He’s also black. Of Malawi descent, to be precise.
Speaking of, here’s some notes concerning Sadie. Just like Mark and Jake, she’s treated with ridicule. The antebellum and bellum South society was politically, culturally, economically, and spiritually built around the institution of slavery. Race and gender determined a person’s status with white slaveholding males at the top of the social hierarchy. With both sexes, slave ownership elevated social status, thus giving women power in a system that they would not typically have power in. The sense of power that came from the institution of slavery fueled white women’s acceptance for the institution of slavery, which they advocated for based on paternalism, and in effect maternalism. In layman words, racism = social status.
Sadie, however, is not fueled. It’s not that she wishes she was born a man. She’s a lady, she likes being a lady, she just doesn’t fathom why the capacity for her expression of her gender can only be at the expense of anyone else’s, black or white. She also realized at a young age that she will never be perfectly feminine all the time, what society expected of Southern women at the time. Regardless of what she presents herself as, Sadie wants to use her femininity outside of wooing rich, young, and stupid perverts. Still, the perfect image has to be maintained. So for a majority of her life, she was socially shunned by fellow members of high estate. This is why she grows attached to Mark - a future of freedom, to look ugly sometimes.