In black America today, there exists a variety of attitudes about one’s race. These attitudes include superficial values about color hues and social status. In “Shades of Black” by Mary Mebane and “How It Feels To Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston, the authors describe factors that influence attitudes about race, color, and class. Acceptance of white beauty standards, upbringing, and the media are factors that influence those attitudes in the black community. Often the factors also disrupt the unity within the black community.

Since slavery, the black community has been forced to accept being white as beautiful. A person has to have long blond hair and blue eyes to be beautiful. The closest thing to that in the black community is to have long hair and light skin. To some black people, this makes a person acceptable to society. However, many black youth still suffer from slights within their own race about how light or dark they may be, how much money their parents make, and being black in general. Some of the upper class, lighter skinned black youths belittle their peers with a lower class status or darker complexion. According to Mebane’s essay, having e

The most influential factor affecting race, color, and class in the black community since its creation is the media. Media personnel come in contact with millions and millions of people daily and imposes certain standards on them. This is true for most of the black community. Some black attitudes towards their own race and other races evolve from what they hear and see daily. The black attitudes are aired daily by radio broadcasts, television sitcoms, and talk shows. Even in the published newspaper, the biased ideas of the editors are written and help to mold the minds of some of the black community. Because of the media, beauty standards force black people to try to adhere to these standards. Mebane describes how dark skinned women hide themselves underneath the mask of heavy unsightly makeup (40). Their skin tones still burn through the plaster of the makeup and make them appear ridiculous. The media serves to disunite the black community by advertising the beauty in being white and use subliminal messages to destroy the community. Strangely enough, the media can be linked to one’s upbringing and self-esteem, other factors that influence the attitudes about race, color, and class held by the black community.

Attitudes about race, color and class in the black community are also influenced by the way blacks raised their children. Some black youths are raised to think that having light skin is one of th

Some topics in this essay:
According Mebane’s, Neale Hurston, Black Community, black community, race color, color class, race color class, attitudes race color, Mary Mebane, light skin, attitudes race, beauty standards, class black community, factors influence attitudes, influence attitudes, black people, white beauty, own race, white beauty standards, Zora Neale,