Racial Stereotypes In Charles Chesnutt's The Passing Of

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There are a myriad of racial stereotypes found in Charles Chesnutt’s “The Passing of Grandison” that several authors examine through the critical race theory that expresses details of races across cultures. Aspects of the African American race throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s that drew attention of critics were surrounded by the belief that “whites were destined by God or nature to rule over people whose physical characteristics denoted innate inferiority” (Carter 70). One critic, Frederickson, tends to lean away from the idea of said belief and explains slavery as being the result of “legal and cultural vulnerability” (Carter 70). Stereotypes of slavery addressed in Chesnutt’s short story are that slaves were content with their lives, southern gentleman are all chivalrous, and that African Americans do not …show more content…

The “Sambo” personality is a result of the “total institution” (Franklin 54). He compares the life of slaves of America to that of Jews in concentration camps during the Holocaust (Franklin 54). The personality of the Southern slave was one that was the “result of the distinctive set of circumstances associated with slavery in the United States” and allowed the slave no personal lives (Franklin 55). In “The Passing of Grandison,” Chesnutt exposes the “great problem” as racial prejudice (Chesnutt 239). Colonel Owens, the slave owner, believed that his slaves were abolitionist-proof because of the life that he provided for them (Chesnutt 245). The attitude that slaves were somehow content and happy in a lifetime filled with servitude is a myth. There were no freedoms or opportunities benefitted to slaves. Dick Owens, the colonel’s son, believed that because Grandison would not run away to freedom after being afforded several attempts that he “recognized his true place in the economy of civilization” (Chesnutt 247). Franklin also states that there are

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