Rhetorical Analysis Of How It Feels To Be Colored Me

The first paragraph of “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” serves to characterize Hurston’s self-identity—it establishes her individualism and highlights the fact that she fully accepts her blackness. Unlike many other black Americans, Hurston believes that her blackness does not bring shame to her—she claims that she is the only black person in the US to not have tried to mitigate her blackness by claiming to be related to an Indian chief. The first paragraph prefaces Hurston’s attitude toward the subject matter of the essay; the frank and unapologetic tone she utilizes in the first paragraph establishes that she does not pity herself for being colored. The first paragraph captures my attention because Hurston’s claim that she is unlike other black people makes me want to read more. To me, her candid tone makes her appear more trustworthy and her essay worth reading.

Hurston counters the argument that black people have been given “a lowdown dirty deal” by nature and that their past defines who they are now. She is colored, but not “tragically colored”—she is unapologetic about her race. She believes that her accomplishments, not her race, define her, but at the same time, she is not ashamed of being black. Her ancestors

may have been treated as subhumans and toiled under white masters, but that is a thing of the past—something that happened sixty years ago and is completely out of her control.
In paragraph 7, Hurston compares the abolition of slavery to the start of a race that she is currently participating in—the Civil War said, “‘On the line’”, Reconstruction said “‘Get set’”, and the generation before hers said “‘Go!’”.

The effect of comparing the end of slavery to the beginning of a race is that it clarifies why Hurston believes that it is pointless for black people to dwell in the past—African Americans who believe that they are defined by their ancestry will be slowed down in life in the same way that runners are slowed down in their race when they look back at the starting line. However, the events that occur at the starting line set the “runners” into motion, so they are important, but it is also important to let go of the

past.
The four parts of Hurston’s essay are:
1. Hurston’s childhood (the period in her life in which she did not feel colored)
2. “Colored” Hurston (how she is only a “little colored girl” in the eyes of others, and how she is seen only as a descendant of slaves)
3. An anecdote of how she also felt colored when a “white person is set down in [her] midst”.
4. Bag metaphor (people are colored bags with the same contents) and how Hurston embraces her black identity.

Hurston divides her essay into four sections as a way to guide the reader through the development of her self-identity. These four sections are in chronological order, beginning with her childhood. Each section also utilizes an extended metaphor to help clarify Hurston’s views on blackness and her self-identity—the front porch in part one, the race in part two, music in part three, and bags in part four.