Joy Degruy's Narrative: A Personal Study Of Slavery

The Frederick Douglass narrative I must say, has begun a spark into my personal study of slavery once again. I was previously intrigued by Joy Degruy’s theory of Post Traumatic slave Syndrome, but this narrative in particular, addressed a sickness I have never learned about before. For example, when he went into detail about how slaves would argue about which of their masters were wealthier or had more physical stature than the other. The idea that “it was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!”, was honestly baffling to me. To say the least, I was very disappointed in them in that they could defend their master even in their own privacy. I think that story was representative
of how slavery penetrated the psyche of the slave. However, I began to think that a slave might feel superior to others, if his master was very wealthy. Not only did he generate the wealth on the plantation (by labor), he himself, was apart of the monetary wealth of the plantation.
Another line that stood out to me was the story about his aunt Hester. He described her as “a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions, having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance, among the colored or white women of our neighborhood”. This stood out to me because the white people of that era stomped it into society that black people were incapable of beauty at all, and the colloquialism of the word baboon was a surname. Therefore, the fact that his aunt was recognized for her beauty and for it to exceed that of any white woman of the neighborhood shows how absolutely flawed and ignorant their logic was. It is almost comedic to see how they made an ass out of themselves.