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How Do People Respond to Injustice? (Submit and Accept (Milkman (Milkman…

- - - - His dad was "sliced in half and boxed backward...how the two halves, not even fitted together, were placed cut side down, skin side up, in the coffin...that when his father was wakened on Judgement Day his first sight would not be glory or the magnificent head of God... it would be his own other eye." (224)
        
        "he remembered anew how his mother smiled when the white man handed her the four ten-dollar bills More than gratitude was showing in her eyes. More than that. Not love, but a willingness to love" (224)
        
        This shows the submit and accept mindset which many other black people have to this racial inequality
        
        He is disgusted by this submission towards gross injustice, which thus pushes his mindset towards one of action.
        
        "She saw it too and, first, goes back to get a cracker's bones for some kind of crazy self-punishment, and second, leaves the cracker's gold right where it was! Now, is that voluntary slavery or not? She slipped into those Jemima shoes cause they fit" (224)
        
        Guitar has a poor opinion of Pilate, as one who submits in her black cage to the white
        
        "instead of life insurance, the sawmill owner gave his mother forty dollars 'to tide you and them kids over,' and she took it happily and bought each of them a big peppermint stick on the very day of the funeral." (225)
        
        There is a sort of pacifying vibe in which the white owner just gives them less than deserved and then his mother used candy to keep the children happy in the face of death.
        
        Seems very grotesque and unnatural, especially for a young boy to see of his father. That would be scarring in itself, but when confronted with
      - Seven Days
        
        Emmett Till
        
        "A young Negro boy had been found stomped to death... The boy had whistled at some white woman, refused to deny he had slept with others, and was a Northerner visiting the South." (80)
        
        Take violent action against a random white in response
        
        Yet also turns into a game of hatred -> bombing three white girls in a church
        
        Destruction of innocence to balance out destruction of innocence
        
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        Yet also justified -> Court system is unfair and won't do any justice
    - - Advocates fighting violently for black nationalism (Nation of Islam) and superiority
      - Us or them mentality
      - Somewhat of an opposite to MLK because violent as to his non-violent protests
- - - - "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania" (1767-1768)
        
        Paul Leicester Ford (ed.), The Writings John Dickinson (1895), pp. 307-322, 328-335, 34~348, 355-357, 400, 405-406.
        
        https://micds.instructure.com/courses/1129300/files/56680158/download
        
        "Let these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds-that we cannot be HAPPY, WITHOUT being FREE-that we cannot be free, without being secure in our property-that we cannot be secure in our property, if, without our consent, others may, as by right, take it away...We are taxed without our own consent, expressed by ourselves or our representatives. We are therefore-SLAVES." (Letter XII Dickinson)
        
        This is a significant historical publication which spurred a lot of reaction towards the injustice of taxation without representation. It is heavily inspired by John Locke, one of the philosophers at the foundation of the Declaration of Independence and the general air of liberty and freedom. His belief was that men have a natural right to three things: life, liberty, and property.
        
        "Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania" highlights the American Dream and the focus on property = freedom. The absence of property equates to essentially being slaves to those that are in control. It's also quite interesting how this is actually from a white Pennsylvania farmer who valued property as freedom, to which Jake became a black Pennsylvania farmer who valued property as freedom as well. This similarity could be coincidental, yet also shows the connection between property bringing freedom as core to the American Dream.
        
        Difference between Macon's and Jake's American Dream
        
        Jake's Interpretation
        
        He loved "property, good solid property, the bountifulness of life..." (300)
        
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        "sat for five nights on a split-rail fence cradling a shotgun and in the end died protecting his property" (51)
        
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        "He called our farm Lincoln's Heaven" (51)
        
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        Macon's Interpret
        
        Exploitation of black tenants to gain wealth. He tries to emulate the qualities of a white man rather than embracing property's role in furthering the black race
        
        Much like how white males exploited at first the Indians land and then African labor to gain property and amass wealth
        
        Exploitation of native americans was the first in a long line of exploitation for white gains and for their own personal freedom for the exchange of anothers'
        
        Ottakar Lindneux, Robert. "The Trail of Tears." Cherokee Families of Rusk County, Texas, 1942, http://cherokee1838.tripod.com/lindneux_painting.htm
    - - "Our papa was dead, you see. They blew him five feet up into the air" (40)
        
        Attributed Blame/Cause
        
        "Everything bad that ever happened to him happened because he couldn't read. Got his name messed up cause he couldn't read" (53)
        
        Resulting mindset (Emulating White Culture)
        
        "Let me tell you right now the one important thing you'll ever need to know: Own things" (55)
        
        The resulting mindset after having everything taken away because perceived fault in his father makes sense: the way white men do things triumphs. Thus it shapes the way he handles himself economically to own things. He has achieved economic stability through following this model of Capitalistic exploitation.
        
        "First he displayed us, then he splayed us. All our lives were like that: he would parade us like virgins through Babylon, then humiliate us like whores in Babylon" (216)
        
        Macon tries to be a white man socially as well. He has a vacation house, and parades his daughters for display. This leads to the strain in their family cohesiveness and hurts them all in the pursuit of the culture that took away his father and his wellbeing.
        
        Macon is attributing the reason for the huge injustice of the Butlers killing his father as his own fault rather than that of the greedy Butlers or the institution of the justice system that didn't care enough to do anything about the murder of a black life
      - "He signed something, I don't know what, and they told him they owned his property" (53)
- - - - "Folks just was thankful the children escaped" (232)
        
        .
        
        "The ways of God are mysterious, but if you live it out, just live it out, you see that it always works out. Nothing they stole or killed for did 'em a bit a good" (232)
        
        Technically died in the end, fulfilling this sort of karma justice, yet this mindset pushes for God to do something rather than themselves.
      - White men killed this sort of American Dream for the Reverend Cooper and his friends where anyone could make it with enough hard work. As such, Milkman notices that they begin to 'die' when Jake was shot, the death of this dream. There is nothing to live for if hard work can just be overtaken at the whim of white men.
      - "white folk didn't care, colored folks didn't dare" (232)
        
        Faced with huge injustice, no one did anything out of fear against punishment and conformity to the status quo.
  - - - About non-intervention and doing nothing. He wants to stay with the status quo, and thus his people suffer and are suffocated as a result. She is powerless, and he has power to take action, yet does nothing. This idea is also shown when he struggles to make a decision as to whether or not to go for the gold in Pilate's house
    - - "I can't let him direct and determine what I do, where I go or when" (294)
        
        Morphs this idea around injustice. Guitar is unjustly persecuting him for some reason, yet he chooses to act against it and become independent. This doesn't mean go after Guitar violently out of revenge, but rather to not let him and his presence interfere with his life, as that would be submitting and allowing Guitar to win by making himself afraid, changing to accommodate the unfair persecution
    - - FOR: Name and authority and money
      - AGAINST (or perceived inequality): Put into family situation, Hagar after him, slight racism (although this is better than most because of his father)
- - - - Born without a navel, she was solely isolated from every community she went to (except the island) because of that fact. That is a huge injustice seeing as she is a child/teenager and she has no control over her navel, yet people still made her an outcast.
        
        "Finally Pilate began to take offense... when she realized what her situation in the world was and would probably always be she threw away every assumption she had learned and began at zero... Then she tackled the problem of trying to decide how she wanted to live and what was valuable to her" (149)
        
        Stopped submitting to her situation and used it to see and accept where she stood, yet took it a step further and learned what she could uniquely do from her position and experiences
        
        "She gave up, apparently, all interest in table manners or hygiene, but acquired a deep concern for and about human relationships. Those twelve years in Montour County, where she had been treated gently by a father and a brother... had taught her a preferable kind of behavior. Preferable to that of the men who called her mermaid and the women who swept up her footprints." (149)
        
        Because of her experiences being both treated kindly and discriminated against, she is able to distinguish which things are important to her and what kind of person she wants to be. She gave up all the useless stuff, but understood that community and connection is where we should care.
      - "It isolated her. Already without family, she was further isolated from her people, for... every other resource was denied her: partnership in marriage, confessional friendship, and communal religion." (148)
    - - "That plus her alien's compassion for troubled people ripened her and-the consequence of the knowledge she had made up or acquired-kept her just barely within the boundaries of the elaborately socialized world of black people" (149)
        
        Through being compassionate towards those she meets, she is able to integrate in society yet also to heal and mend society
        
        "She was a natural healer, and among quarreling drunks and fighting women she could hold her own, and sometimes meditated a peace" (150)
        
        About healing > pain
        
        Peace > fighting
      - "You just can't fly on off and leave a body... collect what was left of the man she and Macon had murdered. (The fact that she had struck no blow was irrelevant. She was part of her brother's act, because, then, she and he were one.)" (147)
        
        Responsible for her past injustices and can't just fly off free without getting rid of her past mistakes and 'shit weighing her down'.
        
        When YOU commit an injustice, take responsibility no matter how easy it is to deflect the blame. That is Pilate's justice. She also is the one to take the punishment, not making Macon Dead do it too.
        
        "'If I bury Papa, I guess I ought to bury this too--somewhere.' She looked back at Milkman. 'No,' he said. 'No. Give it here.'" (334)
        
        She implies and gives Milkman the opportunity to take responsibility for the injustice he's done to Hagar, thus not directly forcing him to, but because she cares about him being a good person, she gives him the opportunity to redeem himself.
  - - - Can rebel, but in which way?
        
        Says that building love and community is the way. Guitar says that he does but really just hates white people. Furthermore, this mindset makes him capable of killing Milkman for the greater good of the black race
        
        ""I wish I'd a knowed more people. I would of loved 'em all. If I'd a knowed more, I would a loved more" (336)
        
        Pilate is spreading love. She knows that connection and community is what matters so she tries to build it within her personal capabilities. It also implies that this love is valuable to both her AND the people she loves, showing regret only at the fact that she had not known more people.
    - - Creates a distinction between Acceptance/Submission and Actively Promoting Equality. Equality shows relation to this idea of embracing community because embracing community helps to reverse the demoralizing and de-humanification effects of discrimination
        
        After the importation of slaves to America, there was a creation of this uniquely African-American culture which was neither that of the White Americans nor African, yet drew from both and added new forms which were uniquely theirs. Some forms of this were integration of Southern cuisine or retelling African folklore, yet they also began calling others of their race "brother" and "sister", family terms, to help reverse the de-humanizing slave owners. They de-humanized by taking away names and separating family members, so taking charge and forming a unique community to reverse those effects is the kind of rebellion which MLK wanted and which Morrison also agrees with.
    - - Describes the rebellious and violent type of responses like Guitar and the seven days, because they are frustrated with the lack of change and thus are inspired to action. But it also condemns the action of going towards black nationalist ideas as creating a 'racial nightmare'. He believes a better alternative is nonviolent protest and ultimately advocates for equality rather than black supremacy.
    - - Kelley, Claire. "mlk-in-birmingham-jail" Melville House. 21 Jan. 2013, https://www.mhpbooks.com/the-story-behind-mlk-jr-s-letter-from-birmingham-jail/