Omission: A Necessary Evil

In Killingsworth’s article, “Appeals in Modern Rhetoric,” there is an example cited from Frederick Douglass’s famous life narrative which shows how an author might use “introductions to set up situations” (Killingsworth, 28).  Douglass’s introduction is a beautiful example of a deliberative speech which uses all the appeals; ethos, pathos, and logos.  However, at the end of the quote, Killingsworth inserted a critique of Douglass’s work by a feminist named bell hooks.  All in all, her opinion was not a major conceptual point of the article; but I found it interesting, and it led me down a nice rabbit whole of thinking.

Gloria Jean Watkins (better known by her pen name, bell hooks) is a modern day African American woman who is devoted to the feminist movement.  Although she is a strong speaker and advocate, I believe her strong convictions about the progression of the “lesser sex” construed her view on the aforementioned introduction written by Frederick Douglass.

Killingsworth states that Watkins firstly acknowledges the “constraints” (K,31) of the circumstances in and for which Douglass wrote.  Secondly, she acknowledges the “demands of the audience upon his writing” (K, 31).  Thirdly, she acknowledges Douglass’s intensions “to impress upon the consciousness of white readers the cruelty of that system of racial domination” (K, 31).  On the other hand, she believes that Douglass did not give credit where it was due: in this case, to an important female figure… Douglass’s mother.  Watkins believes that there was a certain “devaluing [of] black womanhood” (K, 31), because Douglass did not mention the “degree of care that made his black mother travel those twelve miles to hold him in her arms” (K, 31). 

When I initially read this, I became a little upset at the fact that Frederick Douglass, a writer who I look up to, would take a story out of context to get a reaction from his audience.  I couldn’t believe that he would use his own personal history to manipulate the public!  How could this be?  Was Douglass really being manipulative by not including his mother’s value into his narrative?  I looked up the definition of manipulation on dictionary.com, which says that to manipulate means “to manage or influence skillfully, especially in an unfair manner” (italics added).  I don’t honestly believe, given his character, that Douglass was trying to be “unfair” to the memory of his mother.  He didn’t actually manipulate in an unmoral/ “bad” way, such as trying to hide the good qualities and value of his mother.  Instead, he was simply omitting irrelevant facts as he saw appropriate to the time and place.  In conclusion, Frederic Douglass’s omission of certain parts of his story does not automatically equal a lack of respect for those missing parts.

This conclusion leads me to lose respect for Watkins’s claim.  She said that she acknowledged the “constraints” of Douglass’s circumstances, but she remains upset that he acted according to those constraints.  I understand where Watkins is coming from; but overall, I find that her claim may have been an emotional response to make waves in the emerging times of feminism (1970s).  Watkins’s exigency in critiquing Douglass was to further her own campaign for feminism, but it was at the cost of overlooking the value of Douglass’s exigency.