In his narrative, Frederick Douglass describes his tragic and personal experiences growing up as a slave and delves further into how dehumanizing it all was, not only for him, but other fellow slaves as well. He talks thoroughly about several methods how the slave masters would dehumanize their slaves. The first method Douglass, which he states is a common custom amongst slave owners in Maryland, describes in his narrative is how his slave masters had him separated from his mother, so early in fact that it was before he even knew her as his mother. He details, “Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor.” (Douglass 2). The reason for this is to essentially, sever or destroy whatever connection or as he states it, “hinder the development of the child’s affection towards its mother,” even though he claims he honestly doesn’t know the true intention of this. (Douglass 2). This method had quite the impact on Douglass since he recalls never truly knowing his mother in the typical fashion since he only saw her four or five times in his life for a short amount of time. 

Recently, I’ve seen a surge of efforts to dehumanize the Asian population in reference to the coronavirus. While I haven’t seen it in person, I witnessed multiple accounts across different social media platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. For instance, on Instagram, I saw a video of a man spraying an Asian man on the subway with Febreze, yelling indecencies at him and blaming him and “his people” for the outbreak of the virus. Another example I witnessed, while I don’t know how valid these statements are, I’ve seen accounts on Twitter stating that they or a friend that own a Chinese cuisine establishment are going out of business because customers are worried about getting the virus. Adding on to that, while I don’t remember the exact details, I remember seeing another Instagram post that detailed the aftermath of an Asian teenager that was beaten because of the virus outbreak and he was used as a scapegoat. This fits into the historical framework of dehumanizing people because during class, we discussed some of the reasons on why different examples of dehumanization were so prevalent and two of them were if peers and the government justify it, then it’s ok for everyone else to do it. Now while it may not apply to the government completely, the different accounts of xenophobia and racism that has been witnessed throughout the world has, unfortunately, led to other people following their cruel examples such as the incident with the two men on the subway.