"Shades of Black"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Mary Mebane's essay, "Shades of Black," attests to intraracial struggles, which she discusses through first and second-hand accounts of prejudice and victimization carried out by those of her own race. It looks at how the essay contends that factors such as social class, skin color, and interracial matters between White Americans are slowly disrupting the unity within the Black community by causing disassociation between upper and lower class Blacks, by creating intraracial color-based prejudice and discrimination, and by causing African Americans to develop a habit of not fully addressing the biases within their own society.

From the Paper:

"Another example of how divisions among social classes disrupts the unity among some Blacks can be seen right here at Clark Atlanta University. Many blacks on campus, especially females, disassociate themselves from other Blacks that they feel are not of the same social class as they are. One day I experienced this first hand after being denied a seat in the overcrowded cafeteria by a group of black girls because they said my clothes were too cheap. Both this example and the one in the previous paragraph give many Blacks a visual of how social class is dividing the race. As Mebane depicts, the same problem also existed in the 1960's. In her essay "Shades of Black," she claims that social class was one of the determining factors of one's status at North Carolina College at Durham. Children of the upper class that had doctors, educators, and lawyers for parents were considered the elite there (177). "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Mebane, Mary. "Shades of Black." Ideas in African American Thought: Reading and Writing about Self and World. Ed. Phyllis Foreman Lawhorn. Boston: Pearson, 2007, 177-180.

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