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As I mentioned above, Harper is not using biopower in Iola Leroy to talk about the protection of the race, but to illustrate how, to be black is actually to not be protected. Biopower in this novel will help us to identify these moments of ‘un-protection’ as well as understand her strong belief that education and the institution of school is so essential for racial uplift.
As the novel begins during the midst of the Civil War, Harper shows on the simplest level how the bodies of black people are unprotected in the establishment of slavery.
“They have been so long taught they are nothing and nobody, that they seem glad to prove they are something and somebody” (Harper 44). This quote spoken by Robert Johnson is extremely significant when analyzing Harper’s message about the lack of protection biopower grants to black people at this time.
Picture: 2017. Viraltop10s. Web.
If Foucault’s biopower is the protection of the people through their bodies, then in teaching slaves that they are nothing and nobody, they are being taught that they are unprotected because of this “nothing” status. They are not somebodies that biopower must protect. Instead, they can simply remain as part of the “sphere of economic processes” which works to protect white people only.
One other important quotation that is worthy to discuss in the novel and that serves again to highlight the different realities at the time for the black and white, comes from a conversation between Robert and Iola near the end of the novel and far past their days as slaves.
[There are] doors open to him as a white man which are forever closed to a colored man. To be born white in the country is to be born to an inheritance of privileges, to hold in your hands the keys that open before you the doors of every occupation, advantage, opportunity, and achievement. (Harper 266)This quote is significant for a number of reasons:
- Robert (Harper) is able to demonstrate how even after the abolishment of slavery, the notion of protection and privilege under the state is still not open to the black race. Interestingly, even when the literal chains of enslavement are removed, they are still restricted by a figurative chain that holds near to no keys for opportunities for jobs, school and even homes, as we see later in the novel.
- As mulattos, Robert and Iola could have had these inheritances, privileges and protections, yet they chose to identify as black to support the uplift of their race rather than of their own lives.
Presenting this option for personal advancement verses a type of self-sacrifice, these characters represent Harper’s entire platform and basis of the racial uplift she sees as necessary (Jackson 559).
I will elaborate on this idea of ‘sacrifice’ in relation to Harper’s message and stance on religion’s role in uplift in the next section.
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