Zora Neal Hurston Color Struck Colorism

Colorism can be defined as the discrimination or prejudice against individuals with a darker skin tone and usually occurs within people of the same ethnicity and race. Color Struck is not only the title of one of Zora Neal Hurston’s popular works, it is a term used by African Americans who believe that lighter skin, or European features, are the essence of grace and beauty. Color Struck is a four scene play that brings the insecurities and fear surrounding being a darker skinned woman in this time period to the forefront. Hurston used the characters in her play to tastefully display that concept that darker skinned women, at this time, were considered to be a part of the bottom levels of the social ladder and were the least marriageable and
It seems as if Hurston wrote the character to be in this perpetual state of isolation. Emma cannot seem to find emotional nor social sanctuary which she essentially internalizes and displays itself into an inferiority complex, jealously, and various insecurities. By being neglected by both sides she develops this resentment for people with lighter skin. Emma’s character cannot find emotional nor social sanctuary; this parallels the social and political structure of the time period that this was written. This essentially led blacks to internalize its negative stereotypes of their material conditions and their color of skin, which represented blacks as soul-less, poor, depraved, uncultured, irrational, and savage, and finally caused blacks’ self-hatred and their efforts to live like the powerful bourgeois whites (Mirmasoumi & Farshid, 63). The white community naturally viewed the black community as substandard, which essentially blocks the people of the black community from seeing themselves without the internalization of the so called white gaze. It seems as if blacks were essentially coerced to pick between the systems set by the power structure and the practice of otherwise self-doubting African customs. Because of this, most blacks decided to assimilate and imitate most of white America’s norms in order to better certain conditions and achieve any economic gain. This was a process that caused the combined loss of the memory of content of their customs and history and a form of cultural amnesia. The longing to break free of the negative stereotypes associated with being black and acquire a sensation of self-worth within the political and social system propelled blacks to belittle their origin, people with darker skin, in order to obtain some attention and value from the American mainstream