Issues Surrounding Race and Self-Identity in the United States - Essay Example

?Charles Chesnutt’s “The Sheriff’s Children” suggests some difficult issues surrounding race and self-identity in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century United States. To what extent can WEB Dubois’ “The Souls of Black Folk” (in last semester’s Social Science Reader) help explain the dilemmas faced by the story’s two main protagonists? The racial crisis faced by the Afric an Americans in the United States has been much talked about by different authors. The plight of black slaves was supposed to change after the Civil War but ground realities differed greatly. The Emancipation was able to provide the African Americans with rights but these rights were kept restricted well into the twentieth century. The late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century saw a crisis of race and self-identity for the African American community. The problems concerned with these issues were far more visible in the rural heartland of American than in the urban centers. For nearly a century after the Civil War the African Americans were subjected to the same conditions under dominant white populations. Protest came from various quarters including prominent authors such as W. E. B. Dubois and Charles Chesnutt. While Dubois chose to argue for the African American identity through his essays, Chesnutt chose to express these issues through his stories. Chesnutt’s story titled The Sherriff’s Children brings out the contrast between the white identity and the African American identity very clearly. The main protagonists of Chesnutt’s story are a mulatto who has been accused of murder as well as the local white sheriff. The sheriff is portrayed as a man who is true to his duty so much so that he is ready to risk his life to protect a mulatto from lynch mob justice. On the other hand, the sheriff also realizes that the mulatto will be hung sooner or later anyhow even if he is not responsible for the murder. This shows that the sheriff is upholding the law on his end as he deems fit but is not much concerned as to the fate of the mulatto. On the other hand the mulatto has been portrayed as stuck in a debacle that he is not the least bit responsible for. The mulatto has been indicted for the murder of an old man where the mulatto was only reported to be seen. This mere sighting of the mulatto enabled the people nearby to classify him as the sole culprit for the murder. This arbitrary form of justice is recognizable in the essay by Dubois titled The Souls of Black People in which he talks of the Negroes as the “sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with a second sight in this American world”1. This description in itself describes the social status of the African American in the rural American setting as being a second class citizen who is entitled to second class treatment in all affairs in life. Unfortunately as Chesnutt’s piece shows, justice is one of those aspects where the African American was given a second class treatment such that he could be hung without proper evidence. Dubois further exclaims that the African American merely wants to live a life where he can accept his American and African identities at the same time without losing the flavor of either of these identities. In the words of Dubois2: “He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro ad an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.” When this statement is looked at closely, it tends to resemble the desire of the mulatto locked up in the sheriff’s jail in Troy – the desire to be able to embrace his mixed identity as an American and as an African. The locked up mulatto turns out to be the illegitimate child of the sheriff himself thereby presenting a mixed identity. On another note, the mulatto has been schooled and given some education but as Dubois mentions, “the doors of Opportunity” are closed “roughly in his face”3 when he realizes that4: "I have been to school and dreamed when I went that it would work some marvelous change in my condition. But what did I learn? I learned to feel that no degree of learning or wisdom will change the color of my skin and that I shall always wear what in my own country is a badge of degradation.” The urge seen to somehow alter the color of his skin on the part of the mulatto reflects a broader desire of the African American community to either be treated with dignity or to lose one of their inferior identities. Dubois expounds that the “doors of Opportunity” are closed onto people of African American origin even with some education on their side. Another aspect of Chesnutt’s tale is its settings in terms of time. The story has been set after the Emancipation declaration because the mulatto who was arrested was not tried out as an escaped slave at all. Moreover, the mulatto relates the time that he and his mother were coldly sold off by the sheriff (also his father) which was in the sheriff’s youth. However, in Chesnutt’s account the sheriff is seen as operating in his elder years as he has a grown up daughter and the mulatto as a child. Another piece of evidence to support the timing of the story is the description of the murdered man where Chesnutt notes that5: “…about ten years after the war, that old Captain Walker, who had served in Mexico under Scott, and had left an arm on the field of Gettysburg, had been foully murdered during the night,…” Dubois’ essay however has been penned down some forty years after the Emancipation declaration as expounded by Dubois6: “Years have passed away since then, - ten, twenty, forty’ forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development,…” This comparison of timing shows that the problems faced by the African Americans remained consistent even after decades of the Civil War and the Emancipation declaration. The struggle of coming to terms with one form of identity over the other or to accept a mixed identity can be seen as dominating the social, economic and political lives of African Americans. This is made evident in Chesnutt’s work when the black informant arrives to inform the sheriff of a proposed lynching. The black man is neither treated as an equal nor asked if he would want to have food much less being given a place at the table to have food with the sheriff. The treatment of the black man at the hands of the sheriff shows that the black man is still treated as if he were a slave and that the slave is still expected to show obedience for white people. Dubois extends this thought by saying7: “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.” Dubois has also labeled the first decade after the Emancipation as “merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom”8. This is also exemplified in the struggles of the mulatto as he tries to regain his freedom by threatening the sheriff with death even though he knows that the sheriff is his father. In a very fitting manner, Dubois has labeled this racial crisis as the bewilderment of the “serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom”9. The actions of the mulatto in Chesnutt’s story exemplify the predicament of the African American – being stuck in a situation that you were never any part of during its creation. Dubois carries out throughout the essay without naming any names so that his work reflects the struggles of identity and race for the entire African American community. In a similar manner, Chesnutt carries out throughout his story without ever naming the mulatto thereby presenting the image that the mulatto represents the entire African American community. References 1. W. E. B. DuBois, Readings in Social Theory & Modernization, editor John McGrath (Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2011), 195-200. 2. “The Sheriff's Children”, last modified January 8, 2008, http://www.chesnuttarchive.org/works/Stories/sheriff.html. Read More