The Marrow of Tradition

Many of the novel’s white characters are biased against their Black neighbors, but their bias takes different forms. Major Carteret and Belmont believe that their racism is both gentlemanly and poetic: Their goal is to uplift their race and reestablish what they take to be the natural, harmonic order. When they want to overthrow the democratically elected government and its Black representatives, they thus must be careful: They do not want to be perceived as evil but rather to convince others of the rightness and justness of their cause. It is telling that Major Carteret runs a newspaper, harnessing the power of words to serve his cause.

McBane, by contrast, is more to the point: He openly states that he aims to keep Black men down because it serves his desires and interests, and he is willing to achieve them by any means necessary, including lynching and murder. He repeatedly accuses Major Carteret and Belmont of hypocrisy, questioning the point of pretending that there is something beautiful about their enterprise when its goal is simply the subjugation of one race. The massacre in some sense vindicates McBane, proving that there is no distinction between “respectable” white supremacy and violent racial hatred.