This Narrative is about Fredrick Douglas but I couldn't let this thought go. Unless I am misunderstanding, it seems his Aunt was not allowed to go out in the evenings so she could be available when her master wanted to rape her. Additionally, she was also not allowed to be in the presence of a man paying attention to her, so it would seem the only sex her master wanted her to have was that when he raped her. It is so barbaric and horrible that she was brutally whipped for not being available for her master to rape her, for being with someone that payed her attention. It is horrible that she was whipped but it seemed still subsequently raped on future evenings. I can't begin to image how some of the women in slavery felt and coped knowing that rape was just a fact of life, that after working all day they would be made the sexually gratify the person controlling their awful condition, and that someone else could seek to obtain control over their sex and reproduction in such a malicious way. It seemed that sex was very much allowed to be a power oriented activity, like the sex was a way for the slave masters to literally get off on their own sense of power. I think that Fredrick Douglas realized this at his young age when he witnessed the encounter, making the situation even more difficult for him to process.

This passage I think speaks to the fact that these brutal punishments and treatments were terribly traumatic for Fredrick Douglas to witness. He speaks to the way the incident affected him in a traumatic way, how he was a young child but remembers details and emotions from the first time this Aunt was whipped. I think one way slavery affected Fredrick Douglass life was through the immense amount of trauma he experienced, and that he had no choice in handling the trauma, only coping. This trauma begins at such a young age when he mother was removed from him, and continues through the first whipping of his Aunt, among other incidents.

this reminds me of the David Walker piece we read when he discusses the nature of laws set up to keep black people without legal recourse or representation even if they are free. It seems that pains were taken to remove any amount of legal oversight into to practice of slavery.

Walker discusses that slavery throughout history was most often a result of enslaving those who have done harm to a society or people and are deserving of punishment. He argues that slavery in America is the worst in history using the reasoning for enslaving Africans as one of a multitude of reasons to back this claim up. Enslaved people in other societies throughout history earned their position in a sense by being prisoners and prisoners of war. In America Africans were enslaved for no reason brought on by themselves but purely because they were viewed as less than human because of their skin color and were enslaved for the purpose of enriching white society.

Walker uses history of Roman slaves to back up his argument that slaves in America are treated worse than slaves in other parts of history. He uses it to drive home the point that slave in america truly have no control and no means of gaining control over their circumstances, which was not common among slavery through history. Additionally, while slaves were oppressed throughout history it was not common to have laws oppressing a certain set of people once they were no longer slaves. Walker highlights that while slaves in Roman history, once having bought their freedom, could hold any office, but in America are not even allowed to hold spot as a juror for one of their peers, much less hold any public office. This really shows how slavery in america was perverted more than slavery in other pockets of history by racism and entitlement.

Walker does a great job emphasizing the flaws and absurdity in the argument that it would please God to make people with black skin who are innately less deserving of liberty and justice. Walker emphasizes that God did not make black skin an "unfortunate" color; instead white people, not God, seized upon the difference in skin color, deciding that people with black skin were inherently deserving of slavery and harsh circumstances. White people attempted to manipulate religion, by saying that god would design a person to be innately less than another, for use as a thin veil to try and justify, and mask the absurdity of, skin color being the innate determination of a persons freedom and treatment.