Racism In Margret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind

“It was better to know the worst than to wonder”(Mitchell 526). In 1936, Margret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” generated mass uproar over its initial release. The racial language and romanticization of its slave-owning main characters continues to cause controversy today. However, while the novel includes racist attributes, it is hardly meant to discriminate. Mitchell was, in fact, attempting to illustrate through the characters the glamorized view plantation owners had of slave’s livelihood under their care. Mitchell later utilizes events of the civil war such as Sherman’s March, in order to give specific examples of how this thought process proved to be flawed and led to many slave owner’s demise. Therefore, the novel “Gone With the Wind”

A school district in Anaheim, California banned the book for its depiction of slavery as well as the use of the “n-word” throughout the novel, further proving the point that the book was banned primarily for it’s realistic depiction of language and situations common in antebellum south. The novel’s intention is not to discriminate nor glamorize the actions of the plantation owners, but rather to present the commonly told story from the perspective of a southern elite member, in order for the reader to analyze and criticize their thought process. The Medical Journal of Pediatrics argues that teenagers should not be exposed to this type of language and profanity due to the fact that it numbs children emotionally and causes instant physiological reactions for the child such as shallow breathing and an increase in heart rate(Stein 1). However, Benjamin K. Bergen, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California discredits this claim in his novel “What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our

The southern elite ruled over their workforce as a tyrant would his/her country, that workforce being slaves. These laborers became the driving force to maintain these tyrants livelihoods of wealth and fortune. As their workforce, southern plantation owners relied heavily on slaves not just purely for economic reasons but for every day life. The Emancipation of slaves in 1863 in seceded states caused mass devastation among plantation owners who’s livelihood relied heavily on this system of social tyranny. Margret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” gives a startling inside perspective of the mindset southern plantation owners possessed throughout emancipation and the severe impact it had on their success as a people group. Slaves were viewed as property by plantation owners, therefore they were bought and sold as such, Consequently after emancipation, the ruling southern elite experienced a severe loss of sovereignty, the resentment many of the main characters portrayed throughout the novel towards the war and reconstruction as a whole demonstrates the Confederacies feeling of the “Lost Cause” after the war ended. Therefore “it is important to bear in mind its relationship to property.” Author Erin Sheley noted speaking of the deep ties land owners had to their slaves because not only were they a workforce, they were also an