Throughout the novel, issues of race and identity preoccupy Wash. At the beginning of the novel, there is a clear and rigid separation between the identity of the slaves and the identity of the white masters and overseers. While this distinction may be artificial and necessitated by a faulty understanding of the world, one in which black slaves need white caretakers to control and civilize them, it nonetheless has far-reaching effects across the events of the novel.

Even at the plantation, however, there are already complex gradations of education, skin tone, and social rank that indicate a more complicated social system than that of merely black and white. Among the slaves themselves, there are both educated and refined slaves like Gaius or Émilie, as well as rough field slaves like Big Kit and Wash. The house slaves perform softer work, and are often lighter skinned. As Wash realizes when he sees the 11-year-old Émilie pregnant, these lighter skin tones are often the direct result of rape and sexual coercion on the part of white masters and overseers, further complicating what it means to have an identity based on race and ancestry.

Wash’s relationship with Titch gradually evolves from one of slave and master to one of companions.