The judge in the Lindsay Clancy case is admonishing jurors who are refusing to follow his instructions

[u/bendubberley_]

[u/entr0picly]

Frederick Douglass might disagree (that people are too dumb)

[u/TexasRoast → u/entr0picly]

Douglass*

[u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 → u/entr0picly]

I see your point, good quip, but you’re mixing up some things here. Not quite apt.

[u/entr0picly → u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466]

Douglass was famous for talking incredibly dense to the common man because he believed that anyone can understand even when he talked about really complicated things.

Today his words are so dense that practically no one can even understand reading him, including highly educated people, and yet he could reach the uneducated.

Yes, I don’t disagree people today aren’t able to understand. They aren’t, you’re right. But I guess my point was we can reach them because Douglas was able to. We shouldn’t ascribe absolute incapacity when there is potential.

[u/Gloomy-Ad1171 → u/entr0picly]

Pre mass lead poisoning?

[u/IWillLive4evr → u/entr0picly]

Do you have a citation for the claim that Douglass's style was "dense"? I have never heard this before, and while I have only read a little of his work (his speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" in particular), but it seems to me no more or less dense than other leading public figures of his day.

It is remarkable, of course, that Frederick Douglass was one of the best orators of his time, given that he had to fight harder for his education than any of his white peers. That does not make him overly difficult for modern educated readers. His style is comparable to the Declaration of Independence or Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and well-educated kids read those all the time.

[u/violetqed → u/entr0picly]

famous? source?? people can understand his writing…

[u/entr0picly → u/violetqed]

https://prospect.org/2026/07/28/aug-2026-frederick-douglass-indefatigable-american/

>From a modern standpoint, it is almost unbelievable that Douglass could get huge crowds of people, most of whom did not have even a high school education, to pay rapt attention to flowery, hours-long speeches, often full of learned citations and elaborate arguments. But they kept coming back for more.
>There may be something to the idea that television and cellphones have ruined the national attention span; professor friends of mine relate that if they assign any Douglass speech, it must be heavily abridged or students simply will not read it.

Edit: seriously I provide the facts and.. downvotes. Read the article. The American Prospect is serious journalism.

[u/flaming_burrito_ → u/entr0picly]

That’s different from not being able to understand it, that’s just students being lazy and not wanting to read

[u/entr0picly → u/flaming_burrito_]

Is it though? That’s my point though. Douglass treated literally anyone believing they could have the attention to take the time to understand him.

And then my point is people aren’t dumb they just don’t have attention these days. So you’re proving my point.

If everyone is experiencing the same “lazy”, can you really blame an entire generation? And the implication is that students used to be able to read it. The implication is it’s not just students. The implication is it’s everyone in our present.

You should read the article you might learn something… that is if you have the attention, which you sadly probably don’t, which is the problem.

[u/violetqed → u/entr0picly]

I kind of get what you’re saying but it’s just not true that “highly educated” people can’t understand Frederick Douglass

not to mention that english has changed a lot since his time and that can make it more difficult to understand today than it was for “common” people to understand in the 19th century

[u/entr0picly → u/violetqed]

I said including. I didn’t say “all highly educated” people. Of course some can pay attention long enough to understand. My original point stands unchanged.

And college students absolutely fall in the regime of highly educated.

Read the article.

[u/flaming_burrito_ → u/entr0picly]

Yes, presumably given enough time anyone could understand what Douglass was saying, but I highly doubt there was ever a significant portion of uneducated people that took the time to do that. Often, amongst poor and enslaved people in the past, there would be a person who was educated enough to be able to read something and spread its message. A lot of times this was the pastor or someone involved in law. So it was still more or less translated to them, it was not like today where people can read but don’t understand, most of these people literally couldn’t read. It’s ridiculous to suggest they could just consistently glean meaning from words they do not know.

Furthermore, this is a bad example because Frederick Douglass lived 150 years ago, so a lot of his use of language will have become anachronistic in the modern day, and therefore is literally harder to understand than it was then.

I don’t want to disagree with someone who was so much more accomplished and qualified than me, but I just think this is not and was never true.

[u/entr0picly → u/flaming_burrito_]

Read the article I cited.

[u/flaming_burrito_ → u/entr0picly]

I read it, it’s a summary of his life and accomplishments that mentions absolutely nothing about how he got those people to listen to him. You cherry-picked that statement to prove your point, and what I’m telling you is that it is an idealized statement meant to motivate people, not one that was ever actually true. I already told you how his word actually spread amongst the uneducated, they did not magically understand what he was saying because they tried super hard, that’s just not how reality works. Someone broke it down for them, obviously. And just because people were nodding along during his speeches does not mean they understood everything he was saying. It’s the sentiment they agreed with, which is not hard to glean when you’re listening to a famous abolitionist.

[u/RetiredPath → u/entr0picly]

His name is spelled Douglass. Kinda disrespectful not to spell it correctly.