Looking Back at Race

For class I read the article "Who's Black, Who's White, and Who Cares" by Luther Wright, Jr. In this article, Wright goes into talking about different laws and court cases that have come up in the past in regards to race in America. The article made me uncomfortable as I was reading it--I have trouble understanding how people can be so heartless and feel such hatred towards someone just because of the color of their skin.

One line that really caught my attention talked about our "nation's need to define race." I had to ask 'why.' Why is it so important for race to be defined? Aren't we all humans? Don't we all need the same basic needs to survive? Why is this definition so important to us? What does having this definition actually do for us?

The author also brought up how states adopted the "one-fourth, one-sixteenth, and one-thirty-second rules" which basically stated that a person with any amount of black ancestry was considered "black under the law." The courts would use the color of a person's skin to decide if they were supposed to be free or a slave. So if someone was mulatto, but looked white, chances were they would be allowed to walk free, while someone who could be one-fourth black and have a darker skin color may be forced into slave labor.

Another line that caught me off gaurd was how the courts believed that "there was not much difficulty in distinguishing among these different shades of blackness." I can't imagine in the least that this is true. The only way this would be even remotely possible would be if you lined people up of every skin tone from darkest to lightest. And even then, that doesn't determine the state of their race; perhaps someone is outside more than another person is!