Who Ain't a Slave? Historical fact and the fiction of 'Benito Cereno'
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Melville's tale describes the deep structures of a racism that was born in chattel slavery but didn't die with it. Racism, in the United States at least, was grafted onto slavery, while at the same time disguised by a potent kind of individualism, a cult of individual supremacy, based on the fantasy that some men were born natural slaves and that others could be absolutely free.
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