Race and Culture : Beloved

Now at Sweet Home, my niggers is men every one em. Bought em thataway, raised em that-away. Men everyone”.

Reading a text through the Race/Cultural Lens focuses on the cultural backgrounds and race of the characters. This helps the reader have a bigger perspective on the author's attitude towards race.  

The whites during this time were always portrayed as high class, and better than everyone else, especially to the slaves. The slaves in this house at Sweet Home do have it better than other slaves. The different races that are portrayed in this novel is African American. The family live in Ohio  at the beginning of the book. This book was based on the time period after slavery. Meaning that the characters in the book were not currently slaves. The main character, Sethe, escaped from slavery to go to Ohio, when she was 18.  The entire family in the novel are African Americans. Before, Mr and Mrs Garner were the owners of Sweet Home. During a conversation with young men that work with Mr.Garner he tells them, “Now at Sweet Home, my niggers is men every one em. Bought em thataway, raised em that-away. Men everyone”. This quote is saying that everyone that works there is treated like a man because they deserve to be treated like a good person. However, Paul D, who as well as Sethe come back to Ohio, is confused with this reaction because he thinks that everyone treats the slaves wrong and it was suspicious of him saying they deserve to be treated right. After telling all the men this he says, “I wouldn’t have no nigger men round my wife”. It was very suspicious because now he is saying that he does not trust the men around his wife, but he treats them a different way than other owner would treat the slaves. This gives us two different perspectives of the race and cultural lens because it shows that the slaves are treated differently, in a better way because they deserve to treated as good people. They are not treated as slaves but as employees that are capable of handling themselves without an owner treating them disrespectfully, as other owner might of.  However, he does not truly trusts because he does not know what the men are capable of doing. The owners of the Sweet home are portrayed as more high class because they own Sweet Home but also because of their race. The slaves in other places were more lower than anyone else. When the book flashbacks into the times when they were slaves, it shows that they were lower than others.