Since it has not really been addressed yet, the question of race in Slow River is a very interesting one. As someone else mentioned, the gender dynamic is a departure from what we have been reading because Griffith creates an arguably homonormative environment where Lore’s life is inundated with lesbian friends and even an uncle with a husband, demonstrating the total acceptance of gay marriage in this society. As far as race, it is not an issue in any of the main or love interest characters. The character of Paolo and the parts of the narrative of Lore’s past that set up his identification are the most notable admission of the existence of non-White individuals in the van de Oest world. In other areas of the novel, countries are mentioned where the van de Oest family has projects going on, including local labor disputes and the outcry after the Caracas affair. But as far as being a central theme of the book, race is simply not as important to Griffith.

At the same time, this is perhaps done on purpose by Griffith. Since we see the story through Lore’s eyes and are repeatedly reminded of how her family operates, it may be a way to demonstrate the non-existence of Other to the van de Oest family. While Lore did her best to educate herself and read about the biological intricacies of the family business, anything so outlandish as ethics or anthropological studies seem to have been left out. As far as the corporation is concerned, the people of Caracas are relatively inconsequential to the long lasting goals of their remediation projects, and more honestly, their goals of protecting their monopoly by creating dependent bugs. This lack of concern for fellow human beings is especially apparent in the character of Greta, who sells, and essentially destroys, her sister’s life in order to secure the financial future of a particular project which is only a part of the family’s business. This forces the reader to understand in no uncertain terms that the family has not sought to inspire a significant moral compass in their offspring, as the pursuit of morals and the pursuit of insane wealth rarely seem compatible.

Returning to the idea of race in the book, one might also consider the more general pattern of identifying people based on physical characteristics. Socially, we are trained to read certain traits and assign people labels, slip them into categories based on the shape of a nose, the color of skin, or the size and shape of eyes. Interestingly, the labels and categories do vary depending on country, but it seems to be more of an overarching theme of human nature to label and categorize. The idea of the gray hair as a new symbol of wealth was an interesting choice for Griffith and seemed to be her way of hammering home the arrangement of priorities for the van de Oest family. In some ways they become their own race (or they have just excused themselves from being labeled along with anyone else). They certainly have their own laws, codes of moral conduct, recognizable physical characteristic, and financial authority. It seems after muddling through these ideas that, like issues of gender, race is not a theme in Slow River in the way we have been examining it in past books. However, the point of the van de Oest family is that they have made themselves an island, and all those apart from the island are Other, which as a concept certainly lends itself to an analogy of White Americans against the rest of the (specifically non-Western) world.