Racism, as defined in the American Heritage Dictionary is the "notion that one's own ethnic stock is superior." In our world today, no certain race is declared superior over the others. Our society was all created as individuals with our own unique characteristics. Frederick Douglass', My Bondage and My Freedom, proves blacks are equal in intelligence and capability to whites by writing of his life experience.
             In this autobiography, Frederick Douglass says that his mistress, Mrs. Auld, set out to treat him as "she supposed one human being ought to treat another." To her, the color of Mr. Douglass' skin did not make him more or less of a human, nor should it. Mr. Douglass was able to learn and perceive things just as any other man or woman was able to. He knew that he was equal, and he wanted others to know of it also. For example, Mr. Douglass says "I was more than that, and she felt me to be more than that. I could talk and sign. I could laugh and weep. I could reason and remember. I could love and hate. I was human, and she, dear lady, knew and felt me to be so." In saying this he expresses his fondness of Mrs. Auld. He also commends her for believing in him to which, no one did.
             Mr. Douglass often had the chance to talk with the white boys and talked with them about his dream to be just like they are. For instance, he tells them "I wish I could be free, as you will be when you get to be men. You will be free you know, as soon as you are twenty-one, and can go where you like, but I am a slave for life. Have I not as good a right to be free, as you have?" He told of how this puzzles the boys. In these conversations he sees "the fresh and bitter condemnation of slavery, that springs from nature, unseared and unperverted." This helps him in that it reassures him slavery is not the way things have to be. Children, the purest, most honest people in the world, see tha...