Racism In Song Of Solomon

Song of Solomon, set between the 1930s and the 1960s, alludes to many milestones for black culture in the 20th century: the rise of the New Deal Coalition, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, etc. We rarely meet any white characters, but we know that an oppressive white world exists just outside the black world. The few times that white characters do enter the novel, the consequences are immediate and devastating. White people in Song of Solomon are a source of harm for black people: Macon Dead I is murdered by a wealthy white family, and Guitar’s father dies in a factory accident because of his white boss’s negligence.

One form that blacks’ racism against other blacks takes is economic. Macon Dead, a wealthy black businessman, uses his influence and power to squeeze money from the poorest townspeople. He does so because, in many ways, he looks down on blacks; he wants to live far away from them, in the largely white community of Honoré. In much the same way, Hagar comes to hate her hair and dark skin because they mark her as a black woman. She

Where Hagar and Macon try to be as white as possible, Guitar responds to whiteness by despising it as thoroughly as whites despise him. Ever since his father was killed in a white-owned sawmill accident, he has refused to accept any sympathy from the white community; on the contrary, he regards all white people, beginning with the man who owned the sawmill, as complicit in the murder of black people. Milkman comes to realize that Guitar, along with his organization, the Seven Days, is responsible for murdering white people in retaliation for black murders in the area. Though most of the white people he kills weren’t immediately involved in crimes against black people, Guitar nonetheless considers them racists who deserve to die. Ironically Guitar’s monolithic, unsympathetic attitude toward whites is itself a form of race-based