Question #5: What would you do in Blatchford’s position?

I think this question might be the most difficult to answer of the bunch. Perhaps it is not for some people, but I, personally, was struck–still am–by how I might truthfully answer it.

In case anyone read this section at the beginning of spring break and is in need of a refresher, Mr. Blatchford offered Charlie an apprentice position at his practice, but later revoked his offer when all of his employees threatened to quit because Charlie is black. So, going against his principles, Blatchford fires Charlie on his first day. We later learn from a conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Burrell that, had the employees quit, Blatchford’s business would’ve fallen apart, and he would’ve had no way to support his family.

I suppose to answer this question, one must first decide what is more important: one’s moral principles, or one’s family’s welfare?

(We could always speculate and argue that Blatchford could’ve rebuilt his staff in time or found another job to support his family, but let’s think about only the immediate repercussions as Blatchford had to do in that moment.)

So, morals or family. Would I compromise my base principles, what I have decided to firmly place in the categories of right or wrong, to help/protect my family? I guess, for me, it depends on what moral level is being violated. For instance, I think lying is wrong, but I would lie to protect my family. I think stealing is wrong, but I’d steal bread to feed my family. On the other hand, I think murder is wrong, but I don’t know if I could kill someone to save my family. Possibly. I thank God that I’ve never been in such a horrible position.

Would I openly discriminate against a black person, a child, knowing his position at home, if it meant I’d keep my source of income and would protect those I love.

I’d like to think I wouldn’t. I can’t imagine being able to live with myself. And if I really was worried about the welfare of my family and firing him was the only way to ensure they’d be alright, I wouldn’t just send him away as Blatchford did. I’d find a different way to employ him, or I’d find someone who could. I wouldn’t be able to do nothing.

The whole situation is tough, but at least I know that my family would back me up if I stood up for what I believed in, even if it meant loss on their part.

This book has a fairly large and interesting cast of characters. We have the Garies and their children, the Ellis’ and their children, the Stevens and their children, and a whole host of other characters that are either friends, associates, or business partners with one or more of the families listed above. There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of characters (as long as your audience can keep them straight in their minds), but it can become a problem–an injustice, really–when super awesome characters get overlooked and hidden in the shadows of the bigger characters who are contributing to the main plot.

Mrs. Bird, I’m looking at you.

I mean, come on guys! Did no one else just love Mrs. Bird? My new goal in life is to get rich enough to be able to just take in controversial wards for the heck of it, and to lord my money and power over those who would put him or her down. If I can’t be rich enough to give someone a higher education, then I at least want to have even a fraction of the sass Mrs. Bird uses to tell her staff off when they mistreat Charlie.

These are my new priories, and I stand by them.

Discussion Question #1

So, I’m fairly certain that Mr. Stevens, through the letters, has found out that Aunt Tabitha was the disowned daughter of the late Mr. Garie (the one Uncle John speaks about in chapter 9), and he’s obviously pissed that he missed out on whatever inheritance he might’ve gained from her death had she been in her father’s good graces. I don’t understand why he’s mad a Mr. Garie though. It’s hardly his fault that Tabitha was disowned; psychopaths be psychopaths, I guess

As to how this will all play out, I can’t say I have a very good idea since I’m usually really bad at guessing endings and plot twists, but I do think things are going to get worse before they get better (if they get better, that is.) I do, however, think that some kind of confrontation will happen between Mr. Stevens and Mr. Gaire. If said confrontation occurs before Garie finds out just how nefarious Stevens is, then I think he will be kind and gentlemanly, he might even offer Stevens some money. But in the much more likely event that the confrontation happens after Garie is made aware of Stevens sins, I think/hope that Garie tells him off, saying something along the lines of, “I’d much rather be married/related to the African Americans you find so disgusting than to white trash like you.” I don’t know, something like that but in old-timey speak and with more sass and possibly some insults that I would be loathe to say myself, but have no problem reading about when directed at garbage people.

Discussion Question #3

Today, people that are “other” or “different” are praised. But “being different” today is very much an oxymoron because there are so many others who are “different.” Being eccentric or free spirited just takes you out of one crowd and puts you in another. You’re never so different that you’re alone–which is good because loneliness, real loneliness, the inability to truly connect with another living soul, is too much for a person to take. You may feel different or misunderstood by the people around you, but we have the internet and the ability to communicate with virtually any person on Earth. The Garie children, specifically Clarence, had no such luxury.

After the Stevens kick him out, Clarence gets his first taste of “otherness,” and not just “otherness” but supposedly inferior otherness. Until this point, he has never acknowledged the difference in his father’s and mother’s skin tones. In fact, when he hears the Stevens call his mom the N word, he tells Mrs. Steven that if his mom is one, then she is one also. Now this difference has been brought to his attention, and he’s coming to the realization that he, too, is going to suffer from the effects of it. This, I feel, will hurt him immensely in a two major ways as he grows up and experiences more racism.

1. I think this might hurt his relationship with his mother. After being sent away from the Stevens, Clarence contemplates going to see Emily, but he decides against this usual course of action in favor of sobbing himself to sleep. (Poor baby. I want to give him all the hugs!) There are no signs of resentment yet, but I fear it will only be a matter of time.

2. I think this will hurt his education/development into a gentleman of society. We are already seeing signs of this what with the school teacher kicking he and his sister out of the “white people” school, but this might also diminish his intrinsic desire to grow and learn.

Tangent: In this respect I see Clarence Garie and Charlie Ellis as foils of each other. Clarence grew up in a wealthy and sheltered home; Charlie grew up in a not so rich home, and he’d always known “his place.” Clarence is now experiencing racism and is getting kicked out of school; Charlie has always known racism and is being offered a chance at advanced education. I don’t know what the future holds for the two of these boys, but I have a feeling that their fates are polar opposites of each other.

If any of you choose to respond to my post, I have a question of my own I’d like for you to answer: Did Mr and Mrs. Garie “ruin” Little Clarence and Emily by not exposing them to segregation and racial prejudice sooner? Or did they do right by protecting them for as long as they had? The old home-school question, am I right?

As a reader of books and a writer of stories, one would think that I always hope for a happy ending. After all, if you’ve read (or written) hundreds of pages of book and have gotten to know and have become invested in the characters’ story, then you’ll want a happy conclusion, right?

The above is true for me about 99% of the time, and it’s that 1% that makes me wonder if I’m some kind of sadistic jerk. But let’s be real, sometimes an ending is happy but not satisfying–like when the girl gets the guy she loves, but he’s the literal worst and only the audience seems to recognize it. Sometimes an ending is happy but completely unrealistic–like when a war or battle takes place and somehow all of the main characters survived with no permanent damage. And sometimes the happy ending is done well and is indeed satisfying, but a tragic ending would serve a greater purpose-like when a happy ending means a sweet girl finds her father and gets married, but the alternative ending would involve her death, and her death would be a catalyst that frees a lot of slaves from the hands of a disgusting human. See? Some stories need a sad ending.

The last example is obviously very much targeted at The Curse of Caste. Claire, our sweet, literally-deserves-the-best-of-everything-in-life protagonist has two possible endings: relationship with father and Frenchman, or death at the hands of a jealous woman who she has spoken, like, maybe three words to. If given the choice between the two, the answer should be obvious. Pick the ending where the good characters get to be happy and psycho characters get to wallow in self-pity, duh! It’s only fair.

But sometimes life isn’t about fair. In fact, it’s rarely about fair. Sometimes it’s about bad things happening to good people; sometimes evil wins. But the Bible says (and I realize not everyone is religious or believes these words) that God–while He doesn’t cause or create evil–will always turn it into good. In the “tragic ending” of The Curse of Caste, Claire dies, but her death makes Col. Tracy realize how screwed up the institution of slavery is, so he releases all of his slaves. Homeboy was a wealthy man! Who knows how many were freed because of Claire’s death. I know she wasn’t given a choice in the matter, but if she knew what dying would do, Claire probably would’ve welcomed it. She was a selfless girl like that.

In class, I said I believed the happy ending was the correct one, and I stand by that, but it’s not the ending that I prefer. Heroine happiness is almost always something I hope for, but heroine sacrifice for a greater or bigger cause is how all of the best stories end (even if said heroine is unaware of the effects of their sacrifice).

There are many things one can write concerning The Curse of Caste, but what I find the most interesting is the problem that is highlighted by the title itself.

One can easily pick out the problems that are caused for those that suffer on the lower side of the caste system: they are more likely to be poor, hungry, abused, or even enslaved. However, one might not even consider the corners those in the upper castes are backed into by the same system that serves to benefit them.

And even if one is able to easily pick out these upper caste hardships, such as inability to marry someone from a lower caste (even if it’s for love), or the constant need to keep up social appearances (I know, the horror), could one pick out the problems that might not be as evident? For example, while they may not be aware of it, slavery is just as poisonous to the slave owner as it is to the slave. Now, hear me out. A slave is broken in mind, body, and spirit, and it is horrendous and revolting, the things slavery (slave owners) does to the slave. But for someone to be able to do such things to another person, or to be able to turn a blind-eye to it, there has to be something truly broken in them as well: their soul.

Those in the upper caste, those who claimed to have ownership over another person, their deeds and hate leave them with black souls. And you, my readers, may not be religious, you may not believe in Heaven and Hell, but I do, and I would rather have a broken body than a broken soul when judgement day comes.

I know we were only given a small section of the novel to read, but even still there is a lot to unpack.

First , there was the line of text that seemed to contradict what Harriet Jacobs wrote in Incidents. Brown recognizes the lack of a “safeguard” placed around a female slave’s virtue in the South, but unlike Harriet Jacobs, this immorality is almost romanticized and used for the slave woman’s advantage. Brown says that ” the slave women have no higher aspiration than that of becoming the finely-dressed mistress of some white man” (272-273). This could mean that Brown and Jacobs were simply in different parts of the South where different amounts of value were placed on a slave woman’s virtue, or it could be a lack of understanding on Brown’s part due to his being a man.

Second, we once again see the reoccurring scenario of the separation of a child from his or her mother. Never is there a case when such an action isn’t devastating and sickening, but most slave mothers recognize the separation of their children from them as a constant possibility. Brown’s character, Clotel, didn’t live with this fear. She loved Horatio, and he loved her. He wasn’t supposed to grow tired of his mulatto wife and daughter. He wasn’t supposed to sell his wife and give his daughter to his new, white wife. Brown’s writing style doesn’t allow us to completely feel the emotional turmoil Clotel felt over the loss of her child, but her actions later in the novel– risking her life and going back to the South after escaping to find Mary– certainly speak louder than any words of sorrow would.

Third, is the degrading idea that slaves are objects. Surprisingly, this one plays a humorous part in Clotel when a former-slave uses the notion to his advantage. Rather than being allowed to sit in first class or even in coach, the black man is asked to sit in the luggage compartment. He complies, but he refuses to pay the normal $2 fare, paying instead the usual price for a piece of luggage. The story is amusing in that the so called unintelligent, sub-human black man was able to out-smart the white fare collector, but it’s also horrible in that this black man had to ride with things and belongings rather than his fellow human beings.

There were other elements I could mention, but these were the ones that stuck out to me the most. I hope to one day get my hands on the full novel so I can read it in its entirety.

I mentioned in my introduction blog that I work at the restaurant Cracker Barrel. It’s a wonderful place to work, and I consider my co-workers family. However–and I don’t mean for this to be a blow against Cracker Barrel–it is a restaurant.

“Okay, Rachel, it’s a restaurant, so what?” Well, I don’t know how many of you have ever worked in food service, but the cinematic and contemporary literature cliched scenario where the waitress is spoken to lewdly by customers who have no filter or is pinched on the waist or the butt is, believe it or not, a very real thing. Now, I’ve only ever worked at Cracker Barrel, and most consider it a wholesome place for the nostalgic, elderly grandmas and grandpas of the world, so I can’t imagine how bad that type of behavior gets at other places.

Honestly, I don’t know if it’s funny or sad that I’ve been hit on by more men who could be my grandfather than by men who are my own age.

All of this is to say that I have a paying job where the aforementioned scenario happens quite rarely. I don’t know what it’s like to be a slave girl. I don’t even really know what it’s like to be objectified, and most definitely not to the extreme that millions of former-slaves of both genders were in the U.S. not all that long ago. Men couldn’t be men, only brutes, and women couldn’t be women, only breeders. I put up with some weird stuff occasionally, but I’ve never felt unsafe at my place of work. I’ve never had to fear for my life, or tremble at the thought of being ravaged, knowing there’s absolutely nothing I could do to stop it.

Harriet Jacobs, and so, so many others, didn’t have that luxury. What misery, to be sentient and intelligent and capable of feeling, and yet to be forced into the mindset that your very body, the flesh that you occupy and animate, is not your own. What misery, to know the society that gave you values such as purity and chastity is the very society that ripped away any choice you had in regards to upholding them. I can’t even stomach it.

I love music. I don’t think I could get through my day to day without it. Music is how I fill the silence, how I lift my mood, and how I protect myself from the awkward and negative things around me. Listening to music has the power to influence my mood with its tone and melody, but singing…singing is how I express my emotions; my inner feelings are surfaced when I sing. Joy, anger, sadness, fear, confusion, bitterness, contentment, they all have the ability to take on the form of sound waves, and they do.

I don’t know what it’s like to have to endure the horrors of slavery, or to have my soul “boiling over with the bitterest anguish,” but I know the salve of singing, I know the hope it can bring to the worst of situations. I would be surprised if the former slaves didn’t sing at their lowest points.

Singing isn’t a solution or a remedy, but I hope singing brought them some relief.

Slavery is a bothering topic. No one wants to experience that churning sickness in her stomach. No one wants to see dark skin marred by bloody tracks in her mind’s eye. No one wants to imagine screams and wailing. And definitely no one wants to put themselves in a former slave’s shoes–to feel the gravity that comes with the scorn and hate of hundreds of thousands of people. Do you feel that churning yet? As I said: bothering.

Everything I mentioned above is bothering, despicable, disgusting, disturbing, and every other synonym in between, but something that really, really hurts me when I think about black slavery are the people who were doing it, who the slave holders were. White, Christian men and women. White, Christian men and women! I mentioned in my introductory post that I am a Christian, and my love for Jesus is the most important thing about me. So, reading about what people in my religion, my belief system did to other human beings is very hard for me.

It makes me sick knowing that the same people who read “Be kind and compassionate to one another” were a same people who declared that black people were subhuman. The people who know the commandment “You must not make for yourself an idol” made idols of themselves and demanded to be worshiped with blood. The people who told their fighting children to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” were the same people who showed horrible, relentless cruelty to numerous black people.

David Walker, in his appeal, felt the same way. He too was a Christian, and it must’ve disgusted him to have to share the title with the slave holders. Of course, Walker, seeing as he was a Christian, also knew that “faith without works is dead.” He knew God loved him, he knew he wasn’t created lesser, and he knew self proclaimed Christians who treated people with such evilness with no remorse were no more Christians than the demons in Hell. He knew what true Christianity looked like because of Christ’s example, and most of the white people during this time in American history (not just the slave holders) didn’t make the cut.