The Color Line in the United States

W.E.B. DuBois in 1945 pointed out that the problem of this century "is the problem of the color line," and a look through American history shows that this has been the case not only with reference to the line between black and white but between other facial groups as well--Hispanic, Asian, and Native American. Europeans brought a certain attitude with them to this continent, an attitude of superiority that became translated into racial superiority over other racial groups. The color line became even more of a problem with certain other developments, such as the institution of slavery, the use of Chinese labor on the railroads, and more recently, issues of illegal immigration primarily across the Southern border. The problem of the color line remains with us today, as can be seen in the recent arguments and votes concerning immigration issues, the use of affirmative action in higher education and the giving of public works contracts, and in hate crimes sowing that this is anything but a colorblind society.

The color line was an issue from the time Europeans first arrived in North America, with the Native Americans standing as a people seen as different culturally and racially. The Europeans later would bring slaves from Africa to work the plantations, and the color line again operated to keep the races separate and, more importantly, to assert the superiority of the white race over the black, just as the Europeans had asserted their superiority over the Indian. Zinn poi

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the same time a different image was imposed by the majority society, as King notes: I grew up on the one hand feeling positive about being a West Indian and Black; but on the other hand, I had to grapple with the negative imagery of being a Black child in the United Stats, not wanting to identity with people who were slaves and who behaved in a Steppin Fetchit, Rochester model. Everytime one of those movies was shown, we had to fight the next day in school because someone would come up and mock you (King 10). The color line is not only a black and white line, as noted, and this was made evident in World War II when Japanese-Americans were removed form their homes, as told by Valerie Matsumoto. The United States interned Japanese residents of the Western states in internment camps such as that at Manzanar in California. Japanese living in the Western states were seen as potential subversives and were summarily removed to camps to prevent this. At the time of the beginning of the war, there were some 127,000 persons having common ancestry with those who had launched the Pearl Harbor attack. Some 113,000 of these lived in the four states of California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, with 94,000 in California alone. They wer

Category: History - T