African-American Slave Masters

African-American Slave Masters

The preference that slave masters showed towards fair–skinned slaves throughout the years of slavery has had a profound and lasting impact on the perspectives, stances, and biases towards varying skin tones in the present day African American community. During slavery days, most lighter skinned slaves were the offspring of African slaves, and caucasian slave masters. Their lighter skin, looser hair curl patterns, and european features sometimes granted them access to better educations, better working conditions, better food, and more prominent positions in the slave hierarchy. These beneficial aspects of their lives invariably stemmed from their genetic ties to their owners; hence the reason why slave–owners were often partial to fairer skinned ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...Many times blacks who are of a lighter complexion are seen as "prettier or more desireable" towards other blacks today, and as stated previously, were offered better employment opportunities. However sometimes they are shunned by whites and blacks alike and are treated as outcasts by the community due to their inability to conform to a certain ethnicity. In the book "The Autobiography of An Ex–Colored Man," James Weldon Johnson depicts the fictional life of a biracial man living in the post–reconstruction era of America in the nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. In his early childhood days, the narrator frequently struggled with his personal identity after he was told to stand with the rest of his African American classmates during somewhat of an analyzation of the gender percentages by a certain staff member. "I wish all of the white scholars to stand for a moment. 'I rose with the others, the teacher looked down at me and said ' You sit down for the present, and rise with the others. 'I sat down dazed... A few of the white boys jeered me saying:' Oh you're a nigger too! 'I heard some of the black children say,' Oh, we knew he was colored, Shiny would say; 'Come along don't tease him, and thereby winning my undying gratitude.'" (Weldon 11) Before he was seemingly outed

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