twelve Years a Slave Chapter 3

12 Years a Slave
Relevance of Northup's Beating in 12 Years a Slave
The scene in Chapter 3 when Northup is beaten by Radburn and Burch for daring to argue with him that he was a free man is one that seems particularly relevant to the white readers of the tale. It is important that they hear of this cruelty because until they are in the shoes of the man who is beaten they cannot really sympathize or empathize. So Northup recounts what that experience was like and it makes the reader feel terrible for Northup and feel outraged towards the men who kidnapped him.
I see Northup writing for readers so as to inform them. The implications for us reading now are really no different because what has really changed in the century and a half that has passed? Slavery has been abolished in name but in spirit it lives on in myriad ways. We have the for-profit prison industrial complex that exploits the labor of prisoners in the US; and of course the black population is disproportionately represented in the prison system. We have wage slaves all over the world working for multinational corporations. There is no real equality in terms of politics: those we elect to office become like kings and tyrants, unaccountable to the public that put them in office. We the plebes are treated as though we didn’t know how to take care of ourselves. We are told we must lock down for our own good because there is a virus that kill us if we don’t walk around with our noses and mouths covered, keeping our distance from others as though we were all pariahs to one another. There is a psychological enslavement happening right now.
I do not see this as a race issue as much as I see it as a power issue. Radburn and Burch see blacks as a group they can have power over. But Asians were also viewed the same way by others—as were Mexicans and Native Americans. Even in Europe, there is a fight for power among the various nations, even within the states there are those groups that believe they can have power over others.
Northup is describing his beating for a white audience because it is the white audience that needs to be informed about this cruelty that walks among them that they seem not to notice. He is drawing attention to it and forcing us to notice it. It is not really any different from someone today who is forced into solitary confinement (quarantine) and told it is for his own good; or any different from a small business owner who has been run out of business in 2020 and told that he can like it or lump it; it is no different from the father who has lost his job because some bureaucrats in power decided that everything must come to a stop over a virus that makes most people who come into contact with it feel absolutely nothing at all. There is something universal about getting a beat down—and that is what Northup is connecting to: he is latching onto the reality that everyone in life, no matter his color or class or background, has likely experienced in some way the cruelty of the lash—whether it is literal or metaphorical.
This is a story about a human being. It is easier to make sense of what is wrong in America when it is looked at in that way. Too often we see people as symbols of this or that—as groups or as stereotypes. Northup reminds us that we are all individuals with a soul. It is wrong to look at a person and see him as something defined by the politics of identity. That is how Burch and Radburn see Northup. They see him through the lens of identity politics. They see him as just another black to enslave. They do not see him as Northup, the husband and father and worker and community member. We need to see each in that way—as human beings. Why should it matter what our group is or what our skin color is. We are all under the lash now.