Black man portrayals

Racism is the underlying theme of the novel. Allowed to flourish under a racist system of apartheid, it is also a tool that enabled men to abuse women and to abandon their children without any comeback from the state. After apartheid ends, the problems in the nation are not solved in quite the way that it was hoped they would be; in some ways this is also a fault of the government because it is impossible to raise generations of people on the belief that it is essential to separate whites and blacks, and then to tell them suddenly that they are not allowed to think this anymore when they have been raised to accept the fact in the same way that they accept that the sun is hot or that water is wet. In another way, the use of art to commentate at the beginning of each chapter shows that there is less color mixing than ever and that minds are hard to change irrespective of what the government says. it is also racial confusion that causes the mixed race Kids to despise themselves as they do not feel that they are welcomed by either their white families or their black ones.