Hello.
The topic that we chose for this blog assignment is the physical, mental, and systematic abuse of slaves. In particular, we will be exploring the many different ways that slaves experienced abuse, and also analyze and consider how much the punishment of slaves was actually associated with bad behavior on the part of the slaves. We hypothesize that slaves really were punished according to the consequences of bad behavior, at least as slave owners saw it, at least a majority of the time -- otherwise, it would hardly have made any sense for so many people to give slaves such harsh and unjust treatment and apparently get away with it.
The unfair treatment begins in the first part of "The River". The woman who sees Edana, the protagonist, after Edana saves her son immediately starts accusing Edana of having killed her son, and hits her, albeit apparently weakly. Then, a man comes outside and aims a gun at Edana. It could be argued not to be unfair because, as was pointed out in the book, to the woman, it almost just looked like some strange foreign woman was standing around with a drowned boy. The man came out with the gun because times might not have been as clear and safe as they are today.
Rufus, a white boy, was initially seen calling Edana a "nigger", as though it's just a common term. If I'm not mistaken, the term "nigger" is supposed to be considered offensive or demeaning. Rufus said his mom always casually refers to black folk as "niggers", which might be considered unfair. However, it might also be viewed as, yes, casual, because some people have referred to each other as "niggers" not unlike how some people refer to each other as "fool", "fucker", or "bloke". It seems to me that the boy just calls black people "niggers" just because that's what so many other people are doing.
As we read in "The Fire", Rufus did show Edana the beating bruises and the whip scars on his back, so one cannot say the situation is just white slave owners constantly picking on black slaves, as it is seen that the white folk will also whip their own. It seems to me that slave owners were afraid that slave persons would not be very well behaved if there were no whippings, not unlike regular, everyday children, or police and criminals. White people got whipped and beaten for bad behavior, so slave persons should not be any different with regards to, it can be argued.
The worst episode of unfair treatment so far was in "The Fire", section 4, when a white man attempted to engage in sexual assault on Edana. This was clearly unfair. Edana hadn't done anything wrong at all when the man came in, insulted her, and proceeded to assault her and subsequently try to forcefully assault her with rape. Edana did fight back, but completely fairly and strictly in the retaliation of proper self-defense. It was extremely fortunate that Edana was able to land by a stick and knock out the assailant. Otherwise, who knows what sad relationship or even unplanned pregnancy she would have been so unfairly stuck with. God dang.
So as we can see, just as we hypothesized, most of the perceived unjust treatment of slaves was not completely unfair, since black people very well could have been strange, unpredictable foreigners or delinquents in need of consequences. However, it is evident that the abuse of power, or worse, perpetrated against the marginalized blacks was all too real a possibility in the dark, as seen in the attempted sexual assault of Edana.
No comments:
Post a Comment