Comparing Kindred And Dark Benediction

The roles of “protector” and “protected” in stories is often tied with implications of racism, sexism or patriarchal traditions. From the white man’s burden to chivalry to motherly protection, societal and fictional stories are colored by hegemonic forces and norms. The stories Kindred and Dark Benediction complicate and reinforce these hegemonic forces involved in their means of defining of “protector” and “protected” as their protagonist protectors move through their stories and evolve in relation to their charges. In Kindred, Dana’s begins her story as a Protector fitting into the role of motherly, caring womanhood for her ward Rufus. However, the looming tension of racial hierarchies and sexual manipulation through her and Rufus’s relationship

Following Gilroy in his speech in “Race and the Right to be Human,” race has been historically defined since the defining of human rights in the 18th century by who is given those rights and who is, therefore, human. Although in Dark Benediction Willow is racially a white woman, in the early scenes of the book she is treated as less than human and regarded by Paul as such. Through the dermie’s infection their skin literally darkens, isolating them and othering them from whiteness. Without proof of any damaging effect to society, white society begins to rise against them, murdering without distinction or hesitation due to their difference and regarding them as. In one instance of describing the dermies who Willow belongs to, Paul recalls families infecting one another with the disease, drawing parallels to fears from the time was written, the 1950s, to miscegenation and being contaminated (sexually) by those foreign. The fears of “race” mixing are present in both Kindred and Dark Benediction as sexual implications between white and non-white individuals, black people and the infected dermies. The word miscegenation didn’t appear in the English language until the mid-19th century and was used to illicit fears of race mixing between white and (esp.) black society, especially as a race-baiting tactic against those calling for an end to slavery. This fear of the destruction of racial purity and white society continued through the 20th century, leading to racial violence against any implication of racial mixing and laws outrightly prohibiting interracial marriage. This fear, compounded with the racialization of the dermies, makes the sexual relationship and role of protector that Paul seeks with Willow directly contradictory to the pure white identity he ventures