The Emergence And Passing Of Jean Toomer

An examination contrasting the diaries of Donald Vining and Martin Duberman in understanding gay consciousness against the matrimonial hegemony

In his essay, “As Black as We Wish to be,” author Thomas Chatterton Williams tries to paint a picture of a world where the sight of interracial families was still considered an oddity and shows how, over the decades, society has slowly became more acceptable towards the idea. He begins the essay briefly discussing the ignorance of people during the late 1980’s while also elaborating what hardships African Americans have dealt with over the past century. He explains that even with the progression of interracial families and equality of African Americans, a new problem has now risen for interracial children of the future. While either being multiracial, African American, or White, what do they decide to identify themselves as? This is the major question that arises throughout Williams’s argument. While Williams’s supports his argument with unreliable environmental evidence, as well with other statistical evidence. His argument is weakened by an abundance of facts, disorganization, and an excessive use of diluted information.

Lars Eighner writes an article in The Texas Observer called “Bigmama Didn’t Shop at Woolworths” that gives us insight into the life of a family living in Bryan Texas. Bigmama lets us know about her life in which she is unable to shop at regular stores and is followed around to make sure she does not steal anything. Bigmama has to teach her granddaughter about this way of life, advising Sunny Nash about the term “colored” in hopes that Sunny would not live a life of embarrassment or make a mistake and get herself killed. (Eighner 29) We are shown how Bigmama has to make decisions and influence the youth to be aware of what the world is like so that her family would survive. In 1946, Viola Johnson receives a letter from Louisiana State University informing her that the State of Louisiana has separate colleges for whites and colored students and that she would not be admitted to their medical college. (Patterson) Johnson would then write a letter informing LSU that she would be taking them to court in this issue. As time passed, Johnson would attend the southern Louisiana College for colored students and then request again to be admitted to the Medical college at LSU. Being denied again, Johnson would be taken on as the “ideal plaintiff” for the NAACP and go to court against LSU for violating the 14th amendment. She would lose the court battle against LSU, but that did not end her determination. Viola Johnson, now Doctor Viola Coleman would move to Midland, Texas and assist in the desegregation process of Midland Medical school. Viola left a legacy to her children, who knew nothing of what their mother did until she passed, to stand for what they believe in and stay headstrong in this life against unequal rights. (Patterson) In a news article from the 1940s, The Baird Star, reads

The book “Coming of Age in Mississippi” By Anne Moody is an autobiography and talks about the lifestyle of growing up as a Negro in the rural south during horrid times for blacks. Moody was born on September 15, 1940 and died just last year on February 5, 2015. Moody starts her story from the beginning of child hood living with her mother and siblings. She was a brilliant student and also had the motivation for doing her best, but the barriers that blocked her simply seemed impossible to pass, she was a black female. It is noted that in Centreville, where she lived, 8th grade was the highest education for Negro children (28). Whites on the other hand had much more access to literally everything. It wasn’t until about the age of 7 when Moody played with other white children for the first time, this was how segregated the lives were. When including race Moody’s mother always seemed to hide things from Moody and that’s what sprung her curiosity. Moody was often scolded for asking questions that arose like, why the theaters had white and black sections.

Francis Cecil Sumner was born on December 7, 1985 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Too many Sumner was known as the ‘Father of Black Psychologist’ because he was the first black male to receive his doctoral in psychology. Sumner completed this degree at Clark University at Massachusetts in the year of 1920. A committed scholar regarding psychology, languages, and religion, Francis assisted with bettering education opportunities for African Americans for the reason that he was colored” (“Francis Cecil Sumner”). As a child Sumner attended elementary school and three different States Plainfield, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; and Norfolk, Virginia. Sumner’s father was unappeased with the caliber of prep school offered to African youth in the restricted schools available to coloreds (Francis Sumner, Max Meenes). Sumner’s father who was self-educated decided to home-school his son from elementary up

In the late 1960s, Nathan McCall was a smart young African-American living in an all black neighborhood called Manor Cavalier, located in Portsmouth, Virginia. McCall was one of the five young children being raised by his mother and stepfather. First of all, he had two older brothers named Dwight, and then there was Billy, followed by McCall himself, a younger brother Bryan Keith and eventually a stepbrother named Junnie. In a family there is always that person that loves to absorb knowledge; that person was Nathan the one that enjoyed school and books. However, being surrounded by bad influences, living in a bad neighborhood and not to mention living in a time of racism affected his motivation to succeed in the future. The purpose of this essay is that it will demonstrate that someone being labeled as something they are not will affect that person’s future life. Using the labeling theory, the paper will explain that being insulted, humiliated and treated less than a person can lead a youngster to become an aggressive and careless child. Therefore, strategies that will help these youngsters to overcome these racial abuses and false libeling’s are by giving equal opportunities and treatments to anyone, no mater of their past mistakes when they simply want to adjust back to society.

Within the definitions and perceptions of race exists a dichotomy that Duster illuminates as inconsistent, transforming, and historically erratic depictions of what represents the racial categorization of “white”. Vacillating between racial portrayals of “whiteness”, embodying a divergence between the fluidity of historic and social transformation and a disingenuous reflection of bigotry, disrespect, and intolerance, Duster distinguishes race as a compilation of divergent biochemical, neurological, and social identities (Duster n.d.). Cognizant of concessions shown to the “white” race, Duster denotes an inevitability to refute the moral reality of “white’ exclusivity,

James McBride can tell you firsthand about man verse racial identity. Journalizing his experience in his New York Times Bestseller novel the Color of Water simply outlined his struggles of finding who he was. His upbringing included a black father and a Jewish white mother. His background made it hard for him to understand why his home was different than others on the street. Although McBride experience shows an older outtake of racial identity, some may say this still is a problem today. Offspring feels the need to pick a race in society to succeed in the generation and it may be the step to understands them more. Notice in the subtitle of the book "A black Men tribute to his white mother" he label himself as just black as if there was a barrier between his mother and himself because the so different. Today we need to not let racial identity become a big part of our lives.

Nathan’s blackness got in the way of his education and success. At a young age, whether he knew it or not, he had

Many times blacks who are of a lighter complexion are seen as “prettier or more desireable” towards other blacks today, and as stated previously, were offered better employment opportunities. However sometimes they are shunned by whites and blacks alike and are treated as outcasts by the community due to their inability to conform to a certain ethnicity. In the book “The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man,” James Weldon Johnson depicts the fictional life of a biracial man living in the post-reconstruction era of America in the nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. In his early childhood days, the narrator frequently struggled with his personal identity after he was told to stand with the rest of his African American classmates during somewhat of an analyzation of the gender percentages by a certain staff member. “I wish all of the white scholars to stand for a moment. ‘I rose with the others, the teacher looked down at me and said ‘ You sit down for the present, and rise with the others. ‘I sat down dazed… A few of the white boys jeered me saying:’ Oh you’re a nigger too! ‘I heard some of the black children say,’ Oh, we knew he was colored, Shiny would say; ‘Come along don’t tease him, and thereby winning my undying gratitude.’” (Weldon 11) Before he was seemingly outed

In the case of Amanda America Dickson, “her personal identity was ultimately bounded by her sense of class solidarity with her father, that is, by her socialization as David Dickson’s daughter, her gender role as a lady, and her racial definition as a person to whom racial categories did not apply.” This may mean that her freedom was less proscribed by race because she was not a male seeking political advantage. Some people of mixed-race in the nineteenth century South managed to create a personal identity and status that contradicts the contention that all non-whites in antebellum Georgia lived under the oppressive system of slavery. In any case, Amanda America Dickson perceived and performed her role as wealthy lady and apparently

1920’s Struggles During the Harlem Renaissance there were many inspirational authors, poets, and artistic influences in the African American culture, along with women’s rights. Two of which are Jean Toomer, who wrote “Georgia Dusk” and Amy Lowell who wrote, “New Heaven’s for Old.” “Georgia Dusk” portrays the lives of African Americans from an inside perspective that allows readers to grasp onto what it was like to live with racism and diversity during that time period. While at the same time Amy Lowell is describing her life as a women with no rights but those in the house, both views inflict upon the idea of being unvaluable and underappreciated for being the race or gender that they are.

So, Mr. Griffin had a multistage process done on his body so that the pigment of his skin would appear darker. After many treatments of ultraviolet light and tablet pills, Mr. Griffin had become a black man. After Mr. Griffin’s transformation was complete, he immersed himself into the black community. Mr. Griffin was not prepared for what would happen to him once in the black life. While Mr. Griffin traveled to different places in the south he met numerous people, both black and white. Some people were friendly while others were quite hostile.

The narrator of The Autobiography grows up his whole life thinking that he is white. It is not until one fateful day in school where a teacher indirectly tells him that he is black that he finds out. This revelation, which he himself describes as “a sword-thrust” (Johnson 13), suggests a transformation, a great change, a development in the Ex-Colored Man’s racial consciousness in the future. However, as M. Giulia Fabi says, “[The ECM’s] proclaimed loyalty to his ‘mother’s people’ is continuously undercut by his admiration for and identification with mainstream white America” (375). She also indicates how when contrasted with previous passers, “the Ex-Colored Man’s oft-noted cowardice,

Curiosity was inevitable for the boy, however, and led him into what William E. Cross’s Nigresence Model declared was the immersion stage of racial identity for a black person. In this stage, African Americans basically submerge