Tensions and Role Reversals

In the novel “Beloved”, the theme of black on white tension very strongly portrayed through several different scenes. The first of which being when Sethe, Paul D, and Denver go to the carnival and are treated as second class citizens by the people who are running the carnival, being forced to face racial slurs throughout the day. Through the historical lens this is unsurprising because at the time African-Americans were not seen as equals. Even President Lincoln, the person responsible for emancipating the slaves, didn't sleep the slaves as equals, instead he saw them is less than white Americans.

The second scene where racial conflicts are portrayed is the scene where  schoolteacher captures and then burns alive Sixo for not being able to be changed. In the schoolteachers mind institution of slavery was set up for the whites to do their job to help African-Americans and Native Americans to grow and adapt to white culture, whereas for the slaves it's a restriction of their freedoms and it destroys their lives. After having tried to escape sweet home Paul D is been taken back, then forced to sit down and work with an iron bit in his mouth. This is so that he could be degraded is a person just so that he wouldn't be treated as an equal because slave owners at the time were so scared that if their slaves were viewed as equal people that they would leave them, and they would have no one to work the plantations, which was quite a problem because slavery was the system of free labor that provided the backbone for plantations.  

All in all, for the time the book is set in, the racism is normal and expected. However by modern new standards this racism would be far more than any sort of backwoods, cartoonish caricature of a racist. This does not prevent any of the African-American characters in the novel actually from enjoying or living a life the only true conflict but as mentioned where African-Americans fear for their lives would be if the Ku Klux Klan were to come for the other night they don't view white people as dangerous anymore even control it because after emancipation the freed slaves were given their lives back or give me a life for the first place which is new freedom I couldn't be taken away from them this time.