Decades ago, I read an essay by a feminist literary critic named Patrocinio Schweickart about how feminists should read misogynistic texts from the past. She counseled them to face the misogyny but also to look for what she called the “utopian moment” in such texts, an “authentic kernel” of human experience that can be shared and celebrated. I think that’s what Douglass does. He has every reason, given what their sins and follies cost him and his Black sisters and brothers, to dismiss the Founders wholly, but he does not. “They were great in their day and generation.”
It would be utterly unfair to demand of anyone wounded as Douglass was wounded the charity he exhibits here. I would not ever dare to ask it. That he speaks as warmly of the Founders as he does strikes me as little less than a miracle.
Please read the whole thing.
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