Kenneth Arnold

Periods
June 7th, 2017

HowOppressionContinuestoLive

KennethArnold

In the book Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi we see how slavery solidified the placement of black

people on a white dominated social pyramid. Reading the novel through a Critical Race Theory lens

allows us to question the idea that oppression disappear after the emancipation proclamation. We are

shown how forms oppression change from slavery to prison, but the ownership of black bodies remains

the same. Throughout Gyasis novel, we see black people are still owned, abused, and raped; they are still

owned in coal mines by white wardens, abused by white police officers, and raped by the white working

man. Understanding Gyasis novel, through the lens of CRT allows readers to see the continued effects of

slavery decades after laws to end it have been abolished.

One way that the novel shows oppression has not gone away, only shifted, is in the chapter Willie.

An ice cream shop clerk declines Roberts offer to work because he was married to a black woman.

Robert is half-black and half-white, and he appears to be white, but due to the fact that his wife is black he

is denied an opportunity to work. This microaggression is an example of how Roberts white privilege is

revoked due to his wife being black. If we look to activist Peggy Mcintoshs piece, White Privilege:

Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, she illustrates the harmful effects of white privilege: We usually

think of privilege as being a favored state...Yet some of the conditions I have described here work to

systematically overpower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of ones race

or sex. (McIntosh, 29) Despite Mcintoshs article being written in 1989, and the events of Willie taking

place in the 1930s the connection is still relevant today.

 Furthermore, Roberts bosses then try to have their way with Willie in the bathroom of the

establishment she works in. When they find out that Willie and Robert are together, the men want Robert

to have his way with Willie, while one watches and pleasures himself, and while the other guards the

door. Once the man finishes he then fires Robert from his job. Robert cannot file a lawsuit against his

employers due to his wife being black, and no court, which were predominately white, would hear the

case. Robert can no longer live without his privilege, he leaves Willie so he can live in New York more

comfortably, as a white man with a white wife. But for Willie, she simply cannot shed her skin and obtain

the same opportunities as white women. She is a victim of institutionalized racism, living under a system

that favors one race over all others. She is restricted by the social construct of being black in the United

States, her destiny pre-selected by the government and the people said government actually serves. She

continues to live in a society that doesnt want her, didnt want her parents, and wont want her children.

Everyone around her has experienced, and will continue to experience, oppression of all forms.

Further, the ways in which we see white ownership over black bodies is seen in the chapter H. H

is arrested for looking at a white woman, H was chained to ten other men and sold by the state of

Alabama to work the coal mines just outside Birmingham. (Gyasi, 159) Chained to men, sold to

work, these phrases are used by Gyasi to link prisons with slavery, in a time when slavery was

supposedly abolished. The implication of this is slavery is alive, just in a different form: federal prisons.

Prisons that operate with a different form of currency: black bodies. Which are acquired by the state

purposely arresting and sentencing black men for petty crimes, or sometimes nothing at all. These black

bodies shovel thousands of pounds of coal everyday for hours on end, for years, all with no pay. These

black bodies grow the prison so it can fill itself with more black bodies to grow the prison even more, all

the while the pockets of the warden and guards would happily fill with U.S. dollars.
 The connection between prison and slavery is further extended when we observe the conditions of

the mines that the prisoners work in. The mines were described as An entire city underground...and this

city was occupied almost entirely by black men and boys. (Gyasi, 161) The treatment of black workers

in the mines show how little the wardens care about them, to them, their bodies were only a commodity.

They are treated as objects, used for profit. A man is whipped to death for only shoveling 11,829 pounds

of coal in one day, instead of 12,000 pounds. The prison is not treating their workers fairly at all with,

long hours, abuse, unsafe working conditions, no pay, and extreme racial bias. Another example of which

would be when H has to shovel twice his usual load because his partner physically cannot dig, and if they

dont get the full 24,000 pounds they will both be killed. The prison systems are an example of how

slavery continues to live past January 1st 1863.

In conclusion, reading through Homegoing through a CRT lens will allow us to see the continued

oppression of black people past the signing of the emancipation proclamation. Through unfair treatment

in buisness that is still prevalent today, and through the prison system filling itself with black bodies to

work in unfair and unsafe conditions for the states profit. Slavery may of been abolished, but the feelings

and emotions that came from it, continue to be heard and said today, and Homegoing allows us to see

such a thing.