Octavia Butler's Kindred: An Analysis

Ingrained in every aspect of the western world is the systematic oppression of those with lesser power. Racism is to white people as the cycle of poverty is to the wealthy. Racism stems from the ignorant and repressive beliefs of those in power: white people. From the day, the western Europeans began to colonize the lands of others, the system of racial oppression was formed. Much like a snowfall on a winter's night, a heavy wall of racial segregation builds up as time progresses. Octavia Butler’s Kindred delves into the topic of the power struggle between the exploiters and the exploited. She illustrates a story about an African-American woman - Dana - who time travels back into the early 1800s where she meets her ancestor, a young white

boy - Rufus - who inherits the family Weylin plantation. Although Dana feels familial affections towards Rufus, and he to her, their relationship is not one of legitimacy; genuine connections can only be formed when the difference in power is removed. Since the elite use their power to oppress, believe that they are deserving of power, and habitually expose the racial minority to exploitation, whole societies become comfortable with unethical behaviour.
Dana needs Rufus to survive and have a child with Alice Greenwood so that she may exist in modern day.

Although Dana says “[they are] dangerous to each other, [It is] more a reminder than a threat”(125) as she does not want to threaten Rufus due to the familial attachments she holds for him, he often forgets that she has the power to let him die. However, even though Rufus does not know the true reason for Dana keeping him alive, he is still very much aware that he is the one with power in the relationship; he has racial authority that is supported by the society he lives in and the financial power to enforce his power over Dana. Therefore the unstable power difference leads to the unhealthy and unethical decisions Dana must make in order to sustain her relationship with Rufus. Power is a two way street; if one person holds authority over the other then the relationship will not be one of genuinity. Since Rufus holds racial authority over Dana, he has the ability to control her life, sentencing her to brutal punishments when he believes she steps out of line. Dana’s fear of “[dying] on the ground there with a mouth full of dirt and blood and a white man cursing and lecturing as he beat [her]” (107) is what keeps her well behaved, despite her initial will to repel the toxic ideologies of the

1800s.
Oftentimes, abusers of power believe they are in the right. The white slave owners truly believe that they are the superior race; they are conditioned by their environment to believe that African-Americans are created to serve them. Dana’s first encounter with patrollers, “a white man, usually young, often poor, sometimes drunk….a member of a group of such men organized to keep [African-Americans] in line.” (45), is not a pleasant one. The patroller that catches Dana beats and attempts to rape her, causing her to fear for her life and be sent back to her time. The patroller does not need to rape Dana, his job is to keep African-American slaves obedient; however, they often would do whatever their whims are with African-Americans, be they slaves or not. Although Dana believes that she can change Rufus in a positive manner, Rufus still ends up believing that he has the right to control others’ lives. He, and the other white holders of power, do not believe they are benefitting from the wrongheaded conventions of society - they have a sense of entitlement. Rufus truly believes the human species is divided into separate races, not that the human species is a whole and should all be treated equally. Even the most intellectual people of the 1800s owned and supported slaves and the act of enslaving an entire demographic of people. Segregation caused societal conditioning normalizes the enslavement of African-Americans due to the of Caucasian belief of African-Americans being better suited for physical labour.
When immersed in a vat of cultural beliefs, over time, humans will adapt to their surroundings and take on these beliefs in order to fit in. Dana “never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery” (101); it’s disappointing how slavery can be accepted as normal when a society supports it entirely. Although Dana wishes, and tries, for one intellectual person to break the entire system, she becomes accustomed to the way of life that she so strongly opposed at first. In order to survive in a society that does not see you as a human deserving of rights, Dana’s “way [of] always suckin’ up to that woman, [Margaret Weylin], is enough to make a body sick” (220). Alice criticizes Dana for becoming weak willed to Margaret Weylin’s demands. Despite Dana’s initial attempts to resist Margaret’s erratic and autocratic behaviour, she becomes submissive to the slavery mindset. Violence is used to force African-Americans in accepting this way of thinking; fear of the pain of being punished is what turns a strong-willed woman into an obedient slave. The fear of having one’s children sold, or husband whipped, or wife raped: this fear keeps people in their place, only wishing they had the opportunity to escape to the north as a free African-American. Dana is “much better than [she] used to be” (219), according to Margaret Weylin, as “someone must have taught [her] to behave” (219). The decades that separate Margaret’s previous conversation with Dana causes Margaret to barely recognize her. However, for Dana, the time between her last interaction with Margaret are mere months, which shows how quickly one can become accustomed to the slavery mindset - even if they know that such way of life is unethical.
The establishment of the racial hierarchy exploit racial minorities through the abuse of power, granted to them by the systematic oppression developed over time.

A system that grows over time is one that cannot be broken down easily as the beliefs and customs are ingrained in the people’s culture - their way of thinking; members of the dominant culture often believe things that, although not true, validate their unethical actions. Humans have the ability to believe anything is true; for one to be skeptical about a belief that is the basis of an entire socioeconomic system, there is often strong opposition that can easily refute the intellectual advancements of one person. Therefore, for those who are being exploited, it is often easier to fall prey to the slavery mindset than to face punishment for standing up against the system. A corrupt and wicked society can easily form when the members of the society create a power difference to oppress, refuse to believe they are exploiting, and continually condition the exploited into submissiveness. If the system of racial oppression cannot be broken down by the oppressed race, then the responsibility of reconciliation and the fixing of a system long broken is then delegated to those with a voice: white

people.