“The Education of Mingo,” or the education of Moses: reading Charles Johnson’s novella through the lens of whiteness studies

Abstract

The rise of whiteness studies has been a very remarkable phenomenon in the past three decades. Many of its key arguments are very productive in criticism concerning racial issues in ethnic literature. This article reads “The Education of Mingo,” a novella by the contemporary African American writer Charles Johnson, through the perspective of whiteness studies. Mostly adopted in this article are theories about the racial contract and white ignorance proposed by such critics as Charles Mills, Barbara Applebaum, George Yancy, Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tunna. Their theories, I argue, prove to be very helpful for the reader to understand the moral paradox in the story, that is, why Moses, seemingly a well-intended white who hates slavery, could actually be a complicit in racism, and hence in the two murders committed by Mingo.