American Literature

The concept of color in America has long been a polarizing issue, not only politically but individually in helping Americans understand our national and social identities. From the long history of racial subjugation and degradation, founded by the slave trade and continued long after slavery had been abolished, to present day America where we try to attain colorblindness but have still not lost the awareness of racial differences, color has continued to be an important foundation for how we define ourselves. It would be incorrect to assume that simply because color is still part of our social and political awareness that it has not changed in the century and a half since the abolition of slavery or the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The color lines have doubtlessly been blurred as Americas collective attitudes have changed to embrace a broader view of our relationship to humanity. However, the idea of color is still present and as a concept acts equally as burden and liberator, in Americas desire to paradoxically ignore but value racial differences. We cannot ignore it, being so deeply ingrained in our political and social history but nor can we use it as the political and social litmus tests of old that based its rules of inclusionexclusion upon the color of ones skin.

Americas idea of color has been created from a combination of factors, including legal and political edicts and restrictions, social definitions and revolutions, but the one that persists in our minds is something that is impossible to put our finger directly upon. While slavery helped to propagate the idea of color as a dividing barrier, when slavery ended the awareness of differences in color did not. When slavery ended the African Americans who became free and parts of the larger American society were still kept out of the American dream. Its no wonder, given the predominance of lynch mobs and Jim Crow laws to keep black separate from whites in the South that any feelings of being integrated into the larger perspectives of America was paltry at best. In 1964, Malcolm X noted, Im one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. Its this feeling of victimization that prevails even today within Americas national and individual concept of color the psychological damage remains because we cannot erase the damages of over a century of institutionalized racism. Lorna Dee Cervantes expresses a similar sentiment in her poem, Every day I am deluged with remindersthat this is not my land and this is my land (ll. 52-54). Constitutionally part of America, they were still excluded on the basis of legal and social rules and ideals.

Even now, as we try to approach the world with a view toward equality, the awareness of color is still persistent. However, it is now from a different perspective. Whereas black skin was seen as reason for exclusion in the 19th and early 20th centuries, by the late 20th century political and social changes fought for by civil rights leaders, Malcolm X included, made inclusion a reality of color. Such things as the Equal Rights Amendment and Affirmative Action have created a legal framework for addressing the issue of color. However, as Malcolm X noted in his speech, How can you thank a man for giving you whats already yours How then can you thank him for giving you only part of whats already yours As American citizens, freed by the actions of President Lincoln, they remained enslaved to a social and political pandering of individual politicians and groups, showing how deeply the slave-owner mentality had penetrated into the fabric of Americas identity. When such views were overcome and political equality became more a reality, the concept of color still remains. Even laws such as Affirmative Action, which were created to help provide equality, have been met with contention because of the need of such a law to see and value color in order to work effectively. Is this wrong Not entirely, because while we may legally and politically be colorblind, the reality is much different and there continues to be racism.

In this country we cannot escape color. America is a country where, in fact, we value its contribution to who we are as individuals and how we relate to the world around us, where we take pride in our color and its associations to history and broad political or social accomplishments we must embrace it without allowing it to divide us. Color in America is a racial Catch-22 that has no solution in our present views. As long as we value color as part of a persons identity, we allow the door to stand open for the devaluation of this same person based upon their racial identity. Without an awareness of difference and without the social and political stain placed upon color by our forbearers as an excuse for slavery, Jim Crow laws would never have existed and the integration of society would have been a much smoother process. In the same instance, when we close the door to racial difference, we will also be closing the door on a part of American history that while horrific, nevertheless, shows both the hypocrisy and beauty of the American dream. Americans, regardless of their color, understand the world, in part, based on how color relates us to the world. Politically and socially polarizing, color is nevertheless important to who we are and perhaps most important to who we can, as a country become.