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Dr. Foster is Ruth Foster’s father and Milkman’s maternal grandfather. He is the first Black doctor in Mercy, Michigan and consequently a symbol of success and wealth. In the early 1900s, racist perceptions and systems made it difficult for Black people to secure the education and finances necessary to study medicine, so Dr. Foster’s career and status is a rare thing within the Black community. While his success can be seen as a sign of slow progress for the prospects of Black Americans, it also isolates him physically and emotionally from other Black people. Dr. Foster lives in a different, wealthier area of town that is inaccessible to many other Black families. Additionally, as Dr. Foster’s life and identity revolves around achieving goals and collecting status symbols centered around whiteness, his internalized racism causes him to self-isolate from the Black community. In his quest to become an honorary white man, Dr. Foster abandons and denigrates Blackness, inundating his children with offensive beliefs about Black people’s ignorance and savagery. Ironically, despite his attempts to discard his Blackness, Dr. Foster is never welcomed by the white community he covets.
Dr. Foster approves of his daughter Ruth’s marriage to Macon Jr., as both he and his son-in-law share the same obsession with material wealth and lack of empathy for others in their community. Thus, Ruth is passed from one cold and inhumane patriarchal figure to the next, never knowing a life outside of their racist, misogynistic, and controlling behavior. Additionally, Ruth’s relationship with Dr. Foster is strange, and includes conduct that hints at potential incest. However, during brief moments inside Dr. Foster’s mind, we learn that he likely did not engage in any childhood sexual abuse of his daughter. More likely, his loveless demeanor and dominating personality caused Ruth to attempt inappropriate bids for his affection and engage in child-like behaviors in his presence. Furthermore, the incestuous quality of their dynamic may be more symbolic than literal—in his obsession with race, wealth, and status, Dr. Foster creates an environment in which the only worthy Black people in Mercy are Fosters. Thus, Ruth is socially isolated and unable to form any relationships with Black men outside of her father, and later Macon Jr., who is Dr. Foster’s carbon copy. In this sense, Ruth’s relationship with her father is, to some extent, emotionally incestuous.
