“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?”
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.
“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.
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