Race and Identity in Their Eyes Were Watching God

            The concept of race as a determining factor in a person’s worth plays a major role in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. At the beginning of the second chapter we are greeted with the idea that race, and the identity that comes with it, is taught to us, as opposed to being a natural convention. Janie is a six-year-old African American girl who doesn’t recognize herself in a photo in which white children surround her. Upon realization that she is the girl that stands out in the photo, she exclaims “Aw, aw! Ah’m colored!” (page 9) as if she would not have noticed unless someone pointed it out. Regarding the situation Janie states, “Before Ah seen de picture Ah thought Ah wuz just like de rest” (page 9).

            Janie’s caretaker, Nanny, also plays a major role in teaching her the rules of race. She tells Janie, “So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his women folks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see” (page 14). Through this, Janie is taught that the sole purpose of her existence is to clean up other people’s messes and do the jobs that they won’t, both because of her race and her gender. Nanny preaches to Janie “You know, honey, us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways” (page 16). This teaches the poor child that because of her race, there is no way she will lead a normal life.

            The idea that everyone of a particular race must be in the same class is a concept that Hurston toys with quite often in the novel. When Joe and Janie use spittoons instead of regular coke bottles, like everyone else in the town, it causes an upset in the social order. “It was bad enough for white people, but when one of your own color could be so different it put you on a wonder” (page 48). This shows that the townspeople were thrown off by Joe and Janie’s newfound display of wealth and a higher social class, because the norm was that everyone of the same color behaved the same way.

            Janie is treated differently than people of her ethnicity throughout the novel because of her wealth and appearance. Mrs. Turner, a woman that lives in the same town as Janie and Tea Cake, holds Janie to a higher standard than the rest of the “negroes.” She even goes so far as to “forgive [Janie] for wearing overalls like the other women who worked in the fields” (page 140). When speaking with her husband, Mrs. Turner says “Ah don’t see how uh lady like Mis’ Woods can stand all them common niggers round her place all de time,” as if Janie isn’t one. She goes on an entire rant about how much she can’t stand the black people in town, completely ignoring the fact that Janie is the same race as them.