Critical Lens Close - Reading Entry #5 B.H

In page 183 from the book Beloved, there is a passage about Paul D grabbing an article to which he finds a picture of a African male. He doesn't want to read what was about the article since whenever there is an African male or female on the article, the story is horrifying to them. It always meant that whenever there is a picture of African slaves in any article, it meant something bad. Usually the article talks about the actions of one African slave will mean they are all alike, which makes the audience, or white males, either excited or nervous. Stamp Paid read the article to Paul D since he can't read and it talked about how Sethe was running away from white men and went to a wooden shed, where she killed her children. Paul D doesn't believe that story since the picture of her isn't really her. According to Paul D, the mouth wasn't right and didn't have any resemblance to Sethe's mouth. That's when Stamp thinks Paul D's memories have been lying to him the whole time. It had happened eighteen years ago but it seems to Stamp that Baby Suggs and Paul D were looking at the "wrong direction."
In the early 1800s, newspaper articles would post bizarre stories only for African slaves. Newspaper publishers wouldn't make articles about how a white male killed another white male since it will put out a bad image for themselves. Relatively, they also didn't publish articles that makes African slaves have a good image. Instead, publishers put up horrifying stories of African slaves to their newspaper so that they'll have a bad image and wouldn't be trusted. An article I found dated back in 1856 mentioned two slaves, both male and female, cut the throat of their child from one ear to the other. It also included other slaves that were wanted, which to the white males it brought excitement to them. For the audience, this makes them believe that all slaves are like this since there were more articles where that came from. It didn't matter if it was fake or not, the audience still believed them. To this day, people still think that if one person from one race did a horrifying thing, they are instantly convinced that the race are all alike.