“I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom do anything to please her; she is never better pleased than when she sees them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of showing to his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his black slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity for him to do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave whom he would protect and defend.”
This quote from Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is extremely interesting to me because it shows that even is a slave is born of a white man he is not treated any better. In fact this quote goes as far as to say that a slave born of a white man or of the master of the plantation is actually treated worse due to the jealously of the “mistress”. I find this extremely interesting especially if you compare it to the French colony of Saint Domingue. In this French colony slaves born to a white parent were considered freer and on this colony there was a ranking of freedom depending on how much blackness was in their skin. Another aspect of this quote that is of interest is that the master wouldn’t want to sell his slave son because it would be inhumane to do so. But if the master decided that he wouldn’t sell his own son then he must watch one of his other whiter sons (the slave’s brothers) do things such as whip the slave.
