture of how racism and sexuality are linked. The story takes place during the civil rights movement in the United States (Gorman 119). During this time, African Americans were still being oppressed, and white people were angry that they were making progress in society. This often lead to brutal attacks and sometimes death. In the story, the narrator, Jesse, is having difficulty having sex with his wife and compares her to the black women that he has sex with. As the story progresses, the problem emerges with the killing of a black man who is dismembered by a white man right before young Jesse’s eyes. Instead of seeing this as a horrible experience, Jesse takes on the attitude of those around him. Through characterization, point of view, and symbolism, James Baldwin’s story, “Going to Meet the Man,” demonstrates the connection between sexuality, particularly masculinity, and racism.

During the Antebellum period, our young slave girl, in Harriet Jacobs’s novel Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, seeks release from the horrors of a “cruel, sadistic white plantation owner” (vii) in a cruel, sadistic world that sees her as nothing more than property. The psychological tribulation Harriet Jacobs endures makes her a sympathetic character for the abolitionist movement spearheaded by the north. She is faced and burdened with the issues of self-identity, self-preservation, and freedom, yet she is unrelenting in her determination to secure a life in which she has sole control. The outdoors gave the young protagonist, Chris McCandless, in Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, room to explore and find himself before his untimely death. His qualities make him an admirable character (though he was sometimes naïve in his actions), and his death makes him a martyr to the cause

Dehumanization is defined as “the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities.” As Elie Wiesel describes throughout Night, the holocaust deprived him of all human qualities. After Wiesel’s experiences, he viewed his reflection as a corpse (pg 119); every human aspect of himself was taken away during his time at Auschwitz. At this camp, he and many others were treated as if they were tools for labor, not living beings. As twelve year-old Wiesel begins his journey to Auschwitz, he says that he, along with seventy nine other Jews, were forced into cattle cars.

Society’s systematic dehumanization of slaves claims that their lives are not their own, but rather belong to their oppressors. For instance, Jacobs’s cousin Benjamin decides to escape from his masters who equate him and his people to “dogs, […] foot-balls, cattle, [and] everything that [is] mean” and taunts them by saying, “Let them bring me back. We don’t die but once” (27). By metaphorically comparing slaves to dogs and pieces of property, he reveals how little slave owners care about their charges. Rather than remaining under the control of such oppression, Benjamin decides to live and die on his own terms at the risk of capture and punishment, because

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the

Hughes’s descriptive writing prompts the reader to visualize strong images of oppression in America. The speaker provides an image of an extremely suppressed group of people in the statement: “I am the red man driven from the land” (Hughes 21). This simple phrase creates a picture of the Native Americans being driven from their lands and forced to live on undesirable land, and, as a result, this invites the reader to acknowledge their severe oppression. Similarly, the speaker mentions the people who were “torn from Black Africa’s strand” (Hughes 50). This generates an image of boats packed with a depressing amount of broken people, waiting to be sold into slavery. These visual examples portray the severity of the situation that many Americans found themselves in. These

Prior to the publication of any slave narrative, African Americans had been represented by early historians’ interpretations of their race, culture, and situation along with contemporary authors’ fictionalized depictions. Their persona was often “characterized as infantile, incompetent, and...incapable of achievement” (Hunter-Willis 11) while the actions of slaveholders were justified with the arguments that slavery would maintain a cheap labor force and a guarantee that their suffering did not differ to the toils of the rest of the “struggling world” (Hunter-Willis 12). The emergence of the slave narratives created a new voice that discredited all former allegations of inferiority and produced a new perception of resilience and ingenuity.

Hatred for white society was a common sentiment among the black community during the 1950s. These feelings were expressed through different mediums, ranging from music and art, to the written word. But James Baldwin, a popular black writer during this time period, does not harp on this subject. Instead of preaching about his hatred for white America, Baldwin utilizes his narrative and analysis techniques to illustrate the destructive nature of the black society’s hatred for white society in “Notes of a Native Son”.

I am under the impression that this quote means that people should not be afraid of going against society. You should be an individual and think for yourself. If you believe something is wrong then you should stand up for what you believe is right. You should let your voice be heard. There are people all over the United States standing up for what they believe in. For example, U.S. citizens were standing up for LGBT rights. People thought that they should be able to marry whoever they wanted to, even if they were the same gender. The people who believed in LGBT right let their voices be heard and now almost every state in the U.S. allows same sex marriage. LGBT followers proved that there were more problems in this world than boys who kiss