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Color Lines

Apr 25, 2008
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Q: "How many color lines are there?"
A: Well ... I think there's an infinite amount of color lines.
My working definition of color here would have to be: that which is visually indicated through the eye ... and everybody has a different lens. The line is personal discretion, the point where we seek to devalue the worth of one thing over another or differentiate things from other things or ourselves from other people when everything is essentially a part of (to borrow from Paulo Coelho) "The Soul of the World."
DuBois' Color Line was simply black and white (as most color lines are monochromatic). Today most social theorist who discuss racial color lines have also adopted the "color of money" line into the conversation of race and class issues such as William Julius Wilson in his book, The Declining Importance of Race, which proposes that the only color that really matters is green and it even suggests that those of stereotyped racial groups transcend the barrier of race if they are green enough (doesn't mean they care about the environment). Regardless of the Color Line(s) that one is familiar with, the problems they promote can be best summed up by Frederick Douglass in his essay 'The Color Line':

Few evils are less accessible to the force of reason, or more tenacious of life and power, than a long-standing prejudice. It is a moral disorder, which creates the conditions necessary to its own existence, and fortifies itself by refusing all contradiction. It paints a hateful picture according to its own diseased imagination, and distorts the features of the fancied original to suit the portrait. As those who believe in the visibility of ghosts can easily see them, so it is always easy to see repulsive qualities in those we despise and hate.

When we see color that supports an image we wish to paint of ourselves rather than recognizing the array of colors our painted selves already embody ... some on opposite ends of the color line(s) spectrum, we subject our judgments to the disorder which confirms the non-conferable and pushes redemption further away. Some people look at everything through a 300mm lens losing everything in the periphery of their microscopic gaze. Every judgement is temporal. In allowing the perception of the colors others see we can move beyond the color line to recognize that the tiny speck of color that exists in others also exists in ourselves and as a part of this global community, we are all a part of the same painting.