Introduction
In their essays, Frederick Douglass and Richard Wright render their experience of obtaining knowledge, which is unique in both instances, considering that both authors write from the position of young black people in the segregated American society of the 20th century.
Their accounts are touching in that they tell the story of an unraveling desire to explore the world – through books. Frederick Douglass’ “Learning to Read and Write” and Richard Wright’s “The Library Card” are the stories of perseverance and resolve in overcoming the obstacles that prevented the marginalized black people from the most basic and the most important of human experiences: obtaining knowledge. The fact that education was denied to most of the black people is quite telling in itself.
The works by Douglass and Wright feature some views that complement each other and unveil the real causes of the denial. In a society where white supremacy is enforced, the problem of knowledge acquires new, a wider scope. At the same time, knowledge can be a source of empowerment, a strength, a tool of control, a weakness, and a curse.
Background: Segregation and education
Generally speaking, no work of art can be regarded outside the culture it is created in. Specifically, about Douglass and Wright, the authors conveyed their experiences, which cannot be taken separately from the social and political situation in the country. They were growing up in a country segregated by the passage of Jim Crow laws.
The segregation touched upon every aspect of living, including education. The laws of slavery not only prohibited black children to attend schools together with the whites but also subsumed that the two races were getting different knowledge. In this respect, black people were severely constrained. The majority of whites were against educating them at all and enforced this view by forbidding their slaves to read.
Knowledge is empowerment
It is against such a background that the boys discovered the marvel of reading – and knowledge, which opens up as the source of empowerment at this instance. Indeed, a young person who has been raised in ignorance suddenly discovers a strange new world. The novels show Wright’s character the power of words: he is shocked at how a writer can use language to convey his hatred, disdain, and anguish. At this moment, when the experience seems the most surreal, he suddenly realizes that a written word can lash harder than a whip, and feels empowered because of the writer’s courage.
A person that reads starts asking themselves questions and develop new ideas, as in Douglass’ narrative: as a boy who has only just learned his letters, he finds himself questioning the institution of slavery and the inequity of freedom. Not until he learns to read does he realize that he is doomed to be enslaved for a lifetime while his white peers would be free by the age of 21. Thus, the ability to think broader and deeper is one of the ways knowledge empowers, which makes it one of the blissed experiences a human can have.
Knowledge as a tool of control
In a segregated society, the empowerment and broadening of the horizons brought by knowledge have a darker side to them: as a black person educates themselves, they become harder to control. In this society, the whole institution of slavery was based on the distribution of knowledge, and justified by it: the white people were telling themselves that the blacks were unintelligent and savage, and thus legitimized the oppression in their own eyes. Because such prejudice was groundless, the black people had to be kept uneducated to be easily controlled.
Empowered, the black people would easily see the inequity and respond to this by taking action, demanding equality and respect. The response was something the white people feared and tried to prevent. The behavior of Douglass’ character’s mistress and the fact that black people were forbidden to have library cards (as per Wright) can prove that knowledge was equated to a weapon, which the whites tried to keep away from the oppressed. The white supremacy would be undisturbed, and the white people could further assure themselves that they were helping the black people, and not acting out of pure self-interest.
Knowledge is a curse
If ignorance made the black people controllable, knowledge can only be regarded as a curse to those who found the courage and resourcefulness to obtain it. Both authors are very clear on how miserable the knowledge made them: the books the characters read make them see how wretched their condition is. Douglass is particularly descriptive, referring to the physical pain the character experiences when he reads some of the speeches on human rights. He states how the ideas he read were a compliment and a continuation of his perceptions, which made these ideas all the more relatable.
Wright also describes his condition as restless and conveys the sensation of insecurity brought to him by the knowledge, as if he was unsure what to do with it, and whether he should do anything at all. The reality that they live in is suddenly availed to them, and both authors depict the suffering they experience. They feel for the distress their people are in, and the injustice they encounter daily. Worse still is that they are unable to forget what they have read and thought: nothing can be unseen or deleted, and it tortures their minds.
Knowledge as a weakness
With knowledge comes the responsibility to take action: one cannot simply observe and stay passive when they discover such scope. This is the paradox of knowledge: empowering people ad encouraging them to think outside the box, it is weakening them at the same time. Specifically, the youngsters are most distressed when they realize there is no one they can seek support from.
Both authors refer to it as feeling trapped. Indeed, their newly-adopted ideas compel them to act, but they realize they cannot act alone, and no one would share their thoughts. Douglass’ character relates that he often regretted his existence as the urge to fight was nagging and understood that he was all alone. The hostility of the world became evident to the characters as they educated themselves, but with no one to refer to, they found themselves helpless and weak.
The danger of knowledge
Apart from the anguish and isolation, being an educated black person in a segregated white society was quite dangerous. Wright mentions a small group of privileged black people who lived on approximately the same conditions as the whites – “approximately” being the key concept here. His character, however, does not foster any hopes of becoming anything like them, not least because he had to conceal the fact that he was reading. The challenges Douglass’ character has to undergo to educate himself illustrate the point just as explicitly. The danger of being an educated black among the whites was that the segregated society did its best to suppress free thought in slaves.
As a result, and as another common motive in the authors’ works, is the isolation from their community that the characters experience when the knowledge starts to change them. They are unable to treat their peers as they used to, not when they see the horror of their situation in full. Douglass’s character envies their stupidity, and Wright speaks of self-hatred that almost makes him fight his friends. The distance that knowledge creates between him and his people is furthering with every book he reads, and he eventually finds himself in the middle of nowhere: not belonging to either the black world or the white world anymore.
Conclusion
To reiterate, the authors Frederick Douglass and Richard Wright share several points that let the reader regard knowledge as both a curse and a blessing. But despite the empowering nature of education, in a white-supreme society oppressing the blacks and fearing their reaction, knowledge becomes a weapon against the oppressors.
Thus, a self-educated black boy irreversibly subjects himself to being isolated, weakened, and endangered not so much by the knowledge he has but rather, the society’s reaction to it. However, one must not forget that it is the conjoined efforts of such lone warriors as Douglass and Wright that eventually overturned the slavery apparatus – which makes their resolve and dedication all the more blissful.