Theme Of Racial Oppression In American Literature

America presents itself as a land of freedom and equality, allowing many Americans to believe this as truth, even while certain groups have been ignored and left out of opportunities for achievement. This disregard of racial oppression in America has prevailed and greatly influenced American writers. It appears throughout American literature in conversation with itself the racial situations in the United States. From its inception, America has dealt with the question of equality, particularly between blacks and white. The Founding Fathers wrote equality as a basic human right in the Constitution at the same time they decided to allow slavery. Slavery continued for another hundred years before it ended with the defeat of the South in the Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is considered one …show more content…
This faulty thinking is seen notably in The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. In this book, there is a conversation between Mrs. Touchett and the American Miss Henrietta Stackpole. Mrs. Touchett states Americans are “the companions of their servants-the Irish chambermaid and the negro waiter” (James 96-97). To which Henriette questions if Mrs. Touchett calls “the domestics in an American household slaves” (James 97). Henrietta does admit Americans have servants but argues they are more companions that happen to work for her than servants. By this time Jim Crowe laws were implemented in the American South. They allowed lynching, segregation, and the overall suppression of blacks, leaving labor and domestic work the majority of the only jobs available to those with colored skin. Despite these laws and the fact many blacks were just freed from slavery less than twenty years before James had the book published, only because of a war, she is entirely confident in her argument. She is a clear representation of the belief that the Civil War had ended all oppression in the United States along with