TY  - JOUR
T1  - Children As a Source of Exploitation: The Neglect of the Lives Of The Children In Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad
TT  - Sömürü Kaynağı Olarak Çocuk: Colson Whitehead’in Yeraltı Demiryolu Adlı Romanında Çocuklarının Hayatlarının Görmezden Gelinmesi ve İhmali
AU  - Yıldırım, Melek
PY  - 2026
DA  - July
Y2  - 2026
JF  - Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi
JO  - CUJOSS
PB  - Sivas Cumhuriyet University
WT  - DergiPark
SN  - 1305-5143
SP  - 293
EP  - 301
VL  - 50
IS  - 2
LA  - en
AB  - Underground Railroad (2016), a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel for fiction in 2017, focuses on antebellum Southern America during the nineteenth century in an alternative history fiction. The existence of a wide range of representatives of child neglect and abuse of Afro-American enslaved children in the novel stimulates a need to deal with the neglect of the children Underground Railroad, penned by Colson Whitehead in the framework of decolonial childhood theory in the framework of postcolonial literary criticism by Manfred Liebel to learn the way of protecting children from neglect, exploitation, and violence by benefiting from children’s rights. It is pointed out that all the enslaved Afro-American children portrayed in the novel are neglected, ignored, and outcasted in the colonial period of America. Not only are their fundamental requirements not met, but even their right to live is taken from them without giving any punishment to the criminals, because the enslaved children are not given the right of citizenship in the colonial period. Thus, their civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights are denied by the white supremacists. All in all, the children in the novel reveal the way they are exploited systematically in the process of colonial conduct before Emancipation in America.
KW  - Children
KW  - rights
KW  - discrimination
KW  - neglect ans exploitation
N2  - 2017 yılında kurmaca dalında en iyi roman seçilerek Pulitzer Ödülü’nü kazanan Yeraltı Demiryolu (2016), alternatif tarihi roman türünde on dokuzuncu yüzyıl İç Savaş öncesi Güney Amerika’ya odaklanmaktadır. Romandaki köleleştirilmiş Afro-Amerikalı çocukların ihmal edilmesine ve istismarına dair geniş bir yelpazede örnekler içermesi, Manfred Liebel tarafından geliştirilen postkolonyal çocukluk çalışmaları çerçevesinde onların ihmal, sömürü ve şiddetten nasıl korunabileceğini açıklayan çocuk hakları teorisi çerçevesinde çalışma ihtiyacını tetiklemektedir. Romanda yer alan kolonileşme dönemi Amerika’sındaki tüm köleleştirilmiş Afro-Amerikalı çocukların   ihmal edildiği, görmezden gelindiği ve toplumdan dışlandığı görülmektedir. Böylece çocukların sivil, politik, ekonomik, sosyal ve kültürel hakları beyaz ırksal üstünlükçüler tarafından inkâr edilmektedir. Sonuç olarak, söz konusu romandaki çocuklar Özgürlük Dönemi öncesi kolonileşme uygulamaları sürecinde sistematik olarak nasıl sömürüldüklerine ışık tutmaktadır.
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