​​​

​East Fork:

A Journal of the Arts​​


Nathaniel Trent 


         
America has a history rooted deeply within slavery and racism. Throughout Octavia Butler’s Kindred, we see how the old institutions of racism in the 19th century still affect the narrator, Dana, as a black woman in the 70s; even in the 2020s we still see these racist systems affect black people disproportionately. Even the institution of slavery still exists in America, unknown to many, in a system that unequally targets people of color (particularly black Americans). Octavia Butler’s science fiction novel examines, through the time travel trope, the characteristics of America’s murky past that persist today. Individual prejudices, systemic oppression, lack of worker’s rights, and policing, are all things that create modern methods of slavery and enforce old systems of racism.  

         Kindred
is a time travel novel by black American science fiction author Octavia Butler; the novel, narrated in first-person by the main character, Dana, follows her story as she is taken back in time (against her will) to routinely save the life of a young slave master in the 19th century. Through her travels back in time, Dana encounters the horrors of slavery: she witnesses slave patrols beat and carry away runaway slaves multiple times, she herself experiences the dehumanization of being forced into slavery (as she is black with no proof of freedom) and learns the stories of slaves at the plantation. Throughout the story, Dana recounts her relationship with her white husband, Kevin, and through their relationship, we see the modern institutions of racism at play. 

         While writing Kindred, Butler juxtaposes old slavery institutions of racism against new ones. One of the ways Butler illustrates modern racism in Kindred comes from these stories about Dana and Kevin in their present day. One of the most relatable ways slavery has been modernized would be through what Dana refers to as the “slave market”; a temp agency she works at, which can be related to as just a dead-end job. The temp agency, Dana says, paid minimum wage, worked by “winos trying to work themselves into a few more bottles, poor women with children trying to supplement their welfare checks, kids trying to get a first job, older people who lost one job too many…” (Kindred, The Fall). This sort of cheap labor takes advantage of people even today. At the time of narration, the story is placed in 1972, when the minimum wage was $2.00 an hour. In today’s money, this would be the equivalent of $10.75 an hour if one were just to account for inflation (although inflation is not the only influencing factor on minimum wage; many economic factors affect minimum wage). This sort of dead-end, low-pay work relies on worker exploitation and is the most common way in which a modern way of slavery and worker exploitation occurs.  

         Comparing this work to today’s minimum wage of $7.25 cents, one could reach the conclusion that the nature of these dead-end jobs that Dana works in Kindred has gotten even worse. When examining the state of black wealth versus white wealth in the United States, one can see that people of color (particularly black and Hispanic folks) are more likely to be paid poverty wages (or wages classified to put a family at the poverty line for their family size). The data shows that in 1986, only 7 years after Butler published Kindred, 23.5% of black workers and 28.3% of Hispanic workers were paid poverty wages, compared to only 15.4% of white workers. (Cooper, Economic Policy Institute). Today, these numbers are better, but non-white races remain disproportionately taken advantage of by the poverty wage system. This data shows that low pay is a form of worker exploitation that affect all races, there is clearly a racist disparity between who is working these jobs. It is apparent that Butler was painfully aware of this economic disparity while describing Dana’s work-life before the events of the novel.  

         Although not an example of slavery, the story Butler wrote about Dana and Kevin’s marriage was a very real example of individual racism and prejudice in the 1970s. While vague, Kevin remarks after announcing his engagement with Dana to his sister, “I thought I knew her…I mean, I did know her. But I guess we’ve lost touch more than I thought.” Then, “…she didn’t want to meet you, wouldn’t have you in her house—or me either if I married you…And she said a lot of other things. You don’t want to hear them.” (Butler, The Fight).  

         The interesting thing about the juxtapositions of these leaps back in time to describe Dana and Kevin’s past is that they’re placed, structurally, at the beginning of chapters. For example, the first flashback—the one which describes Dana and Kevin meeting while Dana is working at the temp agency—takes place during “The Fall,” the third chapter in the novel, before Dana is transported back in time for the third time. The second scenario, which details their family’s reaction to their engagement, takes place at the beginning of “The Fight,” the fourth chapter in the novel. This structural placement of these flashbacks allows for real-time comparisons of the modern racist attitudes versus the attitudes from the 19th century.  

         Something interesting about Dana’s travels back is that Butler poses Dana as a prisoner to Rufus: she is tied to Rufus, he is the one bringing her back in time to the 1800s. While she is there, she cannot leave, or she could possibly end her own existence by preventing her ancestors from ever being born. Dana is a prisoner to Rufus, forced to work under his capture, and this is analogous to the treatment of prisoners in the modern-day. The thirteenth amendment still allows slavery under imprisonment, reading: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” When further evaluating this exception which still slows slavery under imprisonment, it is not astounding to find that 38.5% of prisoners are black, while only accounting for 13% of the US population. (Bureau of Prisons). Considering the comparisons Butler makes in Kindred to Dana as a prisoner, the novel was apparently written as an allegory to this loophole in the constitution.  

         Butler seems to also be actively placing Dana at odds with Booker T. Washington’s strategy of “Accommodation”; in his speech to the Atlanta Exposition in 1895, Washington says, “As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” He also goes on to state, “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.” (Norton, 717-718).   

         The struggles of Dana in Kindred seem to actively contradict this statement, both in Dana’s travels back to the 1800s and to her modern-day. Dana, although providing all the care and work she possibly could for the Weylin family (she saves Rufus’ life multiple times, nurses him back to health, tries to save his father, stays with his mother), she still earned nothing but abuse and disrespect from them—a direct contradiction of Washington’s sentiment. Washington essentially said that, because black folk lived and cared for white folk, they should be respected and united with them, but Dana’s experiences in Kindred are direct contradictions of this sentiment. Even in Dana’s present day in the 1970s, we see that not everyone accepted the unity of black folk and white folk (see both of their family’s reactions to her engagement with Kevin). This strategy of “Accommodation” from Washington does not work for Dana—the strategy of allowing racism and discrimination to gain equality, to be “as separate as the fingers yet one as the hand”—actively harms Dana’s wellbeing, to a point in the novel where she must force herself into life-or-death situations through disobedience to escape back to her present day. This strife with Washington’s ideas gives Dana real scars and injuries that symbolize the rippling effects of slavery into the modern-day, effects that shaped the character of Dana and black Americans like her.  

         Kindred expertly juxtaposes modern racism with antiquated racism, and intricately crafts a story, almost allegorical, of modern-day racial disparity. Through this story, Butler is able to express that America’s roots within racism still persist in the modern day, and she shows this in a way that is accessible and digestible to the average reader.  





Works Cited 

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Kindred and 200-Year-Old Racism Today 



Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Kindle ed. Beacon Press, 2004.  

Cooper, David. “Workers of Color Are Far More Likely to Be Paid Poverty-Level Wages than      White Workers.” Economic Policy Institute, 21 June 2018, www.epi.org/blog/workers-of-color-are-far-more-likely-to-be-paid-poverty-level-wages-than-white-workers/.  

Bureau of Prisons. “Inmate Race.” 10 April 2021. https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp 

The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Ninth Edition) (Vol. Package 2: Volumes C, D, E).https://platform.virdocs.com/r/s/0/doc/595542/sp/178574984/mi/569909674?cfi=%2F4%2F4.