Building and Presenting Power Relations in Roots

building and Presenting Power dealings in rootAlex Haleys 1976 unfermented, root, portrayed the accounting of a Kunta Kintes family as an epic accounting of survival. Haley presented the history of a man and his family mangled apart, that non broken, under en slave custodyt in America. The experiences that raped Kunta Kintes family life demo the lack of institutional might of those enslaved. Although Kunta and price do non countenance institutional business leader, they do possess a confine standard of force-out inside their nuclear family unit. Haleys depiction of an enslaved family contradicts news reports on the sable family by sociologists much(prenominal)(prenominal) as E. Franklin Frazier and the Moynihan subject, which supported a matriarchal family construction. Roots depicts Kunta and ships bell as equals, with regards to the tote up of stickuation vested in individually individual. uncomplete the young-bearing(prenominal) per watchword nor th e male, has a greater amount of major index. two be about supplyless. Haleys fabrication, Roots, portrays the conflict in the midst of the lack of transfer power and the limit amount of familial power.Roots was make at a time where the social organi bait downion and history of the American dusky family was a genuinely litigious issue. In 1965, round ten years before the novels publication, the U.S. judicature published the Moynihan Report. The report placed the demonic for continuing threatening inequality, upon the very organize of the faint family.1 Moynihans primaeval thesis was that the disastrous family was crumbling and that a study part of the infernal lay with the forbidding matriarchy surviving in the drabened community.2 Much of the discipline in the nonorious Moynihan Report was runner publicized by the prominent black sociologist Franklin Frazier, who published peerless of his studies on black culture in 1939. Frazier wrote that, the N egro char char as wife or incur was the mistress of her cabinand her wishes in regard to conjunction and family matter were paramount.3 In a sense, the Moynihan Report updated the early findings and observations of Frazier.Scholars such(prenominal) as Robert Staples and Angela Davis go up to challenge the assertions make by Frazier and Moynihan. Staples utter that a matriarchy is a golf-club in which more or less(a), if non all, of the legal powers relating to the club and goerning of the family-power everyplace property, over inheritance, over marriage, over-the-houseare lodged in women or else than men.4 He argued that a matriarchal family social system was not believable because the black cleaning lady was exploited because of both(prenominal) her gender and race.5 Davis was an oppo modele(prenominal) sociologist who refuted the matriarchy thesis. She verbalize that the matriarchal structure presented by some ignored the impenetrable traumas the black woman mus t confirm experienced when she had to extradite her nestling-bearing to alien and voracious sparing instincts.6In the novel Roots, Alex Haley depicts the struggles of an enslaved family. chthonian enslavement, Kunta Kinte and bell shapes lives are situated by their posture of organism possess by rule Waller. bell shape has a limited amount of power when it seeded players to piddling matter such as the appearing of her cabin, only when it comes to primary(prenominal) matters such as keeping the family to stringher, doorbell (and Kunta) possessed no institutional power. rent which refutes Fraziers thought that the take had figure over her cabin and family life, is displayed when Kunta and ships bells child, Kizzy, is sold. incomplete of her parents can motley the horrible dower of their only child. campana pleads with secure Waller, weary split us up,7 and to no avail. Kunta tries to physically save his girl only he crumpled to his knees8 afterward he i s assume by the ticket stub of the sheriffs pistol as it crashed above his ear.9 two the mother and the father, female and male are rendered powerless in the situation. This example exemplifies Davis thoughts on the lack of institutional power held by enslaved women, in the facet of the whims of their masters.The cultural class of the domineering black woman belies the globe of the masses of black women who constituted a defenseless classify against the onslaught of ashen racism in its most deathly sexual and economic manifestations.10 The lives of enslaved women could be ruined at both moment. after(prenominal) Kizzy was interpreted a behavior, she was sold to a man of the name, tomcat Lea2E The first iniquity Kizzy is under Leas ownership, he rapes her. Then came the searing retch out as he forced his focussing into her, and Kizzys senses seemed to explode.11After Kunta and the other Africans get arrive at the big boat and wait for the slave auction to commence, he and his mates had had to sit there, burning with discomposure at being helpless to agitate their women, let completely themselves.12 The women were powerless, as they could not stop the recurrent rape at the hands of the toubob and the men were powerless because they could not attend the women. another(prenominal) typeface where Kunta feels pessimistic because he cannot aid a woman in need, occurs age at a slave auction, he hears a arrange Jola woman hollo piteouslybeseeching him to help her13 he feels a bring on of bitter, flooding shame14 at the prospect that he could not or did not do anything to help the woman.After an argument concerning a visit Kizzy was to suck up with young woman Anne, buzzer lay on the lookout in their hindquarters that night, he sat sleepless in the stable infra the harnesses. Both were weeping.15 Neither of them, as parents could control whether or not their child went. Master Waller said he promise Missy Anne to drop Kizzy glowering at Massa Johns.16 regular(a) though Kunta objected to this strongly, he could not do anything about it. It was not inside his power it was outrageous abundant to have to sit by and match while Kizzy was false slowly into a lap dog, but now they wanted him to deliver the wolf to its new keeper.17 on a lower floor thrall, the family structure of the enslaved was neither matriarchal or patriarchal. How could it be? The lives of those edge under slavery were fully controlled by their master. Even the sanctioned rights name was controlled. When Kunta arrived at his first woodlet home he was given a new name, Massa learn your name toby.18 Kunta was flooding with rageand he wanted to bid I am Kunta Kinte, first son of Omoro, who is the son of the blessed man Kairaba Kunta Kinte,19 but he could not utter a word. Kunta had no power.thither were instances in spite of appearance Roots, where both Kunta and Bell exercised power to control aspects of their lives, albeit a limited amount of power. Bell had been on the Waller plantation for more(prenominal) a(prenominal) years and as the cook for the main house, she had access to learning and the master that many a(prenominal) field slaves did not, Bell had more ascertain on the massa than anyone else on the plantation, or likely all of them drop together.20 Bell, along with her girl Kizzy, had another leap of power, they were partially literate. in the long run though, these powers hurt the interests of Bell and Kizzy. Even though Bell had such high standing(a) with Master Waller, she notwithstanding-tempered had no label in the deal of her female child. Part of the priming Kizzy was sold, was because of her ability to read and write. Kizzys intellectual powers in the long run rendered her powerless.Kunta besides struggled to hold up power within his life and affinity with Bell. The naming of their daughter was one instance where he asseverate power. Kunta wished to keep the traditions of his fatherland alive. One way was by naming Kizzy by the kindred ritual as he was named in Juffure. Bell was disinclined to allow this but as deeply as Bell disapproved, she was even more apprehensive of what Kunta would do if she refused.21 Kunta named their daughter Kizzy, which as he explained to Bell, meant you sit down or you stay put which, in twist meant that unlike Bells precedent two babies, this child would never get sold away.22 alas Kuntas wish for his child, as it was represented by the name he gave her, did not come true. Kizzy was sold and even though Kunta had some power within his own family, he did not have the institutional power necessary for lemniscus his (and Bells) greatest upkeep from happening.Alex Haleys poignant novel, Roots, depicts the contest for survival as it was experienced by the family of Kunta Kinte. The novel savagely portrays the conflict in the midst of the slaves lack of institutionalize power versus the power they retained with in their family unit. Through many harrowing experiences, Haley presents Kunta and Bell as finally powerless in the face of their oppressors. Although the novel displays the precarious and insecure living conditions of Kunta and Bell, it also celebrates the resiliency of this family. opponent to the beliefs presented by Frazier and Moynihan, the slave system did not and could not yield and recognize a matriarchal family structure. native in the very concept of the matriarchy is power.23 The portrayal of the enslaved family in Roots refutes the legend of black matriarchy. The novel does not tense to prove a patriarchal family structure, it hardly presents the lack of power of those enslaved.Notes1. U.S. Dept. of Labor, The Negro Family The lineament for National work on (Washington, D.C. GPO, 1965).2. Robert Staples, The Myth of morose Matriarchy, Black Scholar, 2 Jan.-Feb. 1970, 341.3. Deborah White, Female Slaves depend upon affairs and Status in the Antebellum wood let South, Journal of Family History, 8 Fall 1983, 2484. Staples, 336.5. Staples, 335.6. Angela Davis, Reflections on the Black Womans Role in the confederacy of Slaves, Massachusetts Review, 13 Winter/ arising 1972, 84.7. Alex Haley, Roots (New York dell Publishing Co., 1976), 452.8. Haley, 452.9. Haley, 452.10. Staples, 334.11. Haley, 455.12. Haley, 214.13. Haley, 322.14. Haley, 322.15. Haley, 385.16. Haley, 385.17. Haley, 385.18. Haley, 232.19. Haley, 232.20. Haley, 336.21. Haley, 367.22. Haley, 368.23. Davis, 82.