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Jack Bellew, Clare’s white husband, provides proof of Irene’s assertion that white people cannot discern Blackness as well as they believe they can. Bellew is a virulent racist, who calls Black people “devils” and declares he does not just dislike them but actually hates them. Bellew seems obsessed with race, yet that obsessive hatred ironically prevents him from realizing that his wife is Black. Even as he notices her skin darkening as she ages and teases her with a racial slur for a nickname, the fact that he loves her and finds her beautiful means it does not occur to him that she might actually be Black. Although Bellew hates Black people, he also believes he has never known any. This level of racial isolation, even if it is only imagined, exists only for white people. The white world can segregate itself from the Black minority, but the Black world inevitably intersects with white people. Because Bellew believes he does not interact with Black people, he does not see Gertrude as Black, nor Irene, until he sees her in company with the unmistakably Black Felise Freeland. Bellew’s racism both depends on and reinforces his ignorance.
