The totality of slavery is poorly summed up with words such as bondage or concepts such as the theft of freedom and autonomy; they belie the vicious beatings, murder, rape and brutal efforts to keep enslaved people from being able to speak or think about their situation. How the horrors of this reality have become so easily forgotten, excused or obscured that portions of this country are willing to defend the right to glorify symbols of an attempt to keep this system in place through the statues of Confederate soldiers and the waving of the so-called “rebel” flag, is difficult to understand. Regardless, it is nothing new; in the very prologue of Fredrick Douglass’s narrative, Boston writes of the ignorance and “incredulous” perspective many of this time held about the horrors of slavery—enough to discredit such accounts as “libel.”

Douglass himself indicates that such disbelief was, remarkably, not exclusive to Northern whites, whose geographical positioning might offer at least some explanation for their ignorance. He recounts that a mistress of his, described as “a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings,” had somehow been “preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery” (Douglass). How is it possible that anyone alive in this period, especially those who were close to slavery as was Douglass’s mistress, were immune to seeing the brutal reality of what was going on? Furthermore, how is it possible that in 2019, this country still cannot face the reality of what slavery was? I believe the answer, at least partially, lies in the way we use language to construct a reality that obscures inconvenient realities and allows the reality and history to be reoriented to suit the needs of capital and the preservation of hierarchy.

Douglass describes Colonel Lloyd’s plantation as extensions of “the great business place” (Douglass). The word itself, “business” as well as “work,” which appear frequently throughout the text are essential in discussing my point, as perhaps one of the most fundamental reasons for enslaved labor is for the growth of business, market and capital. This is not to dismiss racism and the domination of othered human beings, but is instead to explain, potentially, how these constructs can manifest and remain hidden under the guise of such things—how people like Douglass’s mistress could remain so ignorant of the brutality of slavery. Like the young child saluting on the cover of a copy of Paris-Match, as noted by Barthes, greater, more essential concepts such as “business” (or in the case of Barthes, “French imperiality”) obscure the daily events which lead to its construction and a “whole new history [is] implanted” behind a more seemingly neutral image, word or concept (Barthes). Seemingly innocent words: “farm,” “business place,” “the seat of government,” and even “plantation,” to a degree, are a language which can be easily mobilized under the wheels of capital and racism to hide its inner-workings. “Slavery” is defanged under the guise of “work” and industry.

Douglass also speaks of the way in which the language of slaves becomes policed under the threat of relocation and violence, what Douglass describes as the “penalty of telling the truth,” to the degree that the appearance of reality changes (Douglass). These mechanisms of power prevent the answers to “plain questions” from being aired truthfully, and thus creates a realm where slaves only ever “say they are contented, and their masters are kind” (Douglass). This is a similar process to that of the veil and the hidden, invisible reality people of color must live in under white spaces, as discussed by Du Bois; it is a prison of language. It is, in many ways, a double-consciousness that each slave must undergo when asked about the conditions of the “farm”: Always knowing the brutal reality of the beatings, the killings, the rape and the torture, but always having to say the opposite as a means of survival, as Douglass writes, the slaves would come to believe that “a still tongue makes a wise head” (Douglass).

It is through the use of innocent words that reality can be obscured, defanged and repurposed. And it’s through writing such as Douglass’s narrative that we can get a sense for how these constructs are built. What is perhaps most disturbing about reading this narrative isn’t merely how such brutality can be forgotten well over a hundred years after its writing, but how many whites of the time are described as being ignorant of the contemporary reality they were situated in. As Boston describes in the prologue, inherent to the abolitionist movement wasn’t merely the changing of laws, but it was also the fight against ignorant perspectives and disbelief that such horror was a daily reality. The act of rebellion against slavery was firmly tied to the reorientation of language; it was rebellious to call out “murderous cruelty,” to reassign the reality of slavery as a “crime.”