TOW #1 - How It Feels To Be Colored Me

Zora Neale Hurston writes a compelling essay about the way our environment effects our race.  Hurston kicks off How It Feels to be Colored Me by stating that “I lived in the little Negro town of Eatonville, Florida.  It is exclusively a colored town” (Hurston 114).  This establishes some credibility with the fact that she knows what it is like to grow up feeling included and common in her community.  But when she goes to a different school in Jacksonville.  Her environment changes and becomes foreign to her.  In addition to validating her opinions through tales of her childhood, she was also associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a period which shined light on black artists.  Hurston’s accounts on being black in an all-white community are mainly directed towards younger black women and men.  However, her message can be pertinent to others who struggle with their identity.  Hurston mainly focuses on the fact her feelings with race change wherever she is.  For example, when listening to jazz music, a white man simply states that the music was good, but to her it was an anthem.  The music empowered her and put her into a state full of rage and emotion.  When he simply commented on the music, she realized he did not feel what she did because “he is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored” (Hurston 116).  She and him do not feel the same emotions from a historically black genre.  At this time, she sees the divide between her race and his, and it is extremely relevant when they are together in a cultural environment. 

Hurston’s ability to connect her race and a simple brown bag effectively show readers how race shouldn’t be speculated heavily about.  She says that in a bag, “a bit of colored glass more or less would not matter” (Hurston 117).  Her statement screams not only equality, but also diversity.  The “priceless and worthless” (Hurston 117) pieces mentioned in the bag assert the fact that everyone is made differently with different traits, but her point about how colored glass shouldn’t matter proves that race is merely a color, not a social restriction.  In addition, she uses imagery to strengthen the hopes of young black people.  She mentions how the jazz music “rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive fury, rending it, clawing it until it breaks through to the jungle beyond” (Hurston 116).  This empowers readers with the need to fight against racial boundaries and feel great about their color, Hurston even says that when she feels “discriminated against,” “it does not make me angry.  It merely astonishes me” (Hurston 117).  The use of her imagery and comparisons prove to reader race is not the center of the universe, confidence is.