Examples Of Racial Inequality In Kindred

Throughout the story of Kindred, Octavia Butler illuminates the societal systems and antiquated treatment towards black people created during slavery. In doing so, this allows Dana to uncover the root and reason for racial inequality which ultimately helps her build sympathy towards Rufus. In the first encounters with Rufus, Dana, coming from a time where there is a drastic difference in racial equality, she makes an effort to correct his thought patterns or change how slavery affected the way white people saw and treated black people. For some time, we can see him actively trying to rewire his thinking, but he falls off of that path as he grows up due to his environment. After holding a sense of superiority, his acceptance with slavery and

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” “ I hope not,” I said watching him. “You don’t have to do that kind of things.”(140). Dana plays the role of the angel on Rufus’ shoulder by reminding him that even though the solution may seem subversive, he does not need to become a product of his environment, though easier said than done. Even when she explains to Rufus that in “history,” he will “find a white man named J. D. B. DeBow claimed that slavery is good because, among other things, it gives poor whites someone to look down on”(140). On account of this realization, she begins to understand that no matter what side they are on, history is objective “whether it offends you or not,”signifying that subjectivity is the root of history’s violent nature(140). Rufus, physically, mentally, and emotionally cannot face the weight history packs on top of Dana as a black woman years after slavery and vice versa for Dana to expect a difference from the son of a slave master who can do nothing but follow in his footsteps. By meeting Rufus at various points in his life as he grows up, she comprehends that to blame him directly would mean to erase all of the history before him and the way he was taught and deem his actions as his own fault when he follows the only way this point in history teaches