Bag O' Books: FREDERICK DOUGLASS: PROPHET OF FREEDOM

This has been, for many white Americans, the summer of anti-racism reading. I guess that my dive into David Blight's FREDERICK DOUGLASS: PROPHET OF FREEDOM counts in that category. I can't tell other people how to try and figure out how to do their own thinking about race -- but I don't have much patience for "how to" books like "White Fragility." I'd rather read histories and current books by and about people who have lived the struggle. I've re-read James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" this summer, as well as Toni Morrison's "Beloved." Next up on my reading list is Isabel Wilkerson's "Caste." In between all of these books, I'm getting in a chapter or two of "Moby Dick" now and again.

Among the lessons to be learned from Blight's book is that discerning the One True Way to battle the evil of racism may not be so easy, or even possible. Douglass evolved over time from a "moral suasionist" form of abolition to a fiery advocate of righteous, cleansing violence. He moved from being a radical outsider to a Republican "party man." He struggled with human foibles. 

The two through-lines in his life, though, are this: He always fought for the advancement of his race. And he often did so by telling his own story -- a biography in which he escaped slavery and rose to become a preeminent orator, writer and (three times!) autobiographer.

The other through line, perhaps, is that the struggle never ends. Douglass started his fight against slavery and ended it an enemy of lynching. Evil never subsides. It just takes on new-- and, sometimes, not-so-new -- forms to be opposed.