I Used to Like Him

Last year, I decided I was going to read the entire Harry Potter series, and it took me most of the year. I also had time to read In That Time of Secrets, but then I was left with a couple of weeks at the end of the year before starting a new reading challenge. I decided I would read through my own novels since it's been a while, and I was hoping it would maybe spark me into writing again (it hasn't, so far). When I finished the first one, I thought I might as well go ahead with the second one since they are a pair. While reading the second book, I made a discovery that kind of shocked me - my beloved leading man, John David McKellar, is a racist.

Just a little context - John David is a "pioneer" who has moved West looking for opportunity and a home. The place he decides can give him those things is not free for the taking, though; it is land that was ceded by treaty to the Cherokee tribe. While writing the novel back in 2010, I was brought face to face with the unethical way the United States came to be "settled" - stealing land and breaking treaty after treaty with the Native Americans, mistreating them at every turn. I set up the conflict in the novel as centered around John David and a Cherokee man ("Little" Elwin Root) who wanted the same spot of land John David wanted. A good story needs strong conflict.

What I hadn't realized in the excitement of writing the story is just how racist the things were that John David accepted in the person of another character or even the things that came out of John David's own mouth. Maybe it's an indication of how the world has changed in the 10 years since I wrote the novel and how much more "woke" (to use the young folks' slang) society is in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement and the travel ban on Muslims and the caging of immigrant children at the Mexican border. But I found myself cringing as I read things my "hero" in the story was saying and the attitudes they reflected about his place in the world and Little El's place.

I try to defend him by offering several excuses. 1) I was trying to accurately reflect the time period and its attitudes, and sadly, racism against Native Americans was reality. 2) John David's grudge against Little El is rooted in personal things rather than simple racism (but is that where racism always starts, at least on a personal level?). 3) Characters in a story can't be too perfect; they need to have believable flaws (and I always thought his flaws were part of what made John David an appealing character). 4) As a literary character, John David is on an arc of personal growth from mindless stereotyping of the Cherokee as "savages" to an understanding that the differences between him and Little El are superficial and that Little El is a human worthy of respect.

I've recently started reading the part of the story where John David's arc starts to turn away from the blatant racism toward understanding and respect. But as I remember, there are still vestiges of  those racist attitudes, even after John David has "redeemed" himself. I'm afraid he's going to always be tainted for me now, a character in my mental library who's always going to be carrying an asterisk.

As I was writing this post, I remembered a song called "We Americans" off the Avett Brothers' latest album. In the song, Seth Avett ponders the legacy of a country built on "stolen land with stolen people," and how we can move forward together from that past when so much of that past still remains viable. People grumble about the occasional awkwardness of the lyrics (he's trying to fit in a lot of ideas), but I find it to be a profound and moving song. I'll attach it here and you can see what you think.