Color and Race
Critical Reflection The Color Complex The politics of skin color among African-Americans is complex subject with a long and tumultuous history. Three difference intellectual minds Kathy Russell, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall examine the history and complexity of the issue of skin color among the African-American community. This issue is an extremely sensitive one that is rarely examined by the African-American community. As Russell describes it, African-Americans prefer not to "air there dirty laundry" in front of whites while pretending that skin color is not an issue among African-Americans. However, as Russell notes "beneath a surface appearance of Black solidarity lies a matrix of attitudes about skin color and features in which color, not expertise, influences hiring; and complexion, not talent, dictates casting for television and film" (Russell 1). The goal of this book is to reveal the nature of the color complex among African-Americans and to reveal the ramifications that the color complex has today in the African-American community. Russell does not attempt to answer any specific research question, as she and her colleagues simply examine the state of the color complex among African-Americans. People are interes
This complex has also extended its ugly head to the way most African-American women take care of their hair and family and friends interact. An ever existing reminder of a white dominated society. As a result of this miscegenation a new race of Creoles emerged in the United States. These institutions and ideals have been essential to the development of a color complex in the African-American community, which has in essence, divided the community. As this link the Creole masses established themselves as a new free class or in some instances slaves themselves who worked in realms different from that or the African-American masses. During this tumultuous time period miscegenation occurred between African slaves, the white majority and the local Native American populations. After the period of the enslavement was ended by the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, the Creole community no longer had the barrier of freedom to separate themselves from the masses of the newly freed African-Americans. Since the norms of the larger society have been forced onto the African -American community, African-Americans have embraced Whiteness and thus embraced light skin as closer to white. The color complex today is a facet of African-American life and resonates in every aspect of it. This complex with all its complexities must be understood if the African-American community is to ever have a chance to truly become unified as a people and as a race. This material is methodologically and substantively linked to the material which we are currently studying in class because it is yet another example of the fact that African-Americans in this country had the norms of the society at large forced upon them. As time passed this practice lead to the African-American community associating whiteness with success as revealed by Signithia Fordham in her book, Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success, at Capital High. However, these Creoles or "mulattoes" as they were often called also established systems in which African-Americans of fair skin were able to receive a higher quality education than those who were dark-skinned. Society is one of limited resources, as a white's acquired these resources they used their power through institutions and ideals to impose their beliefs on the African-American community. In an effort "to preserve their status this colered elite began to segregate themselves into a separate community" (Russell 24).
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Acceptance Essays
