Mark Twain's Vision Bleak Life In The 21st Century Analysis

Rushil Kumbhani
Mrs. Corsun
English Period 12
December 13, 2013
Mark Twain’s Vision: Bleak Life in the Twenty-First Century
With the advent of slavery, African Americans had been forcibly shoved into a seemingly inescapable prison of degrading living conditions, grueling work, and excessive cruelty where they were stripped of their basic human rights as society judged and treated them inhumanely. Life was not any more improved for free African Americans in comparison to those restrained by the shackles of a pernicious institution. In fact, white society continued to repudiate free African Americans, denying them many opportunities for advancement and self-aggrandizement, making it apparent that regardless of the status of African Americans,
Twain reveals society’s racial inhumanity towards Jim despite the fact that Jim was freed by Miss Watson, and conveys how a display of moral character does not elevate the treatment of African Americans. Although the doctor reassures the men who capture Jim that he is a moral slave, the doctor’s white supremacy and bias that he exhibits is discernible to the reader when he labels Jim with a price value:
So there I had to stick plumb until daylight this morning; and I never see a nigger that was a better nuss or faithfuler, and yet he was risking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, and I see plain enough he’d been worked main hard lately. I liked the nigger for that; I tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a thousand dollars—and kind treatment, too… and the nigger never made the least row nor said a word from the start. Ha ain’t no bad nigger, gentlemen; that’s what I think about him.
Many say that ever since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, African Americans continue to make stellar progress in achieving rights and advancing through society, however I disagree with the entirety of that ignorant claim. Today, African American males are put through extreme bias by our legal system through mass incarceration, but many still argue that these African Americans have the ability to avoid crime. Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, supports my claim and describes how a plethora of actions or laws are enacted upon these African American males who are ex-drug offenders: “…a wide variety of laws, institutions, and practices—ranging from racial profiling to biased sentencing policies, political disenfranchisement, and legalized employment discrimination—trap African Americans in a virtual (and literal) cage” (184). Society in the twenty-first century restrains African Americans in almost the same way white society did through discrimination in the era of Jim Crow. Specifically, despite the fact that African Americans today have basic human rights and freedom unlike African Americans during slavery and Jim Crow, there is still a sense of parallelism as society still treats