Despite the fact that the white people treated slaves as lower creatures and constantly abused them, they also tried to deprive the black people of their identities. The main goal for it was to keep the slaves under control and limit their freedom as much as possible so they would not resist the existing terrible conditions and would not start a riot. One of the methods masters used to prevent the servants from acknowledging their self-worthiness is the lack of education. They kept the slaves ignorant, so they would genuinely think that slavery was a normal social phenomenon and that they were born to serve the whites. To erase their self-identity even more, the master would not tell their slaves even the most crucial parts of their lives. Whites did not reveal the servant’s date of birth, the name of their parents, and the existence of any family members (Douglass 36). To make it more effective, the masters usually got the slaves from the newborn age, and as they grew and matured, they controlled their development.
Therefore, children were raised in the conditions of white dominance and the oppression perceived as a natural way of existence, so they would never try to change it. While the black children were maturing, masters did not allow them to learn how to write or read. Otherwise, they could learn about their self-identification and realize that the way masters treat them is a great act of injustice. Thus, if the slaves could not read, they were unable to recognize the fact that they also had human rights and families and they deserved to manage their lives by themselves. Overall, illiteracy was the primary method of keeping slaves ignorant and preventing them from self-autonomy and erasing their identities to maintain control over them.
Work Cited
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. JA, 2018.