The impossible position: reading against the surface

Phillis Wheatley was enslaved in Boston when she published this poem at age 20—one of the first Black women published in America. To be published at all, she had to perform gratitude for her enslavement and Christian conversion. The poem's opening lines appear to do exactly that: celebrate 'mercy' and salvation.

But read more carefully. Wheatley doesn't actually endorse slavery—she strategically reframes the conversation. By accepting the Christian framework her captors imposed, she gains standing to rebuke them on their own terms. She tells 'Christians' to remember that Cain was marked but not damned. She quotes the racist language ('diabolic dye') explicitly, making it visible as absurdity rather than truth. The poem doesn't argue slavery was wrong; it argues that Black people are spiritually equal and capable of refinement—which was radical for 1773.

This is constraint as strategy. Wheatley couldn't write a poem against slavery and get published. Instead, she wrote a poem that uses Christian logic to dismantle the theological justification for slavery. The surface reads as pious acceptance; the structure reads as argument.

Why this poem mattered (and why it's complicated)

CONTEXT Wheatley's existence was weaponized as 'proof' that enslaved people could be civilized through education and Christianity. Slaveholders cited her as evidence that slavery could be benevolent. She was paraded as an exception, which meant her humanity couldn't threaten the system.

Yet the poem itself works against this use. By invoking Cain and demanding Christians 'remember' that Black people can be refined, Wheatley insists on the possibility of Black dignity within the only framework available to her. She doesn't accept inferiority—she rejects it, using the master's own theology as the weapon. The 'angelic train' isn't a fantasy; it's a claim of equality grounded in Christian doctrine.

The real work of this poem is what it doesn't say. It doesn't celebrate her capture. It doesn't thank her enslavers. It performs gratitude while strategically arguing for Black humanity—a tightrope walk that shows both the constraints Black writers faced and the ingenuity required to resist them.

Phillis Wheatley

On being brought from Africa to America

ON BRING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO

AMERICA.

The opening move

Wheatley uses 'mercy' to describe enslavement itself—a strategic rhetorical choice that disarms potential critics by accepting Christian conversion as compensation for captivity. This framing was necessary for a Black poet to be published and taken seriously in 1773.

'T was mercy brought me from my pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there's a God — that there's a Saviour too;

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye—

'Their color is a diabolic dye.'

The direct quote

This line appears in quotation marks—she's citing actual racist language she heard. By isolating it, she makes the absurdity visible: 'diabolic dye' reduces a person to a color and assigns it moral meaning. The formality of quoting it makes it harder to dismiss.

Biblical reference: Cain

Wheatley invokes Genesis 4:15, where God marks Cain with a sign after murder. Proslavery interpreters twisted this into claiming Black skin was Cain's curse. She reclaims the reference to argue that even those marked by sin can be 'refined'—a direct counter to racist theology.

Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain

May be refined, and join the angelic train.

Redemption / refinement

Notice the word choice: not 'saved' but 'refined'—suggesting a process of purification or improvement. This language mirrors how Wheatley herself was presented: as proof that Black people could be educated and Christianized, making her existence a political argument.

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