How it feels to Be Colored Me is a descriptive essay by Zora Neale Hurston that does a description of the experiences she had in the American society being an African American woman. Growing up in an all-black community of Florida, Zora did not feel her race had an impact in her life until she left her hometown to live in Jacksonville at the age of thirteen. The author delves into the issue of racial identities and how African-Americans in her society have placed great emphasis on the historical injustices of slavery to haunt the whites. African-Americans should embrace the outcome of the struggles made by the past generations against historical injustices around slavery to pursue glory and adventure.
In the introduction of her essay (Hurston) describes how racial identity back when she was a young girl was a merely social phenomenon. She says, “The only white people I knew passed through the town going to or coming from Orlando.” This description serves to establish the idea that, at that age, she had not conceived her own identity. She refers to herself as “everybody’s Zora” when she performs for the white and colored travelers who passed through the town. The only difference between the whites and colored people at this point, according to her is, the whites gave her small silver, but “the colored people gave no dimes.
When she moves to Jacksonville, Hurston is when she starts experiencing the racial divide. She declares, “I was not Zora of Orange County anymore, I was now a little colored girl.” The postulation that the change in location suddenly made her ‘feel’ black is meant to impose the idea Hurston tries to bring across that race is a matter of social reinforcements and a change of perspective. In this new environment, her fellow colored people always want to remind her of the historical injustice and slavery surged against her ancestors, a form of thinking she refers to as “sobbing school.” She instead chooses to focus on using the gift of freedom given to her by the past generations to advance herself in the process of life. She states, “Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world–I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” Hurston also condemns the African-Americans of her generation who are not proud of their origins and instead want to exoticize their racial identities to escape from discrimination. “I am colored, but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief.” Hurston goes ahead to describe how the racial differences are only felt when they are compared against each other. She feels her distinction in a space full of white people, but through it all, she chooses to remain herself.
When Hurston uses the bags to illustrate our differences in the race, she brings up a fundamental point that deep inside. We are all the same despite our physical appearances, and what we choose to do with our unique qualities is what will determine if we surge within the boundaries.