Identidades in English No 1, February 2014 | Page 74

transmitted, linked and severely punished despite everything. It matters not what theory is employed to
judge the thing nothing more or less than a beast.”22
It would be good to focus on the importance that white
writers gave these communicative and racial contact
spaces to be able to concentrate on the damage being
slave owners, or simply whites, represented for them.
In other words, decipher what Martí termed the socalled “poison of race.”23 In doing so, we can examine
the forms of domination this white elite methodically
institutionalized from the early nineteenth century on
in order to defend its self for those who threatened it,
and perpetuate their sort of power. We can then comprehend why the most important thing about these
novels is not blacks, but whites, and why slavery and
racial mixing were seen as a “