Hyatt Hammad Blog 5
Racism and slavery have been practiced since the birth of the earliest
civilizations; not only are these institutions atrocious, dehumanizing, and
immoral, but they are also hypocritical and riddled with logical fallacies. This
hypocrisy is well illustrated in James Marlon’s novel The Book of Night Women, which tells the story of Lilith growing up
in Jamaica as a slave. Though she feels superior to the other slaves due to the
fact that her father is white, she receives no special treatment from her
masters. Homer, a fellow house slave, reminds Lilith to stay in her place: “Anyway,
make me find the brown sugar that Miss Isobel like…You think she’d like white sugar
the best. But she be white woman so she get what she want. Not like black
woman, eh?” (James 123). Here, the white and brown sugar could represent white
and black people. Lady Isobel, like Master Humphrey and Robert Quinn, wants to exploit
black people and use them up until they expire. Blacks are considered to be
stupid, inherently inferior, and less than human—more of a commodity than a
living being. If you kill someone else’s slave, you are charged with
destruction of property rather than murder. However, blacks are also expected
to be in charge of things that “stupid animals” shouldn’t be held responsible
for, such as cooking, cleaning, and rearing and sometimes even breastfeeding
the master’s children. In fact, an overwhelming majority of American slave
owners had sexual relations (often non-consensual in nature) with their slaves.
So on one hand slaves are seen as animals, tools, and lazy savages, while on
the other they are caretakers, overseers of the other workers, and even lovers.
The duplicity and hypocrisy in the treatment of slaves is well reflected in
Homer’s original observation: that even though Lady Isobel should like the
white sugar best for its inherent superiority, she prefers brown sugar and gets
what she wants because she is white.
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