That this denial of rights to us is because of our color, only as color is a badge of condition, is manifest in the fact that no matter how decently dressed or well-behaved a colored man may be, he is denied civil treatment in the ways thus pointed out, unless he comes as a servant.
Douglass highlights the systemic racism that denies civil rights based solely on skin color, regardless of an individual's behavior or appearance.
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More from Frederick Douglass
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.