Color-White Divide History

Knowing where your ancestors come from can sometimes be a difficult thing to handle and understand. If you have a notion of yourself before you receive actual news as to where your bloodlines reside, It shatters your previous thoughts and causes you to feel like an outsider. You begin to question your cultured norms and habitual daily tasks. After reading the story “Color Lines” by author Ralph Eubanks, I was able to take away that in the 1950’s and 1960’s, “…The American South was a place where the idea of race and identity determined who you were and your place in the world – You were either black or white.” Ralph talks in his story about how dangerous it was to be related to white people: severe . Severe social consequences awaited any black

It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”(4)

The struggle for equality has existed throughout history. The color of a person’s skin seems to depict everything about them. Not only was this an issue in earlier times, but the present as well. The battle to overcome inequity was made significantly more troublesome in the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896.

Skin Color Just a Shade Different In her article “In Living Color” Jana King states her view on segregation and race. There are some points in this essay that need to be picked apart a little more to understand them better. So what is it like to be segregated? How much of people’s judgement comes solely from your race?

Throughout generations it has been shown how different white and black people were treated completely different and had different experiences. As an example the difference between De Crevecoeur and Equiano, these two men had two types of lives and paths that would never cross. De Crevecoeur was a privileged white man who barely ever worried and Equiano was a slave that all he would ever do is worry and be afraid. De Crevecoeur and Equiano did have something in common, they were both trying to show life from their point of view. One person's point of view was how easy and optimistic his life was and the other wanted to show how fearful and anxious his life was.

In our society and schools, people's behavior towards each other, proves otherwise that racial boundaries don’t exist anymore. There are so many students in schools that don’t know their history and origin. It exists, some people don’t notice it, but it is still at the root of our world. In almost everything we do, such as applying for jobs, schools, and political elections, racial bias factors affect who is chosen. It’s part of our origin, we can’t start acting like it never existed, the more we keep deluding ourselves, the more it manifests in our system.

Today the dominate etiquette around race is colorblindness. It has a strong moral appeal, for it laudably envisions an ideal world in which race is no longer relevant to how we perceive or treat each other. (77)

In his essay, “The Souls of the Black Folk” Du Bois (1903) states that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,-the relation of the darker to lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea” (275). According to Appelrouth and Edles (2012: 269) “the color line is both a preexisting social and cultural structure and an internalized attitude”. In addition, they explain that the color line “addresses the historical and institutional (i.e., colonial) dimensions of race” (269).

Even if slavery is not the presiding rule of the land on this planet any longer, segregation based on appearance still exists, just as the "social construction of ‘whiteness’ historically has implied the racial superiority of whites", and prompted the "separate but equal" doctrines of the late nineteenth century (Rundblad & Kivisto xxxi).

The author Du bois in chapter five “The meaning of the progress” points out the color-line. The color- line separates the white race from colored people. This is what Du Bois considers to be the greatest problem of the 20th Century. The color line exists both symbolically and figuratively as a divider that further separates the two groups of people. While these groups live in the same country with the same laws, they have completely different lives all because of their skin color differences. Blacks don’t have the same opportunities of success as the more

Du Bois used the basic concept of the color line to build upon when he created an analysis to identify the racism issues we have in this country. He tries to connect the problem of race, racial domination, and racial exploitation with the problems of the color line. He believed it was a 20 century world problem of the color line between an advanced race of white men and the great majority of undeveloped nations of mankind who happened to be brown or black. Du Bois addressed the differences of race and how it chiefly shows its differences with skin color and hair texture. These differences are used to shut out certain races that do not fit the standard mold of success.

When you look around in a public area, you are able to see numerous amounts of skin colors interacting with one another. Although, it wasn’t always like that. People of all our races weren’t able to sit at the same table without causing uproar, especially in schools. As a matter of fact, Caucasians and African Americans were not even allowed to attend the same school. One famous story that is forever marked down in history is the Little Rock Nine because their bravery in pursuing an education.

Instead of sameness?” ” (Lowry 98). We, like him, come to understand that colors are something his society is not familiar with. It is his mentor, The Giver, who explains that the leaders of the community have come to believe that colors (and any thing that offers uniqueness) divide people.

Many are unaware of the effects that race has played in their lives over the years. Some may not understand its implications, but are very oblivious to it. Race can influence such things like attitude and behavior. Nowadays being white or black means something more than just a Crayola color. No longer are they just colors, they are races with their own rules and regulations. People of color have been inferior to the white race for centuries. In their own way Zora Neale Hurston shows this concept in her story “How it feels to be Colored Me” as does Richard Wright in his autobiographical sketch “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”.

Historical archives discovered by Dorman show that colorism had tangible boundaries within the African American community during the 1920s (47). It is stated that blacks often divided themselves into four subcategories which consisted of “black”, “brown”, “light brown”, and “yellow” Negros (Dorman 47). The above ranking would be listed in a hierarchy from “black” being at the bottom of the socially accepted hierarchy to the “yellow negro” being the most revered and desired socially.