Links and thinks on exceptionalism in fiction

Another link I am too sleepy to poke at much:
Competing Purities

I think it's important, then, to distinguish between: 1) Racism as it occurs in interpersonal transactions, more or less unintentionally, particularly when neither party has power over the body or livelihood of the other party and 2) Racism as system/institution/tool of material oppression. Problem 1), I'd say, is one outgrowth of, and one of many phenomena that help sustain, problem 2); so that someone who's insouciant about problem 1) is gonna be perceived as an element of problem 2), and someone who's accused of having problem 1) will wonder if s/he's being perceived as knowingly contributing to problem 2)

What specifically struck me was a quote from Jonathan Arac:

Yet in wholly omitting from his representation of Huck's America any of the rhetorical, political, or more broadly social resources that supported resistance to the slave power in Huck's time and to Bourbon restoration in Twain's own time, Huckleberry Finn defines no place that citizens can work together in resistance. This is not the worst possible compromise, but it is a great diminishment for the possibilities of freedom, and it has rarely been acknowledged as one of the costs of Twain's achievement.

Once again, as in the links on protagonist privilege: exceptionalism. Every good person reaches their goodness alone, every successful oppressed person throws off their oppression alone or with the help of the unoppressed. When I wrote about Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender inventing Braille, I decided she had to do it in concert with other disabled (and specifically, blind) characters, and it changed the dynamic quite a bit.