Friday, March 22, 2013

Thoughts Regarding "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"


“This is a fair specimen of how the moral sense is educated by slavery.  When a man has his wages stolen from him […], and the laws sanction and enforce the theft, how can he be expected to have more regard to honesty than has the man who robs him?” 
~ Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Chapter 40: The Fugitive Slave Law


Throughout her narrative, Jacobs argues that if the stereotype of colored people being dishonest, cunning, and underhanded is true, it’s because enslavement has forced them to develop such characteristics in order to survive. 


This seems to echo Sir Thomas More’s Utopia:


“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them?”

Both quotations are saying that those subordinate to a governing authority can’t be held responsible for their wrongdoings—it is the duty of the authorities to teach its subordinates ethical conduct, and also to enable them to follow those rules of conduct without infringing on their ability to survive. Does this mean that if you are a criminal, it’s the government’s fault? Not exclusively. But if the government is corrupt, then the people who live under its leadership will follow its example.  


Another work that comes to mind while reading Jacobs’ account is Thoreau’s essay Civil Disobedience. Jacobs herself practiced this philosophy by not acknowledging the validity of slavery in the United States’ law, saying, “I regarded such laws [supporting slaveholders] as the regulations of robbers, who had no rights that I was bound to respect.”


There are two choices when we find ourselves living under the authority of laws or rules that are corrupt. The first is to conform by becoming criminals ourselves. The second is to risk being labeled as “criminal” by refusing to obey these regulations of robbers and living a life of personal integrity.

No comments:

Post a Comment