{"id":28746,"date":"2013-02-14T00:02:42","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T00:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=28746"},"modified":"2016-11-27T22:41:44","modified_gmt":"2016-11-27T22:41:44","slug":"the-harder-whites-made-it-for-blacks-to-earn-a-living-educate-their-children-and-just-make-it-through-a-single-day-without-threat-or-insult-the-greater-the-incentives-grew-for-light-skinned-blacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=28746","title":{"rendered":"The harder whites made it for blacks to earn a living, educate their children, and just make it through a single day without threat or insult, the greater the incentives grew for light-skinned blacks to leave their communities and establish themselves as white."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The harder whites made it for blacks to earn a living, educate their children, and just make it through a single day without threat or insult, the greater the incentives grew for light-skinned blacks to leave their communities and establish themselves as white.\u00a0 If anything, the drumbeat of racial purity, the insistence that any African ancestry\u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3208\" target=\"_blank\">a single drop of blood<\/a>\u2014tainted a person\u2019s very existence, accelerated the migration to new identities and lives.\u00a0 The difference between white and black seemed obvious, an iron-clad rule, a biological fact.\u00a0 But the Walls knew that blacks could be as good as whites and as bad, as smart and as stupid.\u00a0 Blacks had just as much claim to schooling and jobs and love and family, to common courtesies each day.\u00a0 The Walls knew that blacks could be every bit the equal to whites\u2014and that their skins could be equally light.\u00a0 As the United States veered from slavery to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=4781\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Crow<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Orindatus_Simon_Bolivar_Wall\" target=\"_blank\">O.S.B. Wall\u2019s<\/a> children did not stand up and fight. They faded away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Daniel J. Sharfstein. <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=11122\" target=\"_blank\">The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White<\/a><\/em> (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), 236.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The harder whites made it for blacks to earn a living, educate their children, and just make it through a single day without threat or insult, the greater the incentives grew for light-skinned blacks to leave their communities and establish themselves as white.\u00a0 If anything, the drumbeat of racial purity, the insistence that any African [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2766,2767],"class_list":["post-28746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-daniel-j-sharfstein","tag-daniel-sharfstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50294,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746\/revisions\/50294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}