The Legacy of Slavery Theme Analysis

In A Confederacy of Dunces, Toole uses the experience of Burma Jones, a marginalized black man, to demonstrate the way in which the American South’s historical legacy of slavery and racial prejudice affected the lives of black people living in the South during the 1960s, when the novel is set. A Confederacy of Dunces takes place in New Orleans, which, like much of the American South, had segregation laws in place until the late-1950s. These segregation laws meant that black people could not share certain public spaces, such as transportation or restaurants, with white people. Through Burma Jones and the other black characters in the novel, Toole suggests that although segregation was illegal by the 1960s, the legacy of segregation lives on in New Orleans and leaves black people vulnerable to discrimination and exploitation.

In the novel, prejudice against black characters reflects the legacy of slavery in the South. The novel opens on an arrest: the hapless policeman, Patrolman Mancuso, tries to arrest Ignatius J. Reilly for loitering while Ignatius waits for his mother, Irene Reilly, outside a store. When an old white man named Claude Robichaux defends Ignatius, Claude is arrested instead and finds himself in jail alongside Jones, who has been arrested for allegedly stealing cashew nuts. While Claude is distraught and ashamed over his arrest, Jones seems “resigned” to his fate, even though he says he has been framed. It is implied that Jones has been in jail before, which suggests that black men are frequently arrested on flimsy pretexts, whereas white men are not. This speaks to the way that black people are often treated as criminals simply because of a societal stigma against their race, even when they have done nothing wrong. Jones also observes that if he had called a policeman a communist, as Claude did during his arrest, he would be sent to Angola: a maximum-security prison in Louisiana (which just so happens to be named after a former slave plantation, further emphasizing the lasting imprint that slavery has left on the state’s institutions). Jones’s recognition of the inequality between his and Claude’s treatment suggests that punishment for black men in the South in the 1960s was much harsher than punishment for white men when they committed the same crime. This implies that white people had more privilege and freedom than black people, even though, according to the law, they were supposed to be equal. Jones’s arrest suggests that the police are actively looking for reasons to frame and imprison black men. Although Jones is clearly not a danger to society, and is not even a thief, prejudice against black people and the racist idea that they are criminals leads to Jones’s arrest. Jones’s nonchalance about his situation implies that this is a widespread problem in New Orleans, where there is a history of slavery. Even after abolition, prejudice among white communities lingered and led black people to be viewed as a threat, a hostile environment which puts black people like Jones in danger of unfair persecution.

The working conditions and treatment that the novel’s black characters are subject to also reveals the legacy of slavery in the South. The novel insinuates that vagrancy laws (laws against being homeless or unemployed) were supposed to apply to both black and white people in the 1960s, when the novel is set. However, in practice they were applied more aggressively to black people because of racial prejudice. Ignatius, who is white, is unemployed but is only bothered by the police once, when Patrolman Mancuso tries to arrest him. Furthermore, Mancuso is subsequently berated for his treatment of Ignatius—something the reader can reasonably assume will not happen to the policeman who arrested Jones. Furthermore, when Jones is let out of prison, he knows he must immediately find a job because if he is unemployed he will be arrested again. Because of this, Jones feels forced to accept a job at the Night of Joy nightclub, run by a white woman, Lana Lee, where he works for less than minimum wage. This suggests that prejudice causes black workers to be exploited by employers. Lana is aware that she exploits Jones and even threatens to have him arrested if he quits. Being a white woman and a business owner, Lana has all the power in the relationship and can pay Jones as little as she wants—something that she might not be able to get away with if Jones were a white man. Jones also knows that the situation will not be better elsewhere because other employers will do the same, and this suggests that this type of exploitation was a pervasive problem in the South during the 1960s, even after the abolition of segregation laws. 

Though the conditions of literal slavery no longer exist in the South, although many of the novel’s white characters do not seem to realize this. Toole parodies this attitude when Lana Lee forces Jones to dress up as a plantation slave (alongside a sexualized Scarlett O’Hara character played by the bar girl, Darlene) to host the “Southern Belle” themed night at the club. This suggests that Lana literally sees Jones as a slave who she can exploit in any way she chooses. The link between slavery and modern working conditions for black people appears again when Ignatius gets a job at Levy Pants, a textile factory, and finds that most of the factory workers are black, underpaid, and work in unsafe conditions. Ignatius makes the connection between exploitation and slavery when he points out that, while black people used to pick cotton for textiles, now they make the cotton into garments for the profit of white business owners. This suggests that although conditions have improved for black people in the South, racism has merely shifted forms and is still reflected in day-to-day life. Ignatius tries to rally the black workers into a protest against their working conditions. However, although he claims to arrange this for the workers’ benefit, Ignatius really arranges the protest to prove to his ex-girlfriend, Myrna, that he is socially progressive. As Jones points out, however, the protest is the opposite of progressive—rather than liberating the black workers, it is more likely to get them arrested, and all for the benefit of Ignatius’s selfish motivations. This suggests that, although Ignatius claims to be socially progressive, he sees black people not as free individuals but as objects he can use to further his own ends. While black people like Jones and the workers at Levy Pants are certainly better off than slaves, the lingering discrimination and exploitation they face in their everyday lives suggests that racism was still a prevalent, systemic problem in the South in the 1960s.