Hurston  was a little biracial girl from the small Negro town of Eatwonville in Florida. This was a predominately colored community . Hurston at the age of  thirteen became woke to the fact that she was colored.Living  in a mostly colored community she was seen  as the feminine beauty. Also known as the Zora , she was praised . Hurston was unaware of the impact the color of her skin would have on her.She  was sent to a school in Jacksonville where she was no longer the zora of the community. Hurston was no longer seen for her beauty,but only for the color of her skin.

This was a strange phenomenon for Hurston, yet at the same time symbolized her rebirth. As she states ” She was no longer  Zora of Orange County anymore, and it was evident in the way people treated her. As her  heart beat to the flow of Jazz and the rhythm of the drums she could only face her truth (para four).”

Hurston saw slavery as a priced to pay for civilization. She did not believed her past ancestral trauma defined her.In Hurston eyes that was the past and the present was more important. She never saw herself as the colored girl because that was only someones else interpretation of her.

Zora was who she was and what she would remain. She lived her life in the moment and saw the world as her oyster . Never to be angry or carrying  the hate of her ancestors in her heart. She made the best of being colored and white.

A similarity in Emerson’s “Nature” where he also believes in making the best of the present. The past is only a guide to the development of civilization.  Instead of creating rules to follow its more liberating to let nature take its course.  When a man is open to his surroundings he then experiences a newness in self. Emerson was detached from is ego and saw himself in a higher form. Hurston seem have had the same belief.

Too often do we see this generation of young black men and women attached to the past pains of slavery. They hold hate and grudge in their hearts for a pain they did not physically experience. Though it is good to acknowledge the sacrifice our ancestors made for  our freedom.It is also important to understand that this was done so that we can be what they weren’t able to be. Not this another colored person but a person defined by our character, hard work and passion .

We are not not the color of our skin , we are the fruits of our labour.

Zora Neal Hurston starts off her second paragraph of “How It Feels To Be Colored Me” with a very powerful sentence. “I remember the very day I became colored.” The combination of words explains an experience majority, if not all, black folks go through. A moment in life when they realize the color of their skin will create a vastly different life from those with lighter, whiter skin. Hurston comes to this realization when she moves from Eatonville to Jacksonville, Florida. She moves from her majority-black community to a community wear her blackness stands out. She even states; “I was not Zora of Orange County. I was now a little colored girl.” While living in Eatonville, it’s almost as though Hurston was not fully aware of her blackness. Of course, she saw the white tourist going through her town, but she was not aware that the way they treated and acted towards her was due to the color of her skin.

I am currently reading Hurston’s book “Their Eyes Are Watching God”. The main character Janie has an experience like this as well, an experience when she realizes she is a little black girl. Growing up and playing with white children, she herself thought she was white. It was not until she was photographed next to white children that she became aware that she is colored. She was amazed, exclaiming “Aw, aw! Ah’m colored!” Hurston reflects the same idea of “I remember the very day I became colored” through this passage as well. It shows the innocence and naivety of children, only wanting to play and have fun while completely unaware of cruel society can truly be. To children, there is no separation. To children, we are all the same despite our differences. But that innocence and naivety disappear as we are forced to acknowledge the harsh reality, especially during the time this book takes place. Slavery might have been over, but discrimination was still heavy on the mind of many.

In “How It Feels To Be Colored Me” while living with whites, she is constantly reminded of her blackness when that was something she was never concerned about before the age of thirteen. But even with constant reminders, Hurston did not want to be defined by just her blackness. She wanted to be defined as Zora. She does not want pity, she does not want to be bothered by the lives of the generations before her. She wants to continue to look forward but not in the past. It is powerful, in thought, but us black folks will always live in our ancestor’s footsteps. We continue to grow with them in our thoughts as a piece of motivation and incentive. Especially now, with growing protests and a fight for injustice, we are reminded of those who were brought to this country unwillingly and how that has shaped how black folks are treated even today. However, Hurston does make a point in being her own person and not wanting to be defined by her past. We shouldn’t weep or give in to the prejudice we face, but we also shouldn’t turn our backs on our history.

In Hurston’s How it Feels to be Colored Me, she explores the idea that W.E.B DuBois spoke on in his book The Souls of Black Folk: the idea of a “double-consciousness”. This idea, introduced in the title, states that every Black American has two identities: Black and American. Hurston tackles this idea by speaking on an idea that still persists to this day (and one that I’ve even experienced myself) and that’s the idea of predominantly _____ areas. Coming from a completely segregated colored neighborhood didn’t allow for her to understand that not everyone in the world gets treated exactly the same. This disconnect allowed her to live peacefully until she had to leave her town and experience life as an outsider based solely on her looks as shown when she says “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background”. To her, the idea of colored essentially only exists when the races intermingle.

Hurston segways perfectly into the confine’s of Fanon’s The Fact of Blackness as he shares similar views, but through a completely different lens. He too does not understand the issue of his blackness until he is faced with interacting with white counterparts. Unlike Zora, who takes it upon herself to attempt to be lighthearted, Fanon is more bleak, adhering to the poor experiences he faced early on. Although he was initially unable to understand why the world viewed him as a problem, he dug into the history books and came back with one main sentiment: “The Negro is an animal”. By relating black people to animals, he was able to view himself from the perspective of white people and understand why they saw him as such. One instance was when he was shivering on a winter day and a young, white boy believed that he was shaking with rage instead of being cold.

Both Hurston and Fanon understood their differentiation and their place in society, but the difference comes in the HOW. Hurston sees her difference almost as a neutral anomaly as she believes she just understands things in more different in interesting ways such as when a white friend complimented the music while she herself felt as though she could feel it in her spirit when she said, “The great blobs of red and purple emotion have not touched him”. This portrays her blackness as almost a “sixth sense” which is unattainable by white people. Fanon sees blackness as quite the opposite, a disease which most black people want to get rid of just to fit in, but have to accept and embrace to survive within their own bodies. Being seen as different or as he put it “savages, brutes, illeterates”, bothers him extremely as he KNOWS that these stereotypes are incorrect (as shown in his writing style) and he actively sought to remedy these false pretenses in the eyes of white people around him. While Hurston accepted her place in the world as she believed white people “denied themselves the pleasure” of her company by discriminating against her, Fanon was attempting to solve the issue at hand to become more widely accepted rather than just accepting himself and who he was, but he never wanted to be white, just not seen as “ugly” and “mean”.

In “Souls of black folk,” W.E.B. Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African American in American society. He established the main reasons of discrimination is because of skin color and the central problem of 20^th century is the color line. At a time being American essentially meant to be white and how difficult it was to be both black and American. The slow growth of personal leadership and frankly criticized the leaders who bear the primary responsibility of today’s race. Also, he quickly outlined behind the veil, next, he developed his view on double consciousness. Du Bois is driven into two concepts of “veil” and “double consciousness.”

The significance of these words is profound, because they not only briefly describe the situation of blacks and Americans at that time but are also faithful to the spiritual themes of blacks and Americans today. Being African Americans in the United States experience two things. First is having black identity and second is black identity born as slavery. A central metaphor in the book is the idea that the veil separates whites from blacks. The veil is recommended for darker black skin. At the same time, in addition to racist negative visions of black people, the veil prevents blacks from seeing themselves. Du Bois even gave an example that the veil can physically make him different from other people. He recalled his childhood memory that was the first time he realized racism when a girl refused to accept his visiting card. According to Du Bois, “Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil” (1).

In the age of slavery, African American have experienced all doubts and disappointments in a sacred event as “To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice” (Du Bois 1). People couldn’t fully understand the lives of African American people inside the veil. This is a special feeling most African American men and women experience of double consciousness. Double consciousness is considered here as a kind of feeling. It is also part of a more complex dualism, a completely different thought, effort and ideal feeling. As we can see that in some situations they are being treated disrespectfully and pitifully in society for no particular reason and it is just because of black. Those feelings are fixed and lasting forms of consciousness to them and experience them with invalidating. According to Du Bois, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (1). Du Bois, as a victim of racism as black African American have struggled through a variety of stressful outcomes.