​ “So they forget her.

Like an unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep” - From Toni

Morrison’s novel Beloved
Beloved was a symbol of slavery. She represented the suffering and all the deaths and
tragedies that came with slavery. In the end she was forgotten. All the evil and suffering
just vanished and people never spoke about it like everything would go away and never
come back.

“Right off it was clear, to schoolteacher especially, that there was nothing there to claim.
The three (now four—because she'd had the one coming when she cut) pickaninnies
they had hoped were alive and well enough to take back to Kentucky, take back and
raise properly to do the work Sweet Home desperately needed, were not. “-From the
Novel Beloved

“I’ve been here over 20 years and we’ve never had a black person or whatever you
want to call yourself, you’re a mongrel to me,” Barker said. “We’ve never had one. We
don’t let them around.”
“I’m way more superior than you’ll ever be,” Barker said.”
-Quotes by Christopher Barker, Leader of the Ku Klux Klan in 2017

As time progresses things change and we develop as a society. Sort of. There are
great things such as new innovations, new opportunities, advances in medicine,
technology, and overall a better life for people. Unfortunately although science is
learnable and accepted, social issues aren’t picked up the same way. People have
been oppressed and mistreated in America going back all the way to Christopher
Columbus and the Spanish colonizing the natives. Slavery was the most awful thing in
American history and traces from it can be found today.
Beloved was a novel inspired by true events about a slave that killed her own children
so they wouldn’t have to live and suffer through it. The quote from Beloved above
demonstrates the cruelty of the oppressors and the slave owners. When the slave
owner saw his slave kill her children and blood everywhere his first thoughts are how his
future labor will be done. This is inhumanly cruel, even when an animal is injured we
have sympathy for it. The mindset of the slave owner is the false sense of superiority
that makes them believe they are better because of their skin color.
Even though slavery has been outlawed for many decades, the mindset of some
people thinking they are superior still exists for some reason. Years and years pass but
like a stone rock, their mindset doesn't change. In the quotes from Christopher Barker,
the language indicates hatred to people because they are seen in his eyes as inferior.
In a way the hatred stayed the same in him throughout the generations and part of the
slave owner exists in him. Just as the slave owner in Beloved, there is no love,
sympathy, or compassion.

“But my daddy said, ‘If you can’t count they can cheat you. If you can’t read they can
beat you.’” - From Morrison’s Beloved
“​Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now," said he, "if you teach that
nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would
forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no
value to his master."” - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

​ here are middle-income and upper-income African American students who are
“T
chronically underperforming and yet we’ve not created a structure to actually support
their success,” Smith said. His group is supporting ​a bill​ in the California state
legislature that would increase funding for a district’s lowest performing subgroup of
students that doesn’t already get extra money. In many cases, that means black
students.” From “Race no just poverty, shapes who Graduates in America” 2018.

In the novel Beloved we learn that not many slaves were educated because of the
slave owners’ fear of slaves becoming too powerful. Education was a powerful weapon
and would give the slaved new ideas and more knowledge. Therefore most slave
owners forbid their slaves from learning reading and writing.
Frederick douglas was a slave and wrote his own account on slavery and one big
weapon that the slaves didn’t have was education. Education was empowerment and
with knowledge there can be more action and awareness. The slaveholders knew this
and therefore forbid them from this kind of act, which Frederick discusses more in his
autobiography. He describes how in many cases that slaves who were discovered to
be writing or learning were severely beaten and many were even hanged since learning
was a huge crime. Frederick describes how learning to read was insanely painful
because it opened his mind to everything he’s never seen, and he felt so helpless after
attaining all the knowledge of what freedom is. If every slave knew what freedom is
through education then everything would have different.
Today there is a similarity between blacks not getting education and having a
successful future. In the times of slavery many didn’t receive education and the ones
that did had to get lucky and take big risks. Nowadays a very big portion of the schools
in the black community have low funding and therefore low performance. Schools with
low funding have been proven to have less success and less opportunities. Essentially
this means that blacks have more limited early education and this hurts their chances of
getting education higher up. The schools that have more funding are more competitive
and many black people don’t have the resources to achieve their dreams. Not much is
done to help these communities because all of the funding goes to the richer
neighborhoods and areas.

“To be accused was to be convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one
always following the other with immutable certainty - Narrative of the life of Frederick
Douglass

​ nderson is just one of hundreds of black men who have been convicted of and
“A
exonerated for crimes they didn't commit. A new report from the National Registry of
Exonerations, a joint project between the University of California, Irvine; University of
Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law, shows that black
people are more likely to be wrongfully convicted than white people and are also likely
to spend longer in prison before being exonerated for their crimes.” Cnn News 2017

Beloved tells us more about slavery and how inhumanely blacks were treated. The
book mentioned many examples of they were constantly beaten and punished for the
smallest thing. There was nothing they could do and no chance of reasoning. They were
beaten without purpose most of the time just to be disciplined and kept in check. Some
were beaten so hard that their scars never healed.
In both the past and the present the treatment of blacks is still unfair in the justice
system. In both scenarios everyone had the same rights in court and in both cases
black people were falsely accused. Even in today’s society they have a higher chance
of getting convicted of a false crime that they didn’t commit. It has gotten better since
the time of slavery but the statistic of black people being accused of false crime is still
unreasonably high. Many of these men are also convicted of false crimes and don’t
have their own attorneys. Therefore their chances of getting a fair trial aren’t exactly fair.
Many attorneys that are provided to those that don’t have one have many cases to work
on and aren’t paid as much. It will be very unlikely they will treat you differently and give
you as much time as having your own attorney.
As Fredrick pointed out in the past, many were also falsely accused but convicted
regardless. Even though they had trials, they were thrown in jail most of the time. The
system back then was designed to give the appearance of equality yet in reality it was
far from justice. The attorneys were white and many would support the slave owner and
take their words. Even if there were attorneys that supported the blacks, they would
often get hate and threats. Some of them would even lose their jobs if they spoke up
against the system.
Progress has been made from the times of slavery but parts of the judicial system are
still rigged till this day, giving an edge to certain people just like back then.
“If the Negro wanted to vote,” recalled Tom Holland of Madisonville, Texas, “the Ku Klux
was right there to keep him from voting. Negroes was afraid to get out and try to exert
their freedom. They’d ride up by a Negro and shoot him just like a wild hog and never a
word said or done about it.” - Article from This Cruel War

“I​ n the city of Albany, an early cradle of the civil rights movement, a 41-year-old social
worker named Dedrick Thomas told me the wrenching advice he recently gave his
teenage son: “If a cop says ‘Nigger, bark like a dog,’ you bark like a dog. I need you
home alive.” In the agricultural town of Cuthbert in Randolph County, where local
officials recently tried to shut down seven of nine polling places before backing down
after a political firestorm,.” - From Politico Magazine 2018

“​ They impose voter ID requirements that they know will ​fall more heavily​ on African
Americans, poor people and young people. They engineer voter purges that ​wind up
tossing more African Americans off the voting rolls.”
- The Washington Post 2018

After trump's election, more and more scandals have been happening in the polling
areas. Voting is a big role and an important duty that we have. It influences our lives
and those of everyone else. Although it is a constitutional right, many voters -primarily
minority groups- have had their’s limited. In the southern states back then such as
Georgia, there were requirements to prevent blacks from voting such as literacy tests
and many were threatened to be killed if they went to the polling places. Their voices
were silenced and they had no representation in America. Fast forward to today and in
some states (Georgia) the voting places are rigged to favor republicans. Some polling
places have been closed in dominantly black communities. This meant that many voters
would have to travel very long distances in order to vote which was very discouraging.
There are also other things that are added for the same purpose such as Id
requirements. These requirements affect many people that are low income and are
minority groups. They have trouble getting the requirements or due to financial
problems. Just like in history minorities have less representation and are more limited
in America.
 ​ Beloved is a novel about the cruelties of slavery and all the suffering that went into
it. The books sets a basic outline of how blacks were abused during the time of slavery
and the roots of those events extend till this day. There has been a lot of progression
since that time but a lot of things have only changed to a certain extent. The education,
representation, and justice system wasn't fair back then and that still can be seen in
today’s society. As Beloved faded in their memories she was forgotten, sometimes it's
easier to forget things than reflect on them. Beloved was never brought up, but in
reality she never fully disappeared. People began to move on and to live in a reality
where it's easier to live pretending like history never existed. This isn’t right but it's the
easy way out, not tell the story and avoid its existence, after all

“It was not a story to pass on” - From Morrison's Beloved

Sources
   
Barnum, Matt. “Race, Not Just Poverty, Shapes Who Graduates in America- and 
Other Lessons from a Big Study .” ChalkBeat Education New. In Context., ChalkBeat.org, 
23 Mar. 2018, 
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/03/23/race-not-just-poverty-shapes-who-graduates-
in-america-and-other-education-lessons-from-a-big-new-study 

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Doubleday, 

1973. 

Grunwald, Michael, et al. “Democrats Say Republicans Are Stealing the Midterms. 
Are They Right?” POLITICO Magazine, 3 Nov. 2018, 
www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/03/georgia-republicans-democrats-2018-vot
er-supression-222183​.  
 
Morrison, Toni. Toni Morrison, Beloved. Allen & Unwin, 2000. 

Schmidt, Samantha. “KKK Leader Threatens to 'Burn' Latina Journalist, the First 
Black Person on His Property.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 21 Aug. 2017, 
www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/21/kkk-leader-threatens-to-b
urn-latina-journalist-the-first-black-person-on-his-property/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.759
66cf461e7%E2%80%9D  
 
“The Former Slaves' Recollections of The Ku Klux Klan - An Introduction.” This
Cruel War An Evidence-Based Exploration of the Causes and Ramifications of the
American Civil War, This Cruel War, 8 Sept. 2016, w ​ ww.thiscruelwar.com/ku-klux-intro/  
 
Vega, Tanzina. “Study : Blacks More Likely to Be Wrongfully Convicted .” CNN 
Politics, CNN, 7 Mar. 2017, 
www.cnn.com/2017/03/07/politics/blacks-wrongful-convictions-study/index.html​.  
  
 
Waldman, Paul. “Rigged Supreme Court Upholds Rigged Republican Electoral 
Maps.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 25 June 2018, 
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/06/25/rigged-supreme-court-uphol
ds-rigged-republican-electoral-maps/?utm_term=.f4d263c5bd65​.