Mark Twain s The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn - 2561 Words

On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn into office as the 44th President of the United States of America. As the first African American president, Obama started a legacy of change in America, as well as a legacy of newly unveiled prejudice and racism that has plagued African Americans for centuries. Obama’s inauguration helped uncover racism in government that did not end with the abolishment of slavery. Discrimination against free African Americans has been a problem in this country since before the idea of unlawful enslavement was discussed. Mark Twain contributed to the discussion of post-Civil War racism with his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this novel, Jim, an escaped slave, is freed via his owner’s death,†¦show more content†¦As a white male, Tom does not want a black man to be allowed the same privileges as him, because he believes that his rights will be insufficient to his needs if they are permitted to one he deems as lower than himself. However, from a free African American’s point of view, there is no reason as to why one should be denied rights based on the color of one’s skin. In Frederick Douglass’s open letter, â€Å"To My Old Master,† he defends his African American race, while denying the pretensions of the white race: The morality of the act, I dispose as follows: I am myself, you are yourself; we are two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are, I am. You are a man, and so am I. God created both, and made us separate beings. I am not by nature bound to you, or you to me. Nature does not make your existence depend upon me, or mine to depend upon yours. (Douglass 3) The notion that a free African American and a slaveowner could be â€Å"equal persons† in itself was considered blasphemy in the antebellum South, however today it is seen as a basic facet of life: it is against the laws of nature for a person to own another living person. With this fact in mind, there should be no reason as to why an African American and a white person cannot be equal today, despite the fact that modern political racism can deny rights based on reasons that have never been a problem with whites guilty of the same alleged problem. Once again, the