Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a Racist ext (Essay Sample)

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Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a racist text
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is considered the bestselling novels of the nineteenth century based on the relevance of the story’s themes with the then social and political environment. Most of the novel critics have cited it being an anti-racist text due to the calls for the abolishing of black slavery. To some extent this is true, as black slavery was fueled by racist perceptions that had become normalized in some parts of the country. However, a proper analysis of the novel highlights some racist contexts that promote racism among the white and the black characters. In the novel, racism can be identified through the characterizations given to blacks and whites, the dehumanizing of the black people, and the reason behind the author’s call for slave abolition. Despite the novel being considered a racist text, it was among the first to highlight the evils of slavery against the blacks and the need to end it. This paper will rely on Uncle Tom’s Cabin to highlight the racist contexts within the novel.
Racism can be detected in Uncle Tom’s Cabin through the characterizations provided for the black and white people. In the text, white and black people are different in all aspects and there seems nothing to reconcile the differences. In the text, whites are provided all the positive aspects while on the other hand the black people are described based on negative aspects. This is highlighted when a comparison is made between Eva and Topsy as the novel concludes. In the description of the characters, the author writes, “There stood the two children, representatives of the two extremes of society. The fair, high-bred child, with her golden head, her deep eyes, her spiritual, noble brow, and prince-like movements; and her black, keen, subtle, cringing, yet acute neighbor (Stowe 323). In these representations of the two races, it is clear that the white race is perceived as being superior to the black race. This is further illustrated by the fact that the black people were considered as slaves and that was their rightful place, while the white people were considered as their masters. This might have been the reality in the Southern region, but Stowe through the novel seems to reach for this audience by using racist contexts. Throughout the novel there are various instances where black characters are represented inferiorly while the white are considered superior. These are some of the aspects that highlight Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a racist text as it glorifies and embraces some of the racism that was being practiced at the time.
Reading through the novel Uncle Tom’s cabin, one gets to realize the various instances where black people are dehumanized by making them seem less human. In the slavery era, blacks had been treated similar or worse than animals through the dehumanizing practices that were being carried out by the white people. Therefore, in this regard, all the human traits were stripped off from black people and they were often considered inanimate objects. This is illustrated in the novel when Haley incites Arthur Shelby to sell the five year old son of Eliza and states that, “Your wife might get her [Eliza] some ear-rings, or a new gown, or some such truck, to make up with her [about the loss of her son] ... These critters an’t like white folks, you know; they gets over things, only manage right” (Stowe, 1964:49-50). This reference is made to the fact that black people do not have maternal instincts and attachments to their children like white people do, and therefore, giving them a gift will make them overcome their loss. This illustration of dehumanizing black people in the novel highlights the level of racism within the text. Giving the black people sub-human status provided the white people the liberty to treat them as they pleased without any moral conflict (Kim 71). This fuelled the slavery practice along with the extreme mistreatments that was inflicted towards black people. This dehumanizing of black people provided the racism context in the Uncle Tom Cabin’s novel which has been often regarded as promoting the welfare of black people.
Stowe’s novel promotes the abolishing of black slavery not because it is diminishing for the black people, but so that the white people can gain salvation by following the Christian doctrines. Racism in the time of writing the novel was largely promoted through the slave trade which was considered as an evil practice and against the Christian practice. This was the main concern for the author who believed that those