Blog Post #7_Abby

As we keep on reading we learn how school teacher becomes someone really important in Beloved. As a white male the readers have a better understanding and perspective from someone who owns slaves and from someone who disliked colored people and lived during that time.  Schoolteacher was a radical racist who thought Africans were as close to animals as humans could become, he even went so far as to compare the slaves on Sweet Home to animalistic traits, features and characteristics. “No, no. That’s not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right.” Sethe recalls a time where she hears Schoolteacher talking to his nephews about how to categorize Sethe and the other slaves at Sweet Home. In Beloved, the schoolteacher part of the white upper class of plantation owners presided over the lives of Sethe and the other slaves, the lowest social class possible and, considered equal to that of an animal. That is something that I have been learning throughout Beloved. Slavery is a very controversial topic and hard to understand now because we have not experienced anything like it. This a very sensitive topic for me personally, and it makes me angry and sadden how individuals become savages as they sell and buy humans as if they were toys.

In the 18th century slaves had nothing, poverty was very common and one of the reason many slave owners sold and separated the slave from their family. Gladly, a Constitution was created to build a stronger nation and protect civil rights and liberties for American Citizens. In 1868 the 14th amendment was passed and it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law to everyone not only a specific group of people. Years after, African Americans were slowly able to gain more freedom and the right to vote as stated in the 15th amendment passed in 1870. Little by little innocent African Americans started to gain freedom they deserved.