Appealing to the White Audience

In both Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Up from Slavery, the most compelling shared element is the use of literacy as a tool to appealing to the white audience, though they do it in very different ways. For Harriet Jacobs and Booker T. Washington, learning to read and write was a way to speak against a system designed to keep them oppressed. By writing their autobiographies, both were essentially proving their worth to a white audience who would typically look down on them. However, the way they used their voices differs vastly based on their personal views and agendas.

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Both Jacobs and Washington were writing for a white audience, but they used vastly different strategies to appeal to them. Jacobs, writing for Northern white women during the abolitionist movement, portrayed the Northern white women in her life as especially kind and benevolent. She tells the story of how she was abused by Dr. Flint, but through the grace of Mrs. Bruce, her freedom is bought. By emphasizing the sexual predators and the constant threat to her children, she forces her audience to see her not as "property," but as human, facing unimaginable horrors, where she is eventually saved by the white person. Her appeal is based on empathy and trauma: she wants her readers to see the traumatic reality of slavery so that they are moved to support emancipation.

On the other hand, Washington who is writing decades later during the Jim Crow era, writes in a much more peaceful and non-threatening approach. Instead of speaking out about the horrible conditions of slavery, he mostly argues that slavery actually had many positives for black people. While in the beginning of the book, he does talk about the poor conditions of his childhood and the struggle to educate himself, but his overall attitude does not side with the black people. He argues that slaves were more enlightened than those in the motherland (of Africa), and that slavery gave them specialized jobs and skills. Later, he suggests a partnership to white Southerners and Northern philanthropists, assuring them that a Black workforce trained in industrial skills would be more beneficial to the country than an uneducated one. He uses his personal journey of self education and hard work to show how the black community can succeed: urging them to "cast down your bucket where you are" and take advantage of their environment. carefully avoiding any language that might suggest he held a grudge or wanted to flip the social hierarchy overnight.

Washington actively downplays the brutality of slavery, a harsh counterpart to Jacob's descriptions of working on a plantation. Washington speaks of slavery as a concept that, while flawed in many ways, ultimately prepared Black people for civilization. He focuses on the lessons learned rather than the pain endured. Washington was criticized by many activists for his acceptance for segregation and political disenfranchisement in exchange for Black economic progress and vocational training, and appeasing the white people. In actuality though, Washington secretly funded anti-segregation lawsuits, fighting in silence while outwardly sympathizing with White people: he was reliant on keeping a positive public image with the powerful white people in power to be able to continue his career.

Both Harriot Jacobs and Booker T. Washington wrote during a time of oppression and harsh racism, and their novels reflect the necessity to speak highly of the white people around them. Jacobs chose to speak out about her traumatic life as a slave, and to portray the wealthy, white Mrs. Jacobs as her savior. Washington made the argument that slavery actually benefitted the black people in many ways. Both texts are clearly tailored to satisfy and justify the opinions of the white audience, drawing a fine line between truth and myth.