The Ingrate

This week I taught “The Ingrate” –which, by the way, is not a pseudonym for one of my students but a short story by Paul Laurence Dunbar. It’s about a slave who escapes and later becomes an officer in the Union army because his owner breaks the law and teaches him to read and write. My students liked that story because they always enjoy seeing someone stick it to The Man. And, hey, sometimes The Man deserves it.

Was this owner a conflicted soul trying to do something good amidst all that evil? No. This was an owner trying to maximize his profits when he hired his best slave out for extra work; as always, it was only about the money.

The owner claims, however, to be teaching his slave because he is such a generous and kind man that he couldn't stand to see his slave be shorted twenty cents (failing to mention the two dollars he would lose). It’s a matter of principle, he keeps explaining. Well, sure it is. Just not the one he’s claiming. In the end, he's firm enough in his world view that he can only see the slave as "the ingrate" who took advantage of his kind nature. No other explanation is possible.

It's a good thing this only happens in stories. Could you imagine a world in which a self-proclaimed man of virtue who insists he's taking risks for the greater good and not operating out of self-interest is really motivated by greed at the expense of others?

Oh yeah, right.

When we read the first part of the story, my students took the slave owner at his word:

“Is he really a generous man?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it says right here, ‘I am a generous man.’”

Memo to ninth graders, and anyone else who's not paying attention: it's never what The Man says, and it's always what The Man does.