Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass

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Experience in slavery
Fredrick Douglass has a deeper understanding of a slave’s experience from the fact that he was a slave. He provides a first-person perspective on the life of a slave. He gained insight into slavery from experience thus he knows the evils resulting from slavery. As a result, he has numerous good reasons to support its abolishment (Levine 333). On the other hand, Theodore Canot who was an Italian adventurer has a different perspective on slaves. Canot was a slave trader based in West Africa and America. The baseline of their beliefs and actions is tied on their life’s experience; one as a slave and the other as a slave trader. For the trader, he has a good experience since the business benefits him while for the slave, he has a rough experience that makes him fight toward abolishing slavery.
Beliefs
Fredrick believes that the major reason why slavery should end is that it dehumanizes not only the master but also the slaves. He claims slavery corrupts the labor system to the point that slaves are harshly mistreated compared to animals. He asserts that masters to the slaves justify their action from the self-serving believe that slaves are meant to be treated in such a manner. Therefore, they exercise cruelty and egoism for their purpose to be served. Douglas believes in equality in that slaves are not lesser human beings. For this reason, he fought against the injustice caused through slavery. On the other hand, Theodore Canot beliefs are based on racial inferiority, and he considers black people as lesser human beings.

This belief, combined with hypocrisy and desire for profit blurred his morals on trading humans through trafficking. For him, black people were inferior, and they were slaves no matter their origin. As a result, he treated black people with high intensity of brutality. From the moment they were shipped to the moment they were handed to their master, slaves experience a lot of cruelty in his hand. This belief is the one that aroused racial prejudice and has precipitated into racial tension experienced in the day to day life. In this text, we see that beliefs justify personal actions even if the resulting actions are inhumane.
Work cited
Levine, Robert S. The Lives of Frederick Douglass. Harvard University Press, 2016.