“”She said i was a what?” I asked. “Just a strange nigger. She and Daddy both knew they hadn’t seen you before.” “That as a hell of a thing for her to say right after she saw me save her son’s life.” Rufus frowned. “Why?”… His air of innocent questioning confused me. Either he really didn’t know what he was saying, or he had a career waiting in Hollywood. Whichever it was, he wasn’t going to go on saying it to me.” (page 25)

This is a quote from the novel Kindred by Octavia E. Butler. The quote discusses a major difference between present day in the novel and the past that Dana travels to, which the year 1815. The main problem discussed by Dana and Rufus is this idea that Rufus and/or his mother should not be calling Dana a “nigger”. You can see that Dana has a modern view of the word, which is that the word is never used by anyone because the word is seen as hateful and derogatory. Rufus asks why it is a hell of a thing for his mother to have said about her after saving him. He cant understand the concept of Dana getting mad over being called a “nigger” because during this time it is seen as normal. The word is used to describe black people while also putting them down, showing that they are inferior to whites. This is important because it shows us that there is to be drastic differences in the views of Dana and the views of the people of 1815 in the rest of the novel. It also is important because it shows to us the hard ships Dana will be facing due to her having to acclimate her self to this new racist environment.