Black and White in Alice Walker's Color Purple:
Length: 446 words (1.6 pages)
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The Color Purple Essay: Black and White
Throughout The Color Purple, the differences between blacks and whites are shown through race and domestics. Linda Selzer focuses on narration and family ties in this to novel to display the differences in both African American and African racial relations and domesticity. The two most important examples presented by Seizer are the African relations between Doris Baines and the Akwee and the American relations between Sophia and Eleanor Jane.
Doris is a white missionary with a black grandson and Nettie believes that this fits into the ethic that we are all ?one mother?s children? (Selzer 3). But the grandson is more comfortable around the black Olinka than his white family member. This shows Nettie that relationships across racial lines are pseudo-relationships while those within the same race are comfortable and spontaneous. Also, Doris still believes that there are huge differences between blacks and whites, even thought they are the same ?daisy?; She believes that whites are superior. Selzer states, ?Doris with the Akwee lays bare the hierarchy of self-interest and paternalism that sets the pattern for the race relations? (4).
By including the missionaries in Nettie?s letters, Alice Walker opens the door to the African and African American domestics. In America, racial relations are more blatantly racist as shown in Sophia?s life with the mayor?s family. However, Selzer focuses on how Sophia?s role overturns the stereotype of the typical black mammy. This white family expects Sophia to act exactly like the stereotype, which she is clearly unfit for. Sophia reverses her role and has little, white Eleanor Jane work in her kitchen, therefore dissolving the black mammy stereotype. In doing this, the plantation family ?kinship? is also reversed because the blacks are no longer taking care of the whites, the whites are taking care of the blacks. For another example, Alfonso hires whites to work in his store to try and defeat the system.
Selzer also addresses family ties by paralleling the false integrated relations in Africa to those in America. In America, even though many blacks and whites are related, the whites still deny the family tie in order to be superior. Therefore, the hope that we are all ?one mother?s children? will not be reached from across racial and domestic lines. In closing, Selzer states that The Color Purple is a book that raises integration from domesticity and ?explores the possibility of treating all people as ?one mother?s children?-- while remaining unremittingly sensitive to the distance that often separates even the best of human ideals from real historical conditions? (9).
Works Cited
Selzer, Linda. ?Race and Domesticity in ?The Color Purple?.? African American Review 29 (1995): 1-12.
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