Argument of the Equal Amount of Guilt of Whites and Blacks in the Poem On Being Brought From Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley

Johnathan Swift finds recognition around the world for his not so modest proposal, but this paper does not intended to write about Swift’s proposal. Instead, this paper‘s focus resides on a proposal that is actually quite modest in its unassertive and unassuming toner Cleverly concealed in the writing of Phillis Wheatley exist propositions largely countercultural to her time Unlike the ironic, not-so-modest proposal of Johnathan Swift, Phillis Wheatley’s proposal, in the poem On Being Brought from Africa to America, of the rightness for Christian equality among blacks and whites is more obscure.

While it may seem vague, the argument is present in her action of writing, assertion that whites and blacks are both guilty, and that both may equally find refinement through Christ. Phillis Wheatley’s poems spoke volumes against the notion of African perpetual ignorance, solely by the fact that they exist to begin with.

A black, African-born, young women should not have been able to write poetry according to the worldview, of America and England, in her time The belief was that non-Europeans were inept to express themselves in such a gifted form.

in their introduction to Phillis Wheatley, the editors Henry Louis Gates Jr, and Valerie A, Smith approach this very issue. On page 137 they state, “The mere fact of an African-born slave woman’s writing poetry in English was stunning news to Whites who encountered Poems on Various Subjects… Since the revolution of European thought and expression known as the Enlightenment, the assumption among even the educated white elite was that black Africans were incapable of the highest forms of civilization, such as poetic expression”.

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The fact that Phillis even wrote poetry appeals to the notion that blacks were capable of intelligence.

This forms a beginning premise to the possibility of equality among black and white people. If blacks could create examples of intelligence to the same degree if not more artistically pleasing than white people could, than the argument that whites were superior based on intelligence is no longer valid, While this fact may not contribute much to the question of Christian equality, it does contribute to the question of equality in general. Which is still majorly important because if people could first accept Phillis Wheatley intellectual credentials, than they may find the propensity to listen to her proposal of at Christian equality. Phillis Wheatley seems to have not been subversive enough by many critics, though it seems that she found quieter subversive ways of approaching sensitive subjects. In her poem, Phillis states the uncomfortable truth of human incompetence away from God, regardless of skin tone, Both Whites and Negros are equally sinful. When Phillis writes, ”Remember Christians, Negros, black as Cain”, she shows that both White Christians and Negros are Black as Cain.

Her brothers and sisters of her faith along with her brothers and sisters of her race are both crude as the allusion to Cain suggests Some may suggest that this part of the poem only speaks of Africans being “Black as Cain”, but the punctuation suggests a commonality between the proper nouns. If whites and blacks are equal in sin then the notion that they should be equal in faith, become more tightly linked, Without the God that both confess, neither would have the hope of mercy as they do. Since both races are equally sinful the question then becomes can both races be equally refined? If black and whites are equal in destitution, can they both be equal in restitution?

While many of the time would have claimed Africans as subservient to the paler races, they would not have gone so far to say that Africans because of their darker complexion would have been incapable of cleansing by their God, Phillis Wheatley ends her poem by stating the both Blacks and Whites “may be refin’d, and join the angelic train”. This goes to Show that blacks and whites are equal in start (a sinful being), but can receive the same refinement. Thus stated a black or a white may join the same angelic train regardless of appearance. If blacks and whites are equal as so then at least in the sight of their religion they are equal. While not firmly dealing with the illogical equality at hand, dealing with the notion that Christian equality between the races is right leads to the possibly of acknowledgment of complete equality later.

While it may seem vague, the argument is present in her action of writing, assertion that whites and blacks are both guilty, and that both may equally find refinement through Christ. In her poem, Phillis Wheatley proposed that while blacks and whites may not be equal in the eyes of man or its governmental systems, at least in the eyes of God both are able to find refinement by his mercy. This may not give the impression of an aggressive start on the path to equality among the races, but for a fourteen-year-old slave girl it is a rather risky comment to make. Perhaps this is why she chooses to do it in such a modest way.