How it Feels to be Colored Me

Zora Neale Hurston is a black woman who lived in an all black town until she was thirteen and never knew she was any different than anybody else until she moved to a town in the heart of the south, even though slavery is over people still referred to African Americans as the colored people or still thought of them as less superior.


The thesis would be the first sentence in the essay “ 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.”

As this essay progress I love the way Hurston talks about how she became colored, because first no one just becomes colored and no one just wakes up colored. We are born who we are Hurston already knows she’s African American but to come into the realization that racism and discrimination is still present brings you into the knowledge that “ Yes, I am colored.”

Hurston understands that yes she is the granddaughter of slaves, but she says that was sixty some years ago she’s moved on that damage is already done, and we as a race are progressing from it. It relates to the history of slavery and how the slaves and their future generations have progressed from it.

Hurston’s outlook on her race is that of I never really realize my race until I am faced with it. I would say I agree because I think of myself as no different from anybody else in this would I only start to think different when I am faced with different words of aggression.