An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes,
eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes
the white man’s religion.” 60 Nevertheless, Washington was likely the
exception to the rule in that he was able to have direct connections working
with Indigenous people in an educational setting.
Humor was a core feature of Douglass’s speech acts. He knew how to
inflect humor into his speeches, which covered horrific topics yet made the
white people he spoke in front of comfortable. To drive a certain point
home, Black folks learned how to do this and continue doing this in front of
white people. The difficulty in using humor and foils to appease white
sensibilities is that some other group can get hurt in the process. In this
case, I don’t believe that Douglass meant harm to Native people, but the
rhetoric fit into the larger narrative of white people’s belief in their
civilization as the best for all. Liberal whites had accomplished their major
goal of ending slavery. Native people’s decline was their own doing, and
they could not compete with the onward moving civilization of the US.
What we can learn from the Douglass episode is that we should not always
cater to white people’s comfort; they, too, need to hear the gospel truth.
In Douglass’s attempt at obtaining Black freedom, however, he propped
up Black possibility while subjugating Indigenous impossibility. He wanted
to appease white people for the sake of Black rights, which contributed to
the discursive erasure of Native people. Historian David Blight notes that
“it is astounding that Douglass would use race this way.” He continues,
“The marketplace for racism was diverse and terrifying in Reconstruction
America. Even its most visible and eloquent homegrown opponent could
fall to its seductions in his fierce quest to be accepted by American
‘civilization.’” 61 Douglass, like other Black Americans throughout US
history, was not immune to Indigenous erasure and producing white-created
stereotypes about Native people, particularly when speaking in front of a
white audience.
Cora Daniels Tappan, an abolitionist and a member of the American
Anti-Slavery Society, immediately followed Douglass’s speech to the
AASS. She challenged his idea of comparing Black progress and
Indigenous decline. She noted that while the southern slave owners
subjugated Black people, the US government waged a war of extermination
against Indigenous peoples. She believed that Douglass held prejudice
against Native people, and though he used Native people as a foil, he “may