Essay Comparing Butler's Kindred, And A Flight To Canada

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“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.” - Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream envisions the descendants of the enslaved, and the descendants of the slave masters, to develop successful and positive relationships amongst one another. To develop a relationship where these two groups of people consider each other as equal, and the label of slave and master are nonexistent. While today in 2015, this unjust and immoral relationship of slave and master has been destroyed, it is important to understand what it once used to be. Not only the relations between the enslaved and their owners, but how the enslaved view and treat themselves. In Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, and Ishmael Reed’s A Flight To Canada, interracial and intraracial relations are depicted through various different ways. The relations between slaves themselves and their masters, is represented by stereotypes, self hate, and the different attitudes of the oppressed enslaved. …show more content…

Yes, it is true that most slaves were illiterate and did not possess a useful amount of education, but this was not the enslaved people’s fault. The opportunities for education and schooling were slim to none. Due to the fact that the owners of the slaves would not allow for slaves to be taught and educated, it caused the enslaved to either seek an education from other slaves, which would be punishable, or to not seek one at all. The restrictions on gaining knowledge and learning was primarily enforced in order for slave masters to be viewed as superior to their “property”. This method of white masters remaining superior, was a large factor in slaves producing self