Douglass' Rhetoric and Epistemology
I think that Douglass' speech presents a remarkable argument. The content of the speech is powerful, as is Douglass' rhetoric. At the beginning, he makes himself small, citing his embarrassment. He notes the "little experience" he's had in public speaking. This is an understatement, as Douglass had considerable public speaking experience. He had been giving powerful speeches since his first in 1841, at the age of 23. So Douglass' decision to humble himself at the beginning of this speech is a knowing rhetorical move. It endears him to his audience, which was mostly white, presumably. He says things that people might expect in a Fourth of July speech, praising the United States' independence. Douglass makes arguments that people will agree with, condemning the British oppression of colonists in North America. He says of the American Revolution: "Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment." This same framework might be applied to the abolitionist struggle,
Note that Douglass is speaking in the second person. This is consistent throughout the piece, and it denotes a separation between him and the white audience. People usually use the first person plural when they're talking about revolutionary America—"our founding fathers," and so on. By using the second person, Douglass also indicates that he's not part of this American tradition. This happens early in the speech, even when he's talking about Fourth of July celebrations.
The biggest rhetorical turn in Douglass' speech starts to happen here: "What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence ? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?" Here, Douglass uses the first person plural, but his "us" does not include the audience. Rather, it represents black people in the United States. He reveals that the "national independence" that he has described at considerable length is exclusive. Soon, his language becomes more explicit and his tone becomes more critical: "Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us."
Douglass reveals his true subject, slavery, quite late in the piece. I don't think this is usually advisable in rhetorical speech, but in this case, Douglass sudden turn in subject matter and tone ("I will use the severest language I can command") is quite arresting. As he continues, he contends that his points are obvious enough that they don't even need to be argued: "Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already," "There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know slavery is wrong for him."
When it comes to acquiring the knowledge that enables him to make this arguments, Douglass uses mostly history and experience. He uses the history of the U.S. independence movement to set up an idealistic impression of the country that he later criticizes. And he uses his own experiences as an enslaved person to describe the horrors of the United States' internal slave trade.
The presence of Douglass's well articulated reason is his strongest tactic for his argument. Though more subtle than the others, this is perhaps Douglass's strongest point. According to Aristotle, natural slaves lacked the capacity for reason--and clearly that is not an issue for Douglass, assuming he maintains the same capacities as the rest of his black kin. His employment of valid, cogent reason is irrefutable testimony that black people are not, in fact, "natural slaves," but equally comparable in capability. Thus, any argument predicated on logic that African Americans are lacking in reason or ability has been proven fallacious. Douglass, through the presence of his own articulation and reasoning, provides the most powerful rhetorical tool.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with the point that Douglass would argue that black people are not “natural slaves” as Aristotle describes this term, I would go a step further and assert that Douglass would claim that there is no such thing as a “natural slave.” Douglass believes that all people have the same capacity for reason and logic so long as they’re given the same resources and opportunities. This is actually the same idea behind affirmative action within admissions processes. Affirmative action has always been a contentious issue, but I believe that Douglass would ultimately agree with the premise of this admissions tool. Affirmative action is used as a mechanism to adjust an imbalance within the education system that marginalized groups have suffered from.
ReplyDeleteThough Douglass believes that all people have the same capacity to educate themselves and achieve their goals, he would not go so far as to claim that all people have the means to do so. This idea dates all the way back to slavery when black people were denied their most basic rights, including education. While many like to argue that affirmative action is inherently a tool which promotes inequality by prioritizing a certain group over another, we have to keep in mind that the motive behind this prioritization is to account for different ‘starting lines.’