How if Feels to Be Colored Me - Bag Analogy
Bella Omann
“How It Feels to Be Colored Me” Deconstruction
Campbell
January 16, 2015
Deconstructing the Bag Analogy for “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” Zora Neale Hurston states “I feel like a brown bag… in company with other bags, white, red, and yellow” (Hurston 185-186). Each one of these colors represents a different race, brown being African- Americans, white being Caucasian, red being Indians and yellow being Asians. The wall that they all lean upon is the world in which they live in. She continues to go on and say “Pour out the contents and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless” (Hurston 186). These ‘contents’ that are being poured out of the different colored bags are the characteristics in a person. Zora states that everyone is the same on the inside- being made of worthless and priceless things. While there is difference on the outside we were all composed of the same thing. In Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Racism Jana Noel provides information stating that “while children do see differences among people, they do not make judgments based upon those differences” (Noel 43). Perhaps the mindset of superiority because of race brings on thoughts about whether or not the prejudice runs deeper than skin color or not. In How It Feels to Be Colored Me, Zora explains how she went through a time where she felt comfortable where she was, and she was just ‘Zora’, not someone who was black. She seemed to belong even though everyone might not be the same. Then she went to Jacksonville and things changed for her. There she was always reminded that she is “the granddaughter of slaves” (Hurston 184). Through this time of transition in her life, she was still herself. Zora was still the happy person everyone knew her to be. When Zora says “In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held- so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled
“How It Feels to Be Colored Me” Deconstruction
Campbell
January 16, 2015
Deconstructing the Bag Analogy for “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” Zora Neale Hurston states “I feel like a brown bag… in company with other bags, white, red, and yellow” (Hurston 185-186). Each one of these colors represents a different race, brown being African- Americans, white being Caucasian, red being Indians and yellow being Asians. The wall that they all lean upon is the world in which they live in. She continues to go on and say “Pour out the contents and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless” (Hurston 186). These ‘contents’ that are being poured out of the different colored bags are the characteristics in a person. Zora states that everyone is the same on the inside- being made of worthless and priceless things. While there is difference on the outside we were all composed of the same thing. In Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Racism Jana Noel provides information stating that “while children do see differences among people, they do not make judgments based upon those differences” (Noel 43). Perhaps the mindset of superiority because of race brings on thoughts about whether or not the prejudice runs deeper than skin color or not. In How It Feels to Be Colored Me, Zora explains how she went through a time where she felt comfortable where she was, and she was just ‘Zora’, not someone who was black. She seemed to belong even though everyone might not be the same. Then she went to Jacksonville and things changed for her. There she was always reminded that she is “the granddaughter of slaves” (Hurston 184). Through this time of transition in her life, she was still herself. Zora was still the happy person everyone knew her to be. When Zora says “In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held- so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled