The brief scene depicting Tony Fontaine’s escape raises the tense issue of race relations in the era after the war. We see evidence of the violence of this relationship earlier in Rhett’s arrest for allegedly killing a black man who insulted a white woman. Historically, freed slaves (often referred to as “free-issue” blacks in the novel) lacked resources, education, property, and self-direction, and white Northerners manipulated them in an effort to shore up political power. The bulk of the freed slaves found shelter in squalid, hastily built shantytowns. Mitchell ignores these facts, however—one of the novel’s most blatant exhibitions of racism. She describes black people’s lives as “a never-ending picnic” and attributes their hardships to their inability to care for themselves once away from the plantation owners’ care. She describes freed slaves as “creatures of small intelligence” who take “perverse pleasure in destruction.” The only blacks not portrayed as part of a threatening, insolent mass are loyal house servants like Mammy and Pork, who never once indicate any dissatisfaction with their lowly position. The novel doesn’t make any acknowledgment that unhappy house slaves even existed, nor does it hint at the terrible and terrifying power of slave-owners over their slaves. Rather, it portrays a world in which slaves are always a beloved part of the family, and no one strikes them except the brutal Scarlett.
Mitchell’s racism reveals the mindset of Southern gentleman like Ashley Wilkes. Terrified by their sudden loss of political and social power, such men fixed blame on blacks. Confused by a world of freed slaves, they became convinced that black men posed a sexual threat to white women, and formed the Ku Klux Klan to protect their wives and to feel important and powerful once again. Mitchell does point to the Klan’s danger and foolishness, but she mitigates her condemnation of the group by showing only peaceful Klan participants. Even though Ashley supports the Klan, he opposes the organization on principle and is “against violence of any sort.” Thus Mitchell suggests that men like Ashley join the immoral Klan on moral grounds and thus cannot be faulted for their membership if they refrain from violence. According to Mitchell, they remain unsullied by the Klan’s evil as long as they stick fast to their own principles. Mitchell’s demeaning depiction of blacks and her neutrality about the Ku Klux Klan demonstrate that racism pervaded not only Scarlett’s time but also Mitchell’s.