Slavery also attacked the mind The schoolteacher reduced slaves to animals He told his pupils to list Sethe s human and animal traits Sethe recalls a line said by Schoolteacher in Part One Ch Put her human characteristics on the left her animal ones on the right This cruel act shows how Black people were treated as less than human Such dehumanization gave white masters the power to justify violence Sexual Violence and Control Racial violence was also sexual Schoolteacher s nephews assaulted Sethe held her down and stole her breast milk Sethe says in Part One Chapter They used cowhide on you And they took my milk This moment is more than physical abuse It robs her of her role as a mother Slavery not only beat women but also attacked their love for children It combined racism with sexism It shows the double oppression of Black women Violence Against Families Slavery destroyed families through sale separation and death Sethe makes a shocking choice when Schoolteacher returns She kills her crawling baby girl with a handsaw Morrison writes through the Sethe voice in Part One Ch I put my babies where they d be safe This act is violent but it comes from love Sethe believes death is better than slavery The violence of the system forces a mother to commit the unthinkable Psychological Violence and Memory The damage of slavery does not end with freedom Sethe Paul D and Baby Suggs carry scars inside Paul D hides his emotions in a tobacco tin Morrison says in Part One Ch That tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be This shows how racial violence locks away love and feelings Trauma becomes part of memory shaping every decision Community and Silence The community also reacts to racial violence with silence After Sethe s infanticide people turn away from her Baby Suggs broken with grief stops preaching The house at becomes haunted and isolated Violence not only harms one person It destroys trust and divides the whole community Legacy of Racial Violence Even after slavery ended its effects remain Beloved herself is a ghost from the past She forces Sethe to relive the violence The narrator explains Anything dead coming back to life hurts This means that remembering slavery is painful but forgetting is impossible The supernatural here represents the deep wounds of racial history Finally in Beloved racial violence is everywhere on bodies in families in memory and in silence It is physical sexual and psychological Morrison shows that slavery twisted love destroyed homes and dehumanized people The novel reminds us that even when chains are gone the scars of racial violence remain