LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, Fall 2001
Sample Student Midterm

Jill Petersen
LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
Dr. Craig White
10/2/2001

Whitewashing Cultures: The Effects of White Culture on African American Culture as Seen in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Song of Solomon, and Push

Minority cultures of all types are affected by the dominant culture under which they exist. The dominant culture strives to imprint and mold the minority culture into a sub-sect of the dominant even to the point that the minority culture no longer exists in itself. However, in the case of African American culture, the dominant or white culture seeks to alienate and contain the minority culture rather than embrace and disseminate it. White culture would rather keep black culture at a distance and shape it into what the white culture believes it should be rather than accept the benefits and enrichment offered by the African American culture and heritage. In the case of this minority group, the dominant culture would rather keep them at bay and point out the differences between the groups rather than accept the differences and embrace the similarities. This may be because of the dominant culture’s fear of anything and anyone obviously different in appearance and background. However, it is not enough for the dominant culture to separate itself from the African American culture, it has to shape and mold that culture into the stereotype projected upon the minority culture. African American culture is shaped by the dominant/ white culture, among other things, through the white culture’s use of fear within the minority group, the bestowing or withholding of innovations and wealth, and controlling the mobility of the African American. How did the white culture shape the African American culture in Linda Brent’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Sapphire’s Push?

The white dominant culture uses fear to shape and control people and cultures different from them. This fear could be fear of torture, physical pain, reprisals, or financial loss. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, fear obviously takes the form of physical pain and torture. If a slave does anything to displease his or her master s/he can be beaten to the point of death by the master or overseer with little possibility of punishment by the law or retribution from the slaves. This is especially evident with runaway slaves as seen in the example of the narrator’s uncle, Benjamin, who ran away from his master but was returned and put in prison for months without seeing the sun and being allowed exercise. Because of his escape, recapture and consequent torture, Linda’s grandmother did not want her to try to run away from her master. This fear of punishment for running away kept many slaves in situations that otherwise they would have fled. In Linda’s case, this fear kept her in the house with Dr. Flint and his lewd and improper advances to which no woman or child should have to be exposed. This pain and whipping served as a constant reminder to the slaves that they are not free to choose their own paths. Linda’s brother William stated that "he did not mind the smart of the whip, but he did not like the idea of being whipped (353)." Being whipped and beaten was not just about the physical pain used as a deterrent but the reinforcement of one man over another, thus the use of pain shaped the actions and the culture of the enslaved Africans.

In Song of Solomon, the fear evoked by the white, dominant culture does not come from the fear of being beaten by the master but from the thought of being lynched and beaten by any white person who might take offence at the presence or actions of an African American. While this is not an obvious, overlaying theme in the novel, it is present nonetheless in the existence of the Seven Days as the Black answer to the lynchings and murders of African Americans by whites, as Guitar said, "’when a Negro child, Negro woman, or Negro man is killed by whites and nothing is done about it by their law and their courts, this society selects a similar victim at random, and they execute him or her in a similar manner it they can’ (154)." This fear of lynching or physical pain kept African Americans in the limited roles and geography allowed them by the dominant culture. For example, when Macon Dead II first thought about creating a summer retreat for colored people, there was the question not only about whether colored people could afford it but whether it would be allowed by the white system. African Americans were also confined to their section of the city for places to live and work unless they were working for white people. If a "colored" person were to venture into the "white" neighborhood after dark they could be beaten unless they had express permission from a white employer. Black people were not allowed to own guns, as mentioned in regards to Hagar trying to kill Milkman, "’This time she might have a pistol.’ ’What fool is gonna give a colored woman a pistol?’ (119)" It was not logical for Milkman to fear the possibility of Hagar trying to kill him with a gun because there was no way for her to get one to use on him. Violence toward African Americans is an underlying current throughout the novel as expressed by Guitar, "’Everybody wants the life of a black man. Everybody. White men want us dead or quiet - which is the same thing as dead’ (222)." While the violence is not as openly condoned in the time period of Song of Solomon as it was in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl it is certainly still a clear and present danger for people of color.

In Push, the overtones of violence by the white dominant culture become undertones. In the case of Precious the white legal system and Child Protective Services fail to protect the child from the sexual violence perpetrated by her black father and the physical violence committed by her black mother. In this case the dominant culture turns a blind eye to the need of the children of the minority culture to exist in a violence-free home. Had CPS taken Precious from her mother after her first child, perhaps she would not have contracted HIV, perhaps she would have had a better future than the one she has been given. Precious’s fear of the dominant culture’s police force kept her imprisoned in a home where she is beaten and pimped to her own father. Had her fear of the white man’s justice system not impeded her, perhaps her life would have been different. In this case, it is not the fear of violence that keeps Precious from rising to her potential, it is the fear of the police and the legal system that imprisons and enslaves the poor African American.

The dominant, white culture controls the minority, African American culture through technology and wealth. The white race controls the division and use of both and decides who may have either. In Push this is evident through the school system and CPS, both are funded and controlled by a predominantly white government. All of Precious’s contact with either government entity through s white gatekeeper. With school the person who epitomizes the school system for Precious is Mrs. Lichtenstien, the school principal who expels Precious for being pregnant the second time. Later, seemingly to maintain her control over Precious (from Precious’s point of view), she goes to the apartment Precious shares with her mother to tell her about the alternative placement center. Why she did not tell Precious upon her suspension is not entirely clear. The policemen Precious deals with after her first baby, Little Mongo, are representatives of the police and judicial system and many poor minorities harbor a fear of the police and there was obviously no real follow-up by the CPS which left Precious in what they thought of as the typical poor, ignorant, black situation. The welfare system, which her mother Mary L. Johnston uses to control her daughter, is controlled by the dominant society and can be used by the white culture to control and oppress those minorities who depend on it. In this novel, the welfare recipients create a kind of sub-culture, which stereotypically is represented by government cheese. In the case of Precious, she is controlled by the welfare system which controlled the family’s money and the school system which controlled her access to technological advancement and literacy and which had written her off as unteachable and only seemed to keep her in class because they had no valid reason to rid themselves of her until she got pregnant the second time. Precious is controlled and corralled by the systems that were supposed to help her gain independence and financial stability.

Toni Morrison writes about a black society which seems to be self-sufficient and self-contained. However, on a closer look, this society is contained by an invisible barrier which keeps the African Americans separate from their white neighbors. This barrier is the Jim Crow Laws. It is the very society which claims that all men are created equal that decided there is such a thing as separate but equal, however the reality shows that this is not even remotely true in the case of the African Americans in this time period. This is evident in the description of the hospital located at the edge of the black section of town that would not treat black people although they were allowed to work there in subservient positions. They could not practice medicine there but could clean the bedpans. There was no equal hospital for the colored people of the area. The white society impressed their desires on the African American culture in the relatively minor case of the name of the street on which Milkman lives. The black culture who lived on and around the street had named it "Doctor Street" but the white post office named it "Mains Street" and refused to deliver mail to "Doctor Street" since in their opinion it did not exist even though the locals had called it that for years. The postal service even went so far as to put up a sing that said the street was "not doctor street" which then effective changed the name. This is a relatively minor incident but it shows the lengths to which the dominant culture will go to control the minority culture. The wealth of the black people can only be obtained from other black people and not from white people unless it is through some service deemed too demeaning for most white people to do. Black people could not be landlords of whites, nor could they serve as doctors, lawyers or other professional services for whites only for their fellow colored people. In this way the white people who already had the vast majority of the wealth could maintain their control over the outflow of money to African Americans. With wealth generally comes power, and the dominant culture did not want to lose their power to any other culture, therefore they controlled who the minority cultures did business. If they could keep minorities only do business with each other the minorities could never gain more wealth than the majority. Which is obvious through Macon Dead renting only to black people and Pilate having only black customers. The wealth remains fairly static. There is no way to become rich with a limited pool of money for them to all fight over.

In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the white, dominant culture takes an even more drastic and obvious step toward controlling the wealth of the Africans. With slavery, the colored people could not even own themselves let alone any land or money. For quite a while even free black people could not own land. By controlling the money, the slaves had no choice but to stay with their masters or face certain starvation since they could not legally own any land to grow food or make any money to buy food. This is evident in the instance of Linda’s grandmother who loaned her mistress three hundred dollars but when her mistress died Dr. Flint not only refused to pay her back but insisted on selling her to pay her mistress’s debt. The slaves could possibly buy their freedom but it was nearly impossible for the majority of them since they were never given a chance to make any money, and even if they had the money to buy their freedom the master could refuse, as in the case of Linda herself. Her grandmother and later her lover and other friends tried many times to buy her freedom, even after she had run away, but Dr. Flint refused to let her go, thereby ensuring her a life of hiding and secrecy. His control through money went on until he could no longer afford to hold out for her. As for technology, the white people had the advancements and the colored folks lived as though there had been no changes in technology.

Finally, the dominant culture controls the minority culture through limiting the minority’s access to mobility, both physical and social. In Sapphire’s novel Push, people who are born in the ghetto stay in the ghetto. This is the way it is in real life as well. It is next to impossible for a poor minority to escape the poverty that has stalked her for her entire life. For Precious, the only way out of the ghetto is through education, which she is practically denied through the failure of the CPS. Thus both her financial and social mobility is limited. She cannot afford to move out of the projects except into a group home and her social status is limited to the poor who remain in the ghetto with her.

In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, physical mobility is limited in that the slaves are not allowed to travel except with the permission of their masters. This remains the truth in the free states as well as in the slave states of the south. Slaves were not allowed to travel distances by themselves but only with their masters as a way of ensuring that the slave could not run away. Linda had to ask permission to visit her children just a few miles away at her grandmother’s house or risk physical punishment by her masters. Slave did not get to choose where and when they went places, they had to ask permission of the white people who owned them who then controlled the minority population. Even free colored people had to be careful when traveling lest some slave trader kidnap them and sell them into slavery again. Thus physical mobility affected the safety and physical well being of the African American people. As for financial and social mobility, there were basically two possibilities for a colored person: slave or free. There were very few chances for am African American person to become wealthy or even financially well off. They best that most black people could hope for was to remain free and be able to feed themselves and their families.

In Song of Solomon, the Jim Crow laws applied to African Americans seeking to travel. It was possible but not comfortable. By making travel uncomfortable, the dominant culture effectively shackled the African American populace, keeping them the regions where the white culture relegated them thus ensuring pockets of minority culture and lessening the likelihood of a blended society. If a culture separates one part and keeps it away from the whole, then that part cannot benefit from the advances of the whole. In essence, the black culture was forced into "reservations" so that they could not "contaminate" the dominant culture with their "impurities." By limiting the possibility of interaction between the cultures, white society could justify their violent and degrading treatment of the minority culture but creating an "us versus them" mentality. The dominant culture could point their fingers and say "look what they are doing to themselves" not "look what we have forced them to become." This limiting of physical mobility has a large effect on the financial and social mobility possible between the cultures. If the two cultures do not interact, then the minority, African American culture is at a financial disadvantage since all the power and money, in this country, rests with the white, dominant culture.

Dominant, white culture does not want to give up the rights and privileges of controlling finance and government, therefore the people of the dominant group limit those who would take away that power and control. Three of the ways that this controlling population use to manipulate and mold the minority groups who are "threatening" the dominant group’s way of life are through fear both of physical pain and emotional torment, control of the technological innovations and wealth, and control of the financial, social and physical mobility of the minority cultures. While the three novels show some lessening of physical threats toward minorities, there is a renewed emphasis on the part of the dominant culture to separate classes by financial status even more than by race. It is evident, however, that the majority of the people who occupy the lower status are of minority groups such as Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans. While the novels focus on African Americans it is obvious from Push, all the girls in Precious’s class are minorities but not all are African American although she identifies with all of them, that Hispanics are more and more becoming a part of the larger group called the underprivileged.