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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

by Frederick Douglass

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Student Question

Why does Douglass predict a "different-looking" class of slaves is arising in the South in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave?

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Douglass predicts that a "very different-looking" of slaves is springing up in the South on account of the growing number of slaves fathered by their mothers' owners. As a consequence, a new generation of slaves is growing up that looks completely different from the first generation originally brought over from Africa.

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When Douglass refers to a very different-looking class of slaves, he's referring to those, perhaps like himself—he's not absolutely sure—who have been fathered by slave-owners.

Douglass has heard numerous whispers that his own father was a slave-owner, and although he doesn't know whether or not this is true, he has nonetheless observed that more and more of his fellow slaves have indeed been brought into the world this way.

From personal experience, Douglass has noticed that slaves born to slave-owners are invariably treated a lot worse than other slaves. To a large extent, this is due to the resentment of the mistress of the house, who naturally takes offense at the very physical manifestations of her husband's philandering. Such mistresses take out their resentment on those slaves fathered by their husbands, subjecting them to even more cruel and degrading treatment than they would normally expect.

Inevitably, this racial mixing has had an effect upon the skin complexion of growing numbers of slaves. The current generation of slaves springing up in the South looks a lot different from the first generation of slaves originally brought over from Africa. This is because they are lighter skinned.

Even so, that in no way means that they receive better treatment than slaves with darker skin. If anything, as we've already seen, their treatment is worse.

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