While walking down Broadway in New York City with two white female friends, Douglass was attacked and punched in the face. In the wake of the assault, he assails Northern racism, exposing its sources and contradictions.
SOURCE: The North Star, June 13, 1850
Let no one imagine that we are about to give undue prominence to this subject. Regarding, as we do, the feeling named above to be the greatest of all obstacles in the way of the anti-slavery cause, we think there is little danger of making the subject of it too prominent. The heartless apathy which prevails in this community on the subject of slavery—the cold-blooded indifference with which the wrongs of the perishing and heart-broken slave are regarded—the contemptuous, slanderous, and malicious manner in which the names and characters of Abolitionists are handled by the American pulpit and press generally, may be traced mainly to the malign feeling which passes under the name of prejudice against color. Every step in our experience in this country since we commenced our anti-slavery labors, has been marked by facts demonstrative of what we have just said. The day that we started on our first anti-slavery journey to Nantucket, now nine years ago, the steamer was detained at the wharf in New Bedford two hours later than the usual time of starting, in an attempt on the part of the captain to compel the colored passengers to separate from the white passengers, and to go on the forward deck of that steamer; and during this time, the most savage feelings were evinced towards every colored man who asserted his right to enjoy equal privileges with other passengers. Aside from the twenty months which we spent in England (where color is no crime, and where a man’s fitness for respectable society is measured by his moral and intellectual worth), we do not remember to have made a single anti-slavery tour in any direction in this country, when we have not been assailed by this mean spirit of caste. A feeling so universal and so powerful for evil, cannot well be too much commented upon. We have used the term prejudice against color to designate the feeling to which we allude, not because it expresses correctly what that feeling is, but simply because that innocent term is usually employed for that purpose.
Properly speaking, prejudice against color does not exist in this country. The feeling (or whatever it is) which we call prejudice, is no less than a murderous, hell-born hatred of every virtue which may adorn the character of a black man. It is not the black man’s color which makes him the object of brutal treatment. When he is drunken, idle, ignorant and vicious, “Black Bill” is a source of amusement: he is called a good-natured fellow: he is the first to touch his hat to the stranger approaching the hotel, and offer his service in holding his horse, or blacking his boots. The white gentleman tells the landlord to give “Bill” “something to drink,” and actually drinks with “Bill” himself!—while poor black “Bill” will minister to the pride, vanity and laziness of white American gentlemen. While he consents to play the buffoon for their sport, he will share their regard. But let him cease to be what we have described him to be—let him shake off the filthy rags that cover him—let him abandon drunkenness for sobriety, industry for indolence, ignorance for intelligence, and give up his menial occupation for respectable employment—let him quit the hotel and go to the church, and assume there the rights and privileges of one for whom the Son of God died, and he will be pursued with the fiercest hatred. His name will be cast out as evil; and his life will be embittered with all the venom which hate and malice can generate. Thousands of colored men can bear witness to the truth of this representation. While we are servants, we are never offensive to the whites, or marks of popular displeasure. We have been often dragged or driven from the tables of hotels where colored men were officiating acceptably as waiters; and from steamboat cabins where twenty or thirty colored men in light jackets and white aprons were frisking about as servants among the whites in every direction. On the very day we were brutally assaulted in New York for riding down Broadway in company with ladies, we saw several white ladies riding with black servants. These servants were well-dressed, proud looking men, evidently living on the fat of the land—yet they were servants. They rode not for their own, but for the pleasure and convenience of white persons. They were not in those carriages as friends or equals. They were there as appendages; they constituted a part of the magnificent equipages. They were there as the fine black horses which they drove were there—to minister to the pride and splendor of their employers. As they passed down Broadway, they were observed with admiration by the multitude; and even the poor wretches who assaulted us might have said in their hearts, as they looked upon such splendor, “We would do so too if we could.” We repeat, then, that color is not the cause of our persecution; that is, it is not our color which makes our proximity to white men disagreeable. The evil lies deeper than prejudice against color. It is, as we have said, an intense hatred of the colored man when he is distinguished for any ennobling qualities of head or heart. If the feeling which persecutes us were prejudice against color, the colored servant would be as obnoxious as the colored gentleman, for the color is the same in both cases; and being the same in both cases, it would produce the same result in both cases.
We are then a persecuted people; not because we are colored, but simply because that color has for a series of years been coupled in the public mind with the degradation of slavery and servitude. In these conditions, we are thought to be in our place; and to aspire to anything above them, is to contradict the established views of the community—to get out of our sphere, and commit the provoking sin of impudence. Just here is our sin: we have been a slave; we have passed through all the grades of servitude, and have, under God, secured our freedom; and if we have become the special object of attack, it is because we speak and act among our fellow-men without the slightest regard to their or our own complexion; and further, because we claim and exercise the right to associate with just such persons as are willing to associate with us, and who are agreeable to our tastes, and suited to our moral and intellectual tendencies, without reference to the color of their skin, and without giving ourselves the slightest trouble to inquire whether the world are pleased or displeased by our conduct. We believe in human equality; that character, not color, should be the criterion by which to choose associates; and we pity the pride of the poor pale dust and ashes which would erect any other standard of social fellowship.
This doctrine of human equality is the bitterest yet taught by the abolitionists. It is swallowed with more difficulty than all the other points of the anti-slavery creed put together. “What makes a negro equal to a white man?” “No, we will never consent to that! No, that won’t do!” But stop a moment; don’t [be in] a passion, keep cool. What is a white man that you do so revolt at the idea of making a negro equal with him? Who made him? Is he an angel or a man? “A man.” Very well, he is a man, and nothing but a man—possessing the same weaknesses, liable to the same diseases, and under the same necessities to which a black man is subject. Wherein does the white man differ from the black? Why, one is white and the other is black. Well, what of that? Does the sun shine more brilliantly upon the one than it does upon the other? Is nature more lavish with her gifts toward the one than toward the other? Do earth, sea and air yield their united treasures to the one more readily than to the other? In a word, “have we not all one Father?” Why then do you revolt at that equality which God and nature instituted?
The very apprehension which the American people betray on this point, is proof of the fitness of treating all men equally. The fact that they fear an acknowledgment of our equality, shows that they see a fitness in such an acknowledgment. Why are they not apprehensive lest the horse should be placed on an equality with man? Simply because the horse is not a man; and no amount of reasoning can convince the world, against its common sense, that the horse is anything else than a horse. So here all can repose without fear. But not so with the negro. He stands erect. Upon his brow he bears the seal of manhood, from the hand of the living God. Adopt any mode of reasoning you please with respect to him, he is a man, possessing an immortal soul, illuminated by intellect, capable of heavenly aspirations, and in all things pertaining to manhood, he is at once self-evidently a man, and therefore entitled to all the rights and privileges which belong to human nature.—F.D.