Essay on Slavery, Injustice and Discrimination in Frederick Douglas' Shipyard Anthology

In The Shipyard anthology, Frederick Douglas explains what he experienced while at the workplace in Baltimore. He says that there were discrimination and abuse, the worse kind of injustices that the slaves go through; among his colleagues, they were being beaten by white co-workers. The whites saw him as a threat most probably because he was not of the white race; the whites hate competition especially from the Africans. Throughout the text, Douglas describes how the whites exploited the slaves and how they sexually abused women slaves. The slaves faced a lot of mistreatment in that even if they were allowed to make their own arrangements at the workplace, they surrendered a large portion of their income to their masters. The paper will demonstrate how Sharon Subterranean fire the section of the peculiarities of American capitalism relates from the texts from the anthology.

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The peculiarities of American capitalism texts also highlight three themes, racism, repression, and co-optation by the democrats. One factor that relates to the texts of the anthology is racism; this is because it is a political strategy that is used to divide and conquer the minorities. Like Douglas who experienced oppression because of race, Sharon elucidates that the working class also faces exploitation and therefore, they need to fight back through a revolution. Her text inspires the American working class to unite and fight with solidarity so that they can alleviate those conditions that create a zone of low living standards. Sharon Smith proposes that the proletariats have nothing to lose in the struggle; they are only airing their voice so that they can get out of the chains and win by the words.

Furthermore, Coles and Zandy assert in the Shipyard anthology that the whites used racism to divide the blacks from the whites in the workplace, Sharon's text also discusses use racism to divide the working class. They impose segregation to attack the immigrants particularly through the Chinese Exclusion Act (Smith 26). The working class has labeled Eastern and Southern European immigrants as the minority and this resulted in the sterilization of women from inferior places such as Native Americans, Blacks, Latinas, to mention but a few (Smith 30). In addition, Douglas and Sharon are championing a similar theme, exploitation and abuse of the minority by the American working class. There is a need for a labor party in the United States of America, which could be used to address the injustices that many people experience. It is through the working class that white supremacy emerged, which makes the whites to perceive themselves as superior and on the other hand, reverting to treating people of other races as slaves. The key component of the literature is the whiteness theory. The study from the two books boldly helps to awaken the laboring masses by highlighting the abuse and exploitation they seem to the facade.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the American working class is imposed with segregation, which creates two classes of people, the superior whites and the minorities who are treated as slaves. Throughout the texts, the most privileged are the whites, through their acts, they create anxiety because of their brutal beating and exploitation and all this goes unnoticed. People that are not of the white race should, therefore, unite in solidarity and form labor movements to solve workplace exploration and racism.

Works Cited

Coles, Nicholas, and Janet Zandy. American working-class literature: An anthology. Oxford University Press, USA, 2007.

Smith, Sharon. Subterranean Fire (Updated Edition): A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States. Haymarket Books, 2018.