Rhetorical engagement with racism : Uncle Tom ’ s Cabin and Adventures of

Rhetorical engagement with racism; Uncle Tom's Cabin and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Racial relationships were an extremely controversial subject around the time o f the C ivil W ar in the USA. H arriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle T o m ’s Cabin and M ark Twain in A dven tures o f H uckleberry F in n treat this provocative issue o f race by entrusting important roles to the A frican-Am erican characters. U nde Tom and Jim. Predicting the reader's possible revolt against the blatant treatment o f the issue, the two novelists use racist expressions in the convention o f their contem porary audiences to construct a comm unication channel with their audiences. A s a result, these novels have won enormous poptilarity. However, they have been criticized f o r racist tendencies Beneath the seem ingly racist surface o f their texts, Stowe and Twain presen t an innovative vision o f unconditional human equality. Using various rhetorical strategies, these authors help their audiences realize the unfairness a n d fa lse grounds o f racism. The dialectic between the racist language and the anti-racist m essage o f their texts creates a dynam ic fo rce spurring readers into a reconsideration o f their attitude


Introduction
One of the critical issues Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain deal with in their works is the race problem between African-Americans and white Llterator 19 (1} April 1998:65-78 ISSN 0258-2279 Americans.Historically, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and Twain's Adventures o f Huckleberry Finn (1884) were written at a time when the issue of "race" was highly controversial.Stowe and Twain embody their concern about the race problem by entrusting two African-American characters.Uncle Tom and Jim, with significant roles in their novels.Such an attempt attests to the novelists' conviction illustrated in their texts that all Americans, regardless of race, should have equal opportunities of fimctioning as important members in their community.Although Stowe and Twain challenged the dominant ideology of white supremacy, their novels gained an exceptional popularity, resulting from the authors' use of extraordinary rhetorical strategies.The novelists assumed that their audiences were white racists and tried not to stimulate their antipathy.Consequently, they use racist expressions which create the irony and mirror effects.In addition, they present attractive model pictures of racial equality in their texts.

Rhetorical audience
According to rhetorical theory, an author can write a successful work with persuasive power when he or she writes for a rhetorical audience.In this respect rhetoric scholar Lloyd F. Bitzer provides the following useful distinction: "... a rhetorical audience must be distinguished from a body of mere hearers or readers: properly speaking, a rhetorical audience consists only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change" (Bitzer, 1968:8).Bitzer's "rhetorical audience" corresponds to Walter Ong's "fictional audience."Rhetoric scholar Ong defines "fictional audience" as follows: H e [a w riter] has to w rite a book that real persons w ill buy and read.B ut I am speaking -or w riting -here o f the 'a udience' that fires the w riter's im agination.If it consists o f the real persons w ho he hopes w ill buy his book, they are not these persons in an untransm uted state (O ng, 1975:10).
Therefore, "fictional" or "rhetorical audience" for Stowe and Twain should have an interest in the issue of race in order to be "capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change" and should strongly believe in racial inequality in order to "fire the writers' imagination".As "the 'race problem' in America is essentially a "White" problem in that it is Whites who developed it, perpetuate it, and have the power to resolve it" (Katz, 1978:10), the rhetorical audience for Stowe and Twain is not coloured but white Americans who are in a position to address the race problem.Ironically, the two authors' enthusiasm to reach their rhetorical audience has often brought about the misunderstanding that the novels support racism.The misunderstanding mainly results from their use of racist expressions -racist language and racial stereotypes -which is one of the novelists' major strategies to satisfy their rhetorical audience's expectations in order to construct a communication channel.

Debate about racism
The racist expressions in Stowe's and Twain's texts stirred active debates among critics.Some literary critics have judged Uncle Tom's Cabin and Huckleberry Finn as racist.Myra Jehlen identifies an anti-slavery focus in Stowe's novel: "Uncle Tom's Cabin seeks to end slavery, not racism or sexism" (Jehlen, 1989:383).Arnold Rampersad refers to negative perceptions of Uncle Tom by saying, "the name of its hero [Uncle Tom] quickly became a byword among blacks for unmanly compromise" (Rampersad, 1984:49), a view supported by W. Lawrence Hogue who calls the black slave in Uncle Tom's Cabin "the microsign of the safe docile darky who trusts and seems pleased to serve his white master" (Hogue, 1986:32).*Harold Beaver introduces the similar widely held view of Twain's African-American character in Huckleberry Finn: "Jim remains the sentimental stereotype, an Uncle Tom, the good drifting nigger with a heart, but no brains, no scheming imagination, no education even but pleasant clowning and foolish superstitions -a man of feeling who is the natural victim" (Beaver, 1974:339).Ralph Ellison's view of this stereotype is that "Twain fitted Jim into the outlines of the minstrel tradition" (Ellison, 1964:50-51).2 On the otlier hand, many critics contend that Stowe and Twain embody their faith in racial equality in their novels.Among those critics, John Mason Browm presents the following view:  (Smith, 1984:5).Philip S. Foner (1958:215) puts into perspective a significant point of Twain's rhetoric: It w as inevitable that a book w ritten about M issouri w hen it w as slave territory w ould c ontain references from w hich decent A m ericans w ould recoil today.It w ould have been a violation o f reality to put tw entieth century anti-racist expressions and concepts in the m outlis either o f the M issouri slaveow ners o r its back w oods people.
More recently James Kinney also focuses on relevant aspects o f Twain's rhetoric: "Every writer -novelist as well as speechwriter -faces the rhetorical demands of invention, arrangement and style, and the problem of audience" (Kinney, 1985:29).Foner's and Kinney's observations show Twain's keen awareness of the historical context of his rhetorical audience.
Underlying the two aforementioned opposing views of the same works -racist versus anti-racist -are different tlieoretical perspectives.From a common-sense point of view, tlie anti-racist writer do not use racist expressions.The rhetorical perspective rectifies the coinmon-sense reading of the novels as supporting racism and lucidly illuminates that the novels are against racism.

Ideology and rhetoric
According to rhetoric scholar, John T. Gage, authors are supposed to make a "rhetorical coimnitment to using conventions in order to confrol the readers' expectations and responses" (Gage, 1981:55).Louise K. Barnett further suggests that "The individual has little choice but to use the language of his community: it is the only one available to formulate his own thoughts (and thus controls their shape to a large extent), and it is also the only means of talking to other speakers witliin the community" (Barnett, 1979:221).Gage's rhetorical stance and Barnett's linguistic approach support tlie view that Stowe and Twain use racist expressions in their novels to communicate with their rhetorical audience, namely white racists.Literary critic, David W. Levy, justifies the novelists' use of racial stereotypes so as to "control the audience's expectations and responses" in terms of similar constraints as those posed by Gage and Barnett: "Those who attacked slavery in fiction portrayed tlie races in precisely the same terms as tliose who defended it" (Levy, 1970:265).C. Vann Woodward emphasizes the role and im portance of the rhetorical audience in the author-reader relation.From the broader perspective of writing history, "every historian must begin with some conception of the readers he is addressing.The consequence is a considerable measure of reader participation in the writing" (Woodward, 1986:81).
Woodward's perspective indicates that the racist expressions in Stowe's and Twain's novels would, to a large extent, reflect the "measure of reader participation in [their] writing".This, in turn, suggests that the inherent racism of the two texts mirrors the ideology of their time.Guy Cardwell elaborates as follows on the relationship between ideology and text: " ... ideology has been called a kind of unconscious of the text ... The writings derive from the soil or from the society and express the virtuous aspects of the national psyche" (Cardwell, 1991:1).As Cardwell remarks, the nineteenth-century American ideology determines why the two texts appear racist: although the slave trade had been against the law since 1807, black people were still stigmatized as subhiunan (Williams, 1970:3-4).Hence, taking the nineteenth-century American ideology into account, we may assume that it is imfair to criticize the two novels as racist from the late twentieth-century perspective.In fact, as Eric Foner contends, "American history has been revitalized by an infusion of the new perspectives of blacks, women, labor, and others" (Eric Foner, 1980:6) and it would clearly be misleading to comment on the racist issue in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Huckleberty Finn against this background of changed perspectives.Kinfe Abraliam provides tlie following information about the status of the black man in the nineteenth centiiry: In fact, in the nineteenth century, there w as hardly any study w hich attested to the hum anity o f the black m an.The black m an w as a strange anom aly, m ore o f a form ula than a hum an being, not capable o f reflection and cultural expression.Studies on the A m erican N egro as a creative person and a figure o f significance do not in fact em erge until the 1920's, and sim ilarly on the black A frican until the 1930's (A braham , 1982:64).
Twain's rhetorical effort to engage with the audience's expectations and responses, as Stephen Railton suggests, must have generated the widely held view of Mark Twain as "a representative man, a best American self' (Railton, 1987:403), a view which attests to the strong bond Mark Twain established with his audience.Eileen Nixon Meredith calls Twain "a kind of archetypal American who said things profoimdly true and representative", thereby explaining the reason for his popularity (Meredith, 1976:34).

6, Ready-made audience vs rhetorical audience
Stowe's and Twain's audiences consisted of two kinds: ready-made and rhetorical.According to Kenny J. Williams, most of the late nineteenth-century reading audience were ready-made: tliey had read the early slave narratives and had been influenced by tliem (Williams, 1970:85).Perhaps most of their audience may have been ready and even longing to change the social condition which was unfavourable for African-Americans.Though nobody knows to what extent the ready-made audience overcame its racist prejudice, this audience was not Stowe's or Twain's intended rhetorical audience.If Stowe and Twain had vkTÍtten for the ready-made audience, they, without their imagination sufficiently fired, would not have worked so conscientiously on their rhetoric.
The concept of the audience at a teimis match will help demonstrate the distinction between the ready-made audience and a rhetorical audience.If we compare the rhetorical situation to a single's tennis match, the author and the rhetorical audience will be the two opposing players hitting the ball, as the figure below shows.

Spectators Spectators Spectators
In this analogy, Stowe's or Twain's ready-made audience corresponds to the spectators watching the game.The two tennis players will win a huge number of spectators if they play faithfully to each other, without much troubling themselves about what the spectators may think.Likewise, when the author addresses his or her writing to the targeted rhetorical audience, applying every means to control it, the novel will win the audience over, even including the ready-made audience.
The immense popularity o f Uncle Tom's Cabin and Huckleberry Finn proves that Stowe and Twain devoted their writing to their rhetorical audience, namely white racists.

Rhetorical strategies
Stowe and Twain used shrewd strategies to control their rhetorical audien ce.^Their basic strategy was to use racist expressions, by means of which they created irony, mirror, and conciliation effects.

Irony
Right from the beginning of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe presents certain characters as having a contemptuous attitude toward African-Americans.For instance, inciting Arthur Shelby to sell Eliza's five year old son, the slave trader, Haley, says, "Your wife might get her [Eliza] some ear-rings, or a new govm, or some such truck, to make up with her [about the loss of her son] ...These critters an't like white folks, you know; they gets over things, only manage right" (Stowe, 1964:49-50).Haley's view that African-Americans are too subhuman to have a strong maternal affection, but would be overwhelmed by the joy of little gifts echoes that of Stowe's rhetorical audience.Throughout Huckleberry Finn, racist language quite often appears as well.For example, Huck replies to Aunt Sally's question when he arrives at the Phelps farm: "G ood gracious!A nybody hurt?" "N o 'm, K illed a nigger.""W ell, it's lucky; because som etim es people do get hurt" (Twain, 1985:317).
Huck's answer, "No'm.Killed a nigger", reveals his prejudice that African-Americans are not human, while Aunt Sally's response reinforces such racism.These illustrations attest to Stowe's and Twain's rhetorical effort: they present racist views to ease their rhetorical audience, thus luring it into willingly continuing to read their novels.
Meanwhile, beneath the racist surface of the text, which satisfies the targeted audience, an entirely different process is experienced by that audience.The stark picture of some whites' extreme contempt for African-Americans provokes the audience to speculate upon the inhumanity of such contempt.For example, Haley's disdainfril estimation that African-Americans are too subhuman to have maternal affection incites the audience to feel the dreadfiil consequence of racial discrimination: Haley regards Eliza as belonging to a species other than human.
In Huckleberry Finn, a similar process occurs.Huck and Aunt Sally's heedless, habitual racism, in spite of its innocent look, spurs the audience to ponder the 3 From now on their rhetorical audience will be referred to merely as "audience" for analytical convenience.The irony of the texts induces Stowe's and Twain's audience to get absorbed into the texts without being much irritated by their propagandist tendency.

Mirror and conciliation effects
Stowe and Twain use effects of irony as well as mirror and conciliation effects to control the audience.By letting the audience watch such fictional characters as Haley and Huck dramatically project what white racists do to African-Americans, Stowe and Twain invite the audience to meditate on the validity of racism from a detached stance.As if sitting in front of a mirror, facing the reflection of its own racism, the audience gains a chance to objectively reconsider its ideology.Although, by means of the irony and mirror effects, Stowe and Twain challenge the audience's ideology, they take every precaution not to have the audience intimidated, thus conciliating the audience.For instance, Stowe porfrays Haley as an evil figure in a caricature.The effect of this caricature is to distance the audience from Haley's irrational, vicious racism, removing any tinge of threat from the audience.Similarly, Huck's racist language removes the possibility of the audience's turning against him for helping Jim, a fugitive slave, run away.Thus, Twain enables Huck, the central narrator, to fmction as an effective communication channel with the audience by taking on the role of inspiring confidence in the audience.
In this way, the three rhetorical strategies -irony, mirror, and conciliationprovide Stowe's and Twain's texts with double opposite forces.The opponent forces endow the texts with a tension which simultaneously and continuously pulls (on the racist surface) and pushes (on the anti-racist substratum) the audience.

Racial stereotypes subverted
Racial stereotypes abound in Stowe's and Twain's texts.For instance, the description of an African-American slave.Aunt Chloe, at the beginning of Uncle Tom's Cabin, fits the stereotype of a contented, well-treated black slave; "Her [Aunt Chloe's] whole plump countenance beams with satisfaction and content ment" (66) and towards the end of the novel there is the effective juxtaposition of the description of Eva and Topsy, the stereotypical advantaged white American child set next to the disadvantaged African-American child: This depiction embodies the conventional idea of the two races: white Americans have all positive traits; African-Americans all negative.The extremely racist, almost allegorical choice of two children as the representatives of their races certainly suggests Stowe's awareness of what would please the audience.Moreover, Stowe fiirther sets Eva in relief by having Uncle Tom regard her as a demigod: To him [Uncle Tom] she [Eva] seemed something almost divine; and whenever her golden head and deep blue eyes peered out upon him from behind some dusky cotton-bale, or looked down upon him over some ridge of packages, he half believed that he saw one of the angels stepped out of his New Testament (210), Eva's position above Uncle Tom, "looking down upon him [Uncle Tom]", secures the audience with the assurance that Eva's (white) position is superior to Uncle Tom's (African-American), Furthermore, the identification of Eva's white beauty with divinity comforts the audience with a subtle implication that white supremacy extends even to heaven.Eva's mother, Marie, publicly calls her Afiican-American slaves "grown-up children" and "spoiled children," providing fiirther security for the audience to enjoy reading the novel.
Similarly, the stereotypical depiction of Jim, an African-American slave in Huckleberry Finn, satisfies the audience's expectation.In order to survive, Jim an adult black man, has to depend upon Huck, an outcast, uneducated white fourteen-year-old boy.Furthermore, Jim is portrayed as deceptive, superstitious, credulous and stupid.For instance, about his hair ball which he blunders to have the magic power to foretell human fortune, Jim says, "Sometimes it [the hair-ball] Ut0rator19(1)Aprll1998:65-78 ISSN 0258-2279 wouldn't talk without money" (25), deceiving innocent children.Jim also loses his fourteen dollars in a stupid speculation, credulously manipulated by another fraudulent African-American.Jim is so gullible and superstitious as to believe Tom when the boy tells a fake story about a witch.Once Jim believes the lies, he sticks to them as if they were true.For example, when Huck, after the storm, says that everything that happened in the storm is merely Jim's dream, Jim naively believes him.About Jim's credulity, Huck observes, "He [Jim] had got tlie dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place, again, riglit away" (118).At the end of the novel, Jim appears to comply with Tom's words like a senseless toy.Ralph Ellison remarks about the literary representation of African-Americans, "Too often what is presented as the American Negro emerges as an oversimplified clown, a beast or an angel" (Ellison, 1964:26).Such a portrayal of Jim accords with the audience's conventional expectation of African-Americans.James Kinney explains, "The use of certain stereotypes -even certain omissions -can suggest assumptions that the author must believe the audience will share, an indirect but intriguing route to beliefs and attitudes of the popular mind at that time" (Kinney, 1985:30).Kinney's explanation effectively illuminates Stowe's and Twain's invisible, but unfailing effort to communicate with the audience.
Behind such stereotypical racial images lurk Stowe's and Twain's critical insights.While Stowe's Aunt Chloe is happily smiling, regarding her master as trustworthy, her master is negotiating the sale of her husband.Uncle Tom.This picture highlights Stowe's incisive indictment: white Americans have often manipulated African-Americans, betraying the latter's trust.Also, with the ex tremely racist selection of the sample o f each race (Eva and Topsy) Stowe may intend, as Sterling Allen Brown explains, to show Topsy as a pathetic victim of slave-trading and persecution of African-Americans by the white Americans (Brown, 1937:36-37).This selection, in addition, tacitly incites the audience to question whether this is a fair selection for representing each race.The nartator may choose such "good" African-American characters as Uncle Tom or his innocent children and such "evil" white characters as Simon Legree or Henrietta (Eva's cruel cousin).Marie's stereotypical view of African-Americans as children also evokes confrision in the audience especially when it faces Uncle Tom's spiritual superiority as a Christian hero.Uncle Tom says, Ye [C assy] said the L ord took sides against us, because he lets us be 'bused and knocked round; but ye see w hat com e on his ow n Son -the blessed Lord o f G lory -w a m 't he allays poor?A nd have we, any on us, y e t com e so low as he com e? T he Lord h a n 't forgot us -I'm sartin o ' that a r'.If we suffer w ith him, w e shall also reign, Scriptiu'e says; but, i f w e deny him, he also w ill deny us.D id n 't they all suffer?-the Lord and all his? (387).
Uncle Tom's words provide a subversive clue to reexamine such stereotypical traits of African-Americans as humbleness and contentment, not as the sign of submissive cowardice but as that of mature spiritual triumph.Sterling Allen Brown perceives this subversion and calls it Stowe's dilemma.He says, In characterizing the N egroes in Uncle T om 's Cabin, M rs.Stow e faced the dilem m a o f the propagandist.I f she show ed them as brutalized by slavery, she w ould have alienated her readers, w hose preferences w ere for idealized heroes.If on the other hand, she m ade her characters too noble, her case against slavery w ould be w eakened.She did this w ith U ncle Tom , and critics have stated: If slavery produced a C hristian hero so far superior to free w hites, then slavery is excellent (Brow n, 1937:36).
In Huckleberry Finn, a similar subversion of the African-American stereotype occurs.David Smith notices, "Twain's strategy with racial stereotypes is to elaborate them in order to undermine them" (Smith, 1984:6).Whereas Jim appears to depend upon Huck, Jim actually takes care of Huck like a father, providing food and safe places for them to stay in.Jim's paternal care for Huck intimates Twain's acute insight into the white Americans' realistic, economic reliance on African-Americans' labour and care.The divulgation of the voices underneath the stereotypical characterization of Jim obliquely conveys white Americans' exploitation of and political violence against African-Americans.Furthermore, behind the depiction of Jim as credulous and stupid lies a critique of the audience's justification of its own exploitation of African-Americans: the audience has brainwashed itself that African-Americans are so credulous and stupid that they need "smart" whites to look after them.However, the scene in which Jim calls Huck's trick toward Jim after the storm "trash" depicts Jim as Huck's mentor through Huck's initiation process toward mature humanity.

Model, prospect
Stowe and Twain do not merely beat the audience with the hammer of subversive confusion.Through their texts, they provide the audience with an attractive prospect, by presenting "models" of idealistic, trans-ideological human relationships, such as Eva's unconditional love for Topsy and her true friendship with Uncle Tom.Comments by Eva's parents contribute to the attractiveness of this model of democracy and equality for the targeted audience.Eva's mother, Marie, remarks, "Eva somehow always seems to put herself on an equality with every creature that comes near her" (239), while her father, St. Clare, says, "Your little cliild is your only true democrat" (246).By depicting Eva with idealized angelic beauty and thus stimulating the audience's desire to resemble her, Stowe shrewdly coaxes the audience to copy Eva's democratic ideal.Model pictures also abound in Twain's text.For example, while travelling on the raft, Huck's eyes are opened to Jim's humanity, transcending ideological restriction.Huck's (1IAprll1998:65-78 ISSN 0258-2279 initiation serves as a guide for the audience to emulate his experience.In addition, Huck is a boy of innocent, innovative spirit: as Tom Sawyer observes, "Huck, [Tom says] you don't ever seem to want to do anything that's regular: you want to be starting something fresh all the time" (343).Thus, Huck's unspoilt freshness functions as a medium -"a transparent eyeball", as Emerson says in his franscendental essay "Nature" (Emerson, 1981:11) -througli which the audience anew confronts its false consciousness.Stephen Railton comments informatively on this particular fimction of Huck: "Behind Mark Twain's decision to let Huck tell his story in his own words lay precisely the desire to expose the linguistic conventions by which people distort reality, deceive themselves, and exploit others" (Railton, 1987:395).Huck's youth and lack of education also offer an excuse for his thinking and acting outside of convention, removing the possibility of the audience's repulsion.

Conclusion
The claim by Leonard and Teimey that "it is difficult to teach irony, to overcome the literal, to show that a book may mean the opposite of what its words seem to say" (Leonard et al., 1992:9) is certainly borne out by responses to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uticle Tom and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.As these two critics suggest, it is certainly difficult to communicate the effect of literary techniques.However, as these two works reflect their contemporary audience's racial prejudice and the authors' rhetorical attempt to reach their audience, they may serve as the most effective tools for reminding readers of all ages of the destructive cruelty of racism.
Summing up -Stowe and Twain present a combination of affirmative elements (racist language, racial stereotypes, and conciliation) as well as subversive elements (irony, mirror, and model) to their rhetorical audience.The dialectic interaction between "what the text says" and "what the text does" creates a deconstructive tension which endows the texts with a constant suspense.This deconstructive suspense so forcefully absorbs the readers that they do not notice the authors' rhetorical aim -to induce them to inquire into the justice of racial discrimination -which otherwise may offend them because of its propagandistic tendency.In other words, the dialectic -between the racist surface (thesis) and the deconstructive process (antithesis) of the novels -leads the audience to unknowingly perform the role of "ideological critic" of racism (synthesis).The dialectical system atfracts to their texts not only Stowe's and Twain's intended audience but also readers in different times and cultures, inducing them to play the role o f the ideological critic.

Figure
Figure 1: Tennis court analogy

T
here stood the tw o children, representatives o f the tw o extrem es o f society.T he fair, high-bred child, w ith her golden head, her deep eyes, her spiritual, noble brow , and prince-like m ovem ents; and her black, keen, subtle, cringing, y et acute neighbor.T hey stood the representatives o f their races.T he Saxon, b om o f ages o f cultivation, com m and, education, physical and m oral em inence; the Afric, b om o f ages o f oppression, subm ission, ignorance, toil, and vice! (323).
ne w ould have thought that, i f any book m erited the gratitude o f those interested in racial equality, Mrs. S tow e's classic w ould have been that volum e.It m ay n o t have been the cause o f the C ivil W ar, as L incoln once said it was.B ut it w as one o f its m ajor causes, since it blocked the Fugitive Slave L aw (quoted inLee el a i , 1946:70).
1Referring to a stage performance o f Stowe's novel, John Mason Brown comments in Negro Digest that "here is the announcement that Uncle Tom 's Cabin was barred, not in Scottsboro or in any Southern town, but in Harriet Beecher Stowe's own Connecticut -first in Bridgeport, then in New Haven.Why?Because the play was 'anti-Negro'" (quoted inLee el al., 1946:69).He also points out that the name "O Thus, what the texts of Stowe and Twain do to the audience differs from what these texts say.While the language of the texts is racist, the texts provoke doubts about racism in the audience.The discrepancy between what the text says (racist) and what the text does (anti-racist) endows Stowe's and Twain's texts with "irony".D.C. Muecke explains the effect of such irony: Llferator 19(1] Aprll1998:ó5-7BISSN 0258-2279irrationally appalling impact of racism; they treat some people's lives as those of beasts just because they are African-Americans.