Nor did I, when pursuing this course, consider myself as uttering what was utterly false; for I always measured the kindness of my master by the standard of kindness set up by slaveholders around us.
Douglass explains that his positive replies about his master were not entirely false, but rather a reflection of how enslaved people were forced to measure "kindness" against the low standards of the surrounding slaveholding society.
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The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.