Genius (Book) Review: The Underground Railroad— Who is our greatest threat?
A story about slavery that’ll make you question what you know about slavery
My first venture into Colson Whitehead territory was an adventure that took me directly out of my expectations and into a world I didn’t know existed. The Underground Railroad that I knew had been an unfortunate whitewashed version of slaves spirited away by healthy gospel-singing freemen into the arms of enlightened whites who shuttled them swiftly and safely into the arms of the North.
What I found in the pages above, was more akin to Nazi Germany, an America I didn’t know existed; filled with every variation of hatred and violence, protected by law, accepted by ignorance and hate, and winked at by greed amongst even the territories that publicly rebuked it.
Colson’s novel follows the history of Cora, a slave girl in Georgia, from the bondage of the incorrigible Randall plantation to the bondage of freedom realized on her journey North, in part with a new friend, Ceasar, who convinced her to flee to the Underground Railroad.
If you believed slavery-era America was wrong but tidy, more like a blister hidden on the foot, Whitehead writes a medical review that’s no less than leprosy rotting the face, exposed and open for everyone to see; unable to hide that the disease befouled every other part of the body.
Beatings, rapes, torture, hangings, murders, mauling, mutilation of body parts and compendious other “minor” dehumanizations are the regular for the people of Randall Plantation. And Mr. Randall is the good brother. His more intolerable brother maintains an even greater deviant farm just a few acres away. Colson is a brilliant linguist (the best I’ve read this year), but his ability to design new ways to reveal horrors is both beneficial and painful. If you can imagine wincing at a thought, without even having an image, the author is able to take you there. And he does it with brevity. Colson’s concise expositions reveal not only brutality, but also the mind of the bruiser and the bruised.
Cora’s Journey — Equal in Captivity to Her First Captivity
Cora flees throughout the country, creeping North, but as noted midway through the novel, the devil’s fingers are long and have an ominous reach. At each stop along the railroad are inventions of man to subjugate the people of a lesser race. Cora flees to South Carolina where the slaves aren’t on a plantation, but bought in bulk by the State Government. They are allowed to bunk together in dormitories, being paid to be the help. Cora is hand-picked, graciously, by a proctor for a special job because she “thought of you” when the position opened. Cora would dress up in costume and portray various scenes from Africa to America in the slavery process to show children and curious museum goers the system of American agriculture. She’s nothing less than a zoo animal.
Imbecile blacks, mad women, and those with two children are secretly being sterilized to reduce the potential black population and help evolution along by removing the jungle instinct from them.
More attractive women are secretly infected with Syphilis in order to study how the disease spreads…so a cure can be found.
In North Carolina, there are no slaves around. They aren’t concerned with sterilizing. They just kill you on the spot. Slavery has been replaced by a more trustworthy Jew and Irish indentured servant. Having black people around threatened the wives and children of North Carolina. What if they rise up and rebel? What if they rape your spouse while you are at work?
White sympathizers are hung in the public park on Friday nights. Runaways are found, bloodied and hung along the road to warn whites and blacks alike. A Nazi-esque police force travels the countryside, forcing themselves upon landowners, rich and poor, searching homes, burning properties, killing anyone associated a with a black slave. Children turn on parents. Veterans of Indian evacuations are called in for their expertise. A guaranteed method of being with a beautiful woman on a cold night? Travel as a renowned slave recovery agent.
Laws didn’t matter, and the ones on the books are ignored, even in the North, if the bounty hunter paid the right fee to bookkeepers in government agencies. Going as far North as Trenton or New York City was still not enough to ensure one’s security.
The choice of the Railroad was to escape slavery to a freedom of poverty and fear.
My greatest take away was the message about who and what is our greatest threat.
Although slavery had its (albeit false) justifications, it had something else that protected its brutality.
Safety.
If we fear the slaves, we keep the slaves. Letting them go free would mean a mass of uneducated deviant members of society. Letting them mingle with our children would surely be the moral decline of our posterity. Letting them out of their beds at night would mean the violation of our spouses. These are animals. How will we protect justice and civilization if we don’t condemn them? We won’t.
Hitler told us to fear the power brokers that will destroy our culture. Stalin told us to fear the West who sought to consume us with their greed. The Kaiser told us to fear the Social Democrats who craved the destruction of God’s Monarchy. The government told us to fear the Native Americans who were savages, bent on massacring us. Now the preachers and plantation owners told us to fear a race of animals who would corrupt us and impoverish us if they left the plows.
Rarely ever do we need to fear the weakest in society. The poor haven’t been the downfall of a people. The broken and weak aren’t the ones that defraud us. The huddled masses never consume us.
Instead, wise teachers have always trained us to beware those in power. Beware the dogs among us, the ones that oppress, who put heavy weights on people and do nothing to alleviate them. Beware the hypocrites. Beware those that love attention. Beware those that project morality, but inwardly are open graves full of dead men’s bones. Beware the merciless. Beware the unforgiving.
Colson encouraged me to remember to be wary, not of those in need, but of those who need nothing. The first group requires only food and clothing. The second requires your servitude.
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