The Benevolent Master and the Benevolent "Ally"

Most cultures, American social and political culture in particular, have an affinity for hindsight bias. Many now obsolete traditions or devices are denounced for their simplicity or hypocrisy or any number of other faults. However, we know good and well that our current, treasured societal systems may one day be broken down and destroyed, remembered only as the fabrications of twenty-first century simpletons. We are often guilty of the same faults which we point to in past society.

Within Beloved, it is very easy to see racial injustice. Not only are we frequently brought face-to-face with vivid memories of Sethe's enslavement, but also we are reminded repeatedly of the Reconstruction era systems which continue to hold back the newly "freed" population. The most prominent white characters (even acting as only minor characters) are the owners of the Sethe's plantation, the Garners. The Garners are not represented by Sethe as the evil, backbreaking slave masters familiar to use in mainstream media; they instead hold evil in a different sense: the evil of benevolence. While "evil benevolence" might sound harsh and paradoxical, it is actually much less of a paradox than the myth of the kindly slave owner. In my mind, there is no slave owner who may truly represent benevolence without fundamentally rejecting the system which they uphold; these are still people who believe that black people are lesser, inferior. They are still slave owners, and nothing besides complete abandonment of the slave institution can change this evil.

What is meant by "benevolence" in this context is simply the absence of "too much" physical and emotional abuse and torture towards slaves. However, what these kind-hearted owners lack in overt torture and racism, they make up for in evils like paternalism and the subtle enforcing of the superiority complexes which made slavery possible. When Sethe asks Ms. Garner about a wedding and all Ms. Garner can say is "you are one sweet child," Ms. Garner has proven herself no better than the owner who regularly beats and abuses slaves. She doesn't get a prize for not hitting Sethe on the head with her wooden spoon. Ms. Garner has still furthered the racial hierarchy in her patronizing attitude, just in this one interaction; she has painted Sethe as an ignorant, impish object incapable of understanding.

In today's world, many of us find ourselves perpetuating injustice in a similar manner. No, we don't buy and sell slaves, but our true recognition of minority races and oppressed groups often fall short of ideal. When we do things like idolize and deify entire groups, imagining them as perfect victims and nothing else, we are oversimplifying them, and therefore failing to fully recognize them, as Benjamin puts it. This is its own kind of condescension, and, although harder to recognize and seemingly more amiable, can add in the same way to existing racial hierarchies as overt racism.