Frederick Douglass: Chapters 5-7

After reading these chapters, two very specific themes stand out to me. 

1. Education is power
2. Slave owners understood this concept and actively worked to keep slaves from gaining an education and, by result, power. 

First of all, the fact that Douglass realized that an education was valuable because his master did not want him to learn to read,  reveals that he was intelligent in the first place. As such, he already contained a quick mind and a disposition for education. This in of itself is remarkable due to the fact that he had spent the first 5-7 years of his life living in an appalling state of neglect. I also enjoyed how Douglass went about learning to read and write. Not only does this demonstrate a startling amount of persistence, but it also shows that a mind that actively want to be educated will find a way even in the most oppressive of circumstances.

Douglass realized at a young age that learning was the key that would unlock the door to a much better life. This realization, or connection, between education and his future was the reason for his success.

Secondly, it seems to me that the very acknowledgment of the reality that an education would "ruin" a slave appears to also be an acknowledgment of a slaves humanity. There is no admitted danger in training a horse or a dog, but "training" is not a word used in the context of slavery. Rather, slaves were intentionally not "educated". If slaves truly lacked humanity and were in fact unequal to their masters, than it would stand to reason that education would not be a dangerous quality in the mind of a slave. This inherent contradiction between the slave owners denial of a slaves humanity and the methods used to oppress slaves, seems to indicate that, despite their political rhetoric, slave owners fully understood the overall humanity of their "property." 

I intend to look carefully at the rest of this piece in order to recognize and dissect some other inherent contradictions in American Slavery.