How It Feels To Be Colored Me Analysis

Jacksonville is where she where Hurston “was now a little colored girl.”(14) The pain that discrimination can cause did not affect Hurston her self-pride and individuality did not allow racial difference to effect her negatively. Hurston writes “I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood”. (14) Hurston describes how someone is always reminding her of the past transgressions of the White people. Her response is simply that the past is in the past and we must live in the present. Hurston does describe moments when she feels racial difference and her experiences with it. There are time where being amount thousands of white people the author is “a dark rock surged upon, and overswept.”(14) Additionally there are the times where the author is among just one white person in a sea of black people as she describes in her different experience with a friend at a Jazz Club. With all of these situations of difference the author describes not changing and remaining the same. The author explains pride in oneself multiple times throughout the essay stating “I am the eternal feminine” (14) and “How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my

Hurston argument is that there is a “lack of curiosity about the internal lives and emotions of the Negroes, and for that matter, any non-Anglo-Saxon peoples within our borders, above the class of unskilled labor” (Hurston 951). Within the border of the world, where whites are considered majority there is no sense of awareness of marginalized groups. Hurston expands this thought by stating, “The fact that there is no demand

W.E.B. Du Bois (1968-1963) was a huge contributor to sociology through the eyes and experience of an African-American scholar (Vissing, 2011). Du Bois was an author, activist and student of Black sociology. In his 1897 article, Strivings of the Negro People”, Du Bois introduced the term “double-consciousness”, a concept I believe to be just as relevant in today’s African-American communities. Double consciousness refers to what Du Bois considered an absence of “true self consciousness” (Du Bois, 1897) amongst Africans in America. In place of that absence, lies a dual awareness- awareness of one’s self combined with an awareness

Hurston, on the other hand, lived in a town where only blacks lived until she was thirteen years old. Therefore, she only knew the “black” self. There was no second identity to contend with. She states that “white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there.”2 She does not feel anger when she is discriminated against. She only wonders how anyone can not want to be in her company. She “has no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored” (Hurston 1712).

W.E.B. DuBois, in The Souls of Black Folk describes the very poignant image of a veil between the blacks and the whites in his society. He constructs the concept of a double-consciousness, wherein a black person has two identities as two completely separate individuals, in order to demonstrate the fallacy of these opinions. J.S. Mill also describes a certain fallacy in his own freedom of thought, a general conception of individuals that allows them to accept something similar to DuBois’ double-consciousness and perpetuates the existence of the veil.

In Zora Hurston’s “How it feels to be colored me”, she teaches her readers what it means to be a person of color who loves yourself. While reading “How it feels to be colored me”, the readers are shown that Zora Hurston has great pride and love for who she is as a person and she shows this with the many rhetorical strategies present in her story. In Hurston’s story she establishes her love of self by using connotations about her skin color, metaphors about how she should not be treated differently based on the color of her skin, and imagery to vividly describe the way she is treated by the people of the world.

Even though both Hurston and Hughes grew up around the same time period, they had very different ideals regarding their experience as African American’s as well as a different voice used within their works to convey their ideals. Hurston in her 1928 essay “How it Feels to be Colored Me” describes her childhood and coming of age with a delightful zest that cannot be contained. Although the essay does contain some dark moments such as when she describes her experience with her friend at the jazz club and the sudden realization of the racial difference between her and the other patrons, for the most part the work exudes her keen sense of dignity despite the popular opinion of the masses during that period. Lines in her essay such as “But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes…I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it” (Abcarian, Klotz, and Cohen 812) beautifully express her sense of self dignity and refusal to give in to the negative energies surrounding her race. Despite the many hardships that the color of her skin caused her she was proud and determined to never let that stand in her way of

She grew up in a primarily black town where not many whites come through. So growing up she did not experience much racism until she was older. By her teen years she could not understand why someone would discriminate against her. But she was not insulted by the racism, she simply did not care. In the story she went to a jazz bar with one of her friends who was a white man. She explains her experience as “when I sit in the drafty basement that is The New World Cabaret with a white person, my color shows” (Hurston 977). Throughout the story she talks about how she does not feel any different from anyone else, except this moment. The white man cannot relate to Hurston because of their very different life experiences. Hurston really feels the jazz music and has a personal connection, whereas, the white man just thinks it is good

The most inportant question is whether Hurston's books further racial equality or not. Langston Hughes certainly didn't think so, calling her "a perfect 'darkie.'" He believed whites paid her for being their happy stereotype so they could feel okay about blacks' inequality (Hughes,1940). Likewise, Alain Locke criticized her avoidance of interracial confrontations (Locke,1938), as did Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison

This doesn’t correlate to what Hurston conveys in her metaphor because the metaphor is declaring that humans are different only because of their color, while the rest of the essay is stating that not only is the color different, but also the personality of the

Chapter Summaries Chapter 1. Of Our Spiritual Strivings In this book W.E.B Du Bois explains how he experience racial diversity at a very young age and he also spoke about two major ______ the “double consciousness” and “the veil”. “Double consciousness” is the belief that African-Americans in the United States live with two different identities. Du bois describes that one of the most important thing to the black experience is the black identity, the second thing was the American identity.

”(188). She doesn't believe her race to be something bad either. Hurston was a young colored woman at Barnard College and she said “Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon , and overswept, but through it all I remain myself.” She was too busy “sharpening her oyster knife” (186), to be

The early 20th century African-American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois identified the 'double consciousness' of African-Americans as the demand that African-Americans must understand white culture as well as their own to survive in a hostile, white-dominated America. Unlike whites, who could choose to interact with blacks only when it suited their needs (whether this meant employing them as servants or going to jazz clubs), African-Americans had to be hyper-aware of the needs of whites, given white political and economic dominance.

DuBois was fascinated by the social structure of society, how people interacted with one another, and what factors contributed to the extent of their interaction. DuBois focused his studies on racial issues and how the minority view themselves against a white community. During his studies he coined the term “Double Consciousness,” which takes a deeper look into how one develops a divided sense of self by viewing themselves critically through the eyes of others, more specifically the white majority and the black community. DuBois discusses this developed consciousness as the participation one takes in each community. He believed that black Americans also developed a two souled perspective, having two different thoughts and behaviors, depending on who is viewing them.

William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor and he explored a societal idea that other authors, poets, and short story writers adapted in their pieces of writings as well. The theories of Du Bois’ “Double Consciousness” made its way into Ralph Ellison 's novel Invisible Man, and Langston Hughes series of poems. All of these authors wrote about Double Consciousness in there own way but never changed the real meaning of it being, it describes the individual sensation of feeling as though your identity is divided into several parts, making it difficult or impossible to have one unified identity. Double Consciousness, had two perceptions that anyone could take either way. The first being, the presentation of African-American as almost entirely deprived of their agency. Then, the second idea branching off of Double Consciousness was what Ellison adapted to his novel. One is not just “African” or just “American” that certain black society lives as an “American” and a “Negro” but derives from all the wealth of human experience encompassing multiple layers of identity. Both views lead back to the ideas of identity in society and within a single person, which Ellison, and Wright challenged us as the readers to find in there pieces of work.