Post 5

The Power of the Status Quo

In Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, he depicts himself as an enslaved man, stolen from his home and culture which he looks back on with some admiration and nostalgia. He explores the world and meets countless people, has countless experiences, and views the hardship and torment enacted on fellow slaves and even freed black individuals. In his Narrative, Equiano uses his experience to denounce individual people and unfavorable trends in human behavior, not the institution of slavery or racism from which so much of the injustice is derived.

Equiano is overjoyed when he himself is freed, and so ecstatic he can hardly even write out his feelings to their full accuracy. He writes that his “imagination was all rapture” and his “feet scarcely touched the ground, for they were winged with joy” (Equiano 7.1). Yet he does not speak out against the many forms of slavery, religions, et cetera that he comes across as they cause harm. Instead, it is individual people that he targets. Of a captain that mistreated even his white crew members, Equiano states that “he was a very cruel and bloody-minded man, and was a horrid blasphemer” (11.10), drawing on his morals and lack of respect for his religion. Happily, Equiano also picks out certain individuals for more praise. For example, he and other slaves at one point in time “knew [Equiano’s] master to be a man of feeling, [slaves] were always glad to work for him in preference to any other gentleman” (Equiano 5.9). While Equiano has no comment on the institution of slavery here, he notes that certain slave owners are better than others to “work for”, generally because of their benevolence.

Equiano may like to give humanity the benefit of the doubt, and mark only specific individuals as more ‘evil’ than others. Or, perhaps his choice to not condemn certain people or institutions stems from slavery and racism being so deeply rooted in African or Western society at this point in time. When we look back on the period from modern times, we wonder how society could be so wrong on such counts. However, when humanity looks back on today one hundred years from now they will surely say the same thing. The “normal” is a very powerful force.