Race and Cooperation

For a novel placed in the South during a time when racial inequality was still a huge issue, Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God deals with racial topics in a way I did not expect. While not every character may have expressed concern over race, there is evidence that race was still consciously present in many of the characters' minds. In fact, the character that discriminated against colored people the most was colored herself, breaking an easy but dated stereotype. This is just one of several examples I will be looking at.

To start off with, Janie's Nanny was dead-set on getting her to marry a white man. While she did not show evidence of actually discriminating against her own kind, her image of success was having relations with a white man, and felt that Janie would live a life similar to her own if she married a black man. Granted, Nanny's perspective was jaded by the fact that she grew up in times of slavery, when racism was at its peak, she used her used her experience to take it upon herself to ensure that Janie would be "taken care of" and would be wed to a white man.

What really surprised me was Logan's character. Right off the bat I expected to see Janie living a life with an abusive white husband that thought he was better than her, etc. On the contrary, Logan treated her fairly equally. however, Janie left him to pursue a new life of potential happiness with someone else. Even when Janie threatened to leave, Logan did not retaliate with violence; rather, he only expressed his frustration and sadness through his words, and let her go.

The mots interesting mentality of all the characters displaying racial consciousness was Mrs. Turner. While Mrs. Turner showed the most typical form of racism (i.e. discriminating against black people), she actually was the most unique with her circumstance. She even went as far as to try and convince Janie to marry her brother, who was lighter than she [Mrs. Turner] was, and says, "We oughta lighten up de race" (135). Janie states her own thoughts on colored and mixed folk, but Mrs. Turner's skewed opinion cannot be swayed.

Lastly, another interesting bit is how racially conscious Eatonville is compared to the muck. Eatonville's people are focused on keeping their community run by blacks and when someone such as Janie comes along, her Caucasian features quickly become the center of attention. However, the muck is much more indifferent. Blacks, whites, native Americans, and Bahamans co-mingle in harmony - well, aside from Mrs. Turner anyway. In general, however, they all live together with racial differences aside.

The only example of the usual flat-out "whites hate blacks" or "blacks hate whites" theme demonstrated in this novel is Mrs. Turner's unusual dislike for her own make up, and the rest of the novel brings out different types of racial issues such as a jaded view of whites being superior or challenging the misconception that all whites during the early 1900s were racist and abusive to blacks, instead proving that there is more to racism than their stereotypical images.