January 2024 - The Color Line
In 1881, Frederick Douglass published an article in The North American Review entitled, “The Color Line.” (Vol. 132). He writes how, “[o]ut of the depths of slavery has come this prejudice and this color line.” They were used by powerful interests to separate humans into those who are deemed worthy of respect from those who are not. Its purpose is clear, Douglass explains – it “simply advertises the objects of oppression, insult, and persecution.”
The color line has divided people by race in many ways. Douglass points out that it exists “[i]n nearly every department of American life…. It fills the air.” And furthermore, “It meets Black people at workshop and factory, when they apply for work. It meets them at the church, the hotel, at the ballot-box, and worst of all, it meets them at the jury-box.”
Though the color line was intended to deny Black citizens power, it also was created out of concern for white comfort. While they might not have wanted to admit it, most white people understood that centuries of exploitation had created a debt owed to Black Americans. This awareness created tension. Douglass explains, “A man without the ability or the disposition to pay a just debt does not feel at ease in the presence of his creditor. He does not want to meet him on the street, or in the market-place. Such meeting makes him uncomfortable.” Segregation minimized white discomfort.
Douglass himself bore the color line with grace, perhaps because he did not internalize it. As “The Color Line” argues, racial prejudice is not inherent in human beings or in society. Douglass understood that the color line manifested in particular times, for particular reasons. It was neither a part of him nor inevitable. He wrote, “It is American, not European: local, not general; limited, not universal, and must be ascribed to artificial conditions, and not to any fixed or universal law of nature.” In Europe a Black person “mingles with the multitude unquestioned.” The color line proved contingent.
The term was made famous when W. E. B. DuBois declared that the color line was "the problem of the twentieth century." But as a child, DuBois himself mingled with white children unquestioned. Being one of the very few Black children in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, he was tolerated. Perhaps he and Douglass gained their confidence through experiencing social equality.
It was when DuBois entered the white university settings that the color line became clear to him. A “veil” separated him from much of American academia. As he writes in The Souls of Black Folks, “Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailingly palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.” [p.5]
DuBois was right in saying that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.” It arose as poll taxes, literacy tests, and discriminatory hiring. A century after the end of chattel slavery, racialized systems of control are evident in racial profiling, health disparities, and more. Redlining led to de facto segregation in our cities. Langston Hughes said that in Cleveland, where he went to high school, the city “began to draw increasingly sharp color lines.” They wove into extensive systems of social control.
Douglass saw this happening at the end of Reconstruction. Citing the beleaguered protagonist of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, “…the colored man is the Jean Valjean of American society….” Escaped from captivity on the galley, “[h]e has ceased to be a slave of an individual, but has in some sense become the slave of society.”
FURTHER ACTION
1) Support the NAACP which has been trying to understand and deconstruct the color line since its early years when Du Bois edited its publication The Crisis. He introduced a regular feature called “Along the Color Line" which, according to the University of Washington, "culled news from correspondents and published more than 100 short news reports each month under headings that included education, industry, political, church, military, personal, social uplift, and music and art.” It was intended to provide a map for navigating mundane and extreme dangers posed by racism in America.
2) Learn how the color lines continue to oppress people of color today. Begin by reading Soya Jung’s article, “The Endurance of the Color Line.” Then read John Hope Franklin’s book The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-First Century. It was based on a talk he gave one day after the Los Angeles police officers were foun "not guilty" for their clear and brutal beating of Rodney King.
3) Appreciate how racism can infect even Black activists of integrity, including Douglass who, at times, blamed the victims of racism. He writes how the Black man in America “…is the trammeled victim of a prejudice, well calculated to repress manly ambition, paralyze his energies, and make him a dejected and spiritless man, if not a sullen enemy to society, fit to prey upon life and property and to make trouble generally.” Something similar occurred when Obama chastised the Black community for contributing to their own problems. For more on this, read Derecka Purnell’s 2019 article in the New York Times, "Why Does Obama Scold Black Boys?"
In 1845 Douglass fled to England to escape being captured and returned to bondage. He discovered a world were no color line separate him from the white population.
Hugh Taft-Morales
Is the Ethical Culture Leader of the Baltimore and Philadelphia Ethical Societies. This is his independent project - as much a learning experience as a modest effort to help others become more committed to, and effective in, anti-racism work.
About this project:
Originally a year-long commitment, I have decided to continue reaching out to people like me: people who identify as white, accept that racism gives them privileges, and want to confront systemic racism more consistently and constructively. Of course anyone can support the project, but my main hope is to support self-identifying whites in deconstructing white supremacy.
This project will focus mainly on how racism in the United States has hurt Africans and their descendants. While non-whites from Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East are often brutal victims of racism, I have been taught most
by victims who happen to be black.
People of color have already shared their wisdom in countless writings from slave narratives to peer reviewed articles to award winning historical works. The weight of 400 years of race-based oppression fuels my commitment. Perhaps it will help you with your own efforts to deconstruct white supremacy.