Context

=Discrimination=

Even though the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery and the 14th Amendment (passed in 1868) guaranteed the rights of citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, discrimination against African Americans never stopped.

Brown vs. The Board of Education is one example of how white children and black children were not allowed to go to school together and how the black children were not given the same rights (or all African Americans for that matter). Even though the Amendments were passed within the government that said “equal rights” for everyone, these actions only concerned the government and not those of private citizens. Which meant that the people could virtually do whatever they want to discriminate and the government couldn’t pass any laws discriminating.

Another example is the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. On June 7th, 1892 (2 years before //Puddin’head Wilson// was written), Plessy, who was one eighth black and seven eighths white, but considered African American under Louisiana state law, sat in the “white” section of a train. When he was told to move and sit in the “colored” car, he refused and was arrested and put in jail. Plessy argued his rights under the 13th and 14th Amendments, but was denied and was told that Louisiana had the right to regulate how the railroad functioned as long as it was within state boundaries. Even when Plessy took the case to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, no one listened and declared that no one violated the 13th or 14th Amendments.

In the book //Puddin’head Wilson// by Mark Twain, a slave woman switches her son with her master’s son to protect the future of her own son. Her son, named Chambers and her master’s son, Tom, were both born on the same day. Roxy, the slave woman, is also only one sixteenth black, and believes she can get away with the switch because the two boys pretty much have the same colored skin and Chambers is only classified as African American because of his mother. Chambers, now “Tom”, grows up with a rich white family and when he gets older, he has gambling troubles and loses a lot of money. He also ends up murdering a couple people, and ends up being found out as Roxy’s son from the fingerprinting that Puddin’head Wilson does.

What this shows is that people don’t only classify race (which definition is, “Any of the traditional divisions of humankind, the commonest being the Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negro, characterized by supposedly distinctive and universal physical characteristics.”), by the color of someone’s skin, but by how they grow up, who they grow up with and what they become. When “Chambers” grows up and goes college and does pretty well for a “slave”, he’s somewhat respected because he has a good education. It’s almost as though he’s white, which he really is, but no one knows that. “Tom”, doesn’t do so well, and //has// to be respected because he’s “white” and comes from a rich white family, but in reality he wouldn’t really be respected for being poor and a murderer. The point is that people don’t only judge by the color of one’s skin, but by economic status, education, friends, family, interests etc. and that race is something made up.

If you’re not known for being white or black or whatever, and are born into a situation or thrown into one like Tom and Chambers, you could grow up white, black, Mexican, Muslim, anything. It just depends on how well you do, and who you become. And if you’re found out and discriminated against, you’re automatically put into a race by society.