What do the following journal titles / newspaper headlines tell us about the legacy of slavery in

the US?

The pandemic echoes a history of disruption Covid-19 is disproportionately

for Black families, stretching back to slavery
sickening and killing Black
Black men are dying in disproportionate numbers from COVID-19, Americans, the result of centuries
often leaving grieving spouses and children behind. USC Dornsife of structural racism, a group of
experts discuss how this tragedy connects to a long history of
disruption of the Black family in America, from slavery to Harvard researchers says.
incarceration

It’s Not Obesity. It’s Slavery.

The novel as microcosm

If Abraham Lincoln is the personification of the “body politic”, Oak View cemetery seems to be
another deathly manifestation of the United States itself – full of conflicting voices and egos. In this
reading, the nation is white and largely middle-class, the “dreaded iron fence” (p.87) marking a line
that separates the voices of the poor and black from those privileged enough to be given their own
“sick house”. In death, though, this line is easily traversed – the reverend later reports a disembodied
voice crying, “Let them have their chance […] In this place, we are all the same”. The voice is naïve,
and the cemetery, like the nation, erupts into conflict.

Tropes and archetypes

This website presents some of the pervasive stereotypes of African Americans:

https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/popular-and-pervasive-stereotypes-african-americans

How does Saunders engage with these stereotypes in his depiction of race in American? Do you think
he does so successfully?