Frederick Douglass talks about many of the disturbing things that African Americans went through during the time of Slavery. One of these things included the dehumanizing acts the slave owners took part in. When it comes to the dehumanizing of African Americans, these people were treated as property, they could be bought, sold, and traded; “More to the point of Douglass’s case, because slaves were considered property they were denied the rights associated with property ownership, including the right to privacy derived from property-in-self.” (Douglass) These slaves had absolutely no rights. They had no right to vote, freedom of speech, they did not even get to decide where they would work as a slave. They did not even have the right to stay with their families. Douglass was born into slavery and as he shares in Chapter 1, he never met his mother or father or any other family members in that case. “I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night.” Slaves did not get to complain about anything, did not get to share their feelings with anyone, never got sympathy or empathy, these slaves basically got no type of feelings reciprocated towards them. They had no privacy as their entire lives were devoted to taking care of their owners. The mere word “Slave” dehumanizes these Americans just because of the color of their skin. 

There are many different dehumanizing practices going on in today’s society. One extremely prominent one is Asian’s getting discriminated against because of the Coronavirus. Although the virus was originated in China, the people of China should not be blamed. As soon as the virus started to become more serious, I saw more and more people discriminating against Asian’s everywhere, especially on the trains. People would avoid sitting next to Asian people and would cover their mouths around any Asian near them, however, the person who does not look Asian that they feel as if they don’t need to take such precautionary measures might just be the one who has the actual virus. I feel that many things like racism, sexism, religious discrimination, heterosexism, etc. are all forms of dehumanizing people. Another instance was when after 9/11 many Muslim people and Sikh people were being discriminated against. Many people were telling Muslims to go back to their country and stereotyping every Muslim as a terrorist. Sikhs would also be discriminated against although they were not Muslim and had absolutely nothing to do with the attack, just like every other American. They were being discriminated against because of their Turbans, also being stereotyped because of what they wore. It’s very disappointing to see that people still treat others with such disrespect.