The Physicality of the Color-Line

The physicality of the letter thus invites us to consider the physicality of racial notions. Is race simply a “mistake,” and only that, as Walter Benn Michaels suggests (Autobiography of an Ex-White Man, 143)? Even though race as a biological phenomenon does not exist, does its position as a social construct generate material structures? Daniel Worden says yes. In “Birth in the Briar Patch: Charles W. Chesnutt and the Problem of Racial Identity,” Worden argues that “race persists as a governing reality in twentieth-century America” (3). Worden navigates the paradox of race as both a social construct and a “lived reality” (3). In the city of Patesville in The House Behind the Cedars, for example, Worden claims, “The clock tower reminds Warwick that race is constructed by the very spatial and temporal history of the town, a history that he has abandoned to pass as white. Embedded within the structure of Patesville is a racial hierarchy that resists historical change” (7). Worden posits that we physically embed race within the social and geographical architecture of the United States. The clock tower, in its unwavering, looming presence, represents an unaltered southern view of race that persists even after the Civil War. Furthermore, Worden directly connects the physicality of race to a less encompassing but nevertheless powerful symbolic structure: letters. After Rena’s mother Molly falls ill, Molly employs Frank to help her write a letter. Worden writes, “Frank’s letter is enclosed in an envelope addressed by John Warwick. Writing in the South, Frank’s voice is always already enveloped within a white form. The racially indeterminate voice is marred by its inscription as black and its enclosure within a white sphere of circulation” (Worden 9). The combination of the three individuals at work creates a unique dynamic: Molly, though illiterate, can project her message through Frank’s voice. Then, the white envelope, pre-addressed by the white-passing hand of John Warwick, allows Frank’s “marred” voice to pass through any marked or unmarked realms. The letter’s ability to physically parallel racial notions while also subverting those same notions thus strengthens Worden’s argument. Moreover, in the example of Molly’s letter, another compelling theme arises—literacy.

Within the scope of letters, (il)literacy regulates the act of written communication. Thus, the regulation of this literacy can function as a form of domination. In “Drawing the Color Line: Silence and Civilization from Jefferson to Mumford,” Reinhold Martin describes how Thomas Jefferson reinforced physical racial boundaries in his Monticello home through the restriction of communication and the domination of bodies. For instance, in his dining room, Jefferson created an architectural structure that defines stark Black and white spaces:"French wine was made available by dumbwaiters connecting the dining room to the wine cellar below, where an enslaved person stood ready to supply the bottles. As its name suggests, the purpose of the dumbwaiter was to exclude black voices and black ears from the conversation above … It helped to produce that sphere by minimizing interference and distortion, and restricting transmission and communication in a manner that ontically differentiated master from slave. (Martin 66)"Jefferson emphasizes his status by placing himself on the first floor. He then confines his slaves to a literal lower level of the house, essentially erasing the Black body. By “restricting transmission and communication,” Jefferson silences his slaves and prevents the transference of information (Martin 66). In the Monticello library, too, Jefferson enforced a physical color line. Martin continues, “In the dining room, silence served “enlightened” conversation; in the library, silence anchored the aesthetic education of the white southern gentry” (71). And in the cellar below, Jefferson excluded the Black slaves from every human right—freedom, education, even from bodily access to the white realms of home. By etching these visible boundaries in his home, Jefferson rearticulated race and slavery throughout his daily life. Wilson delineates this overt enunciation and re-enunciation of racism, claiming, “In America, in the present as in the past, the color line continues to be drawn and policed, and the consequences of our country's racial past will continue to live in us as long as we unwittingly volunteer to continue to act as guardians of that line” (149). Even today, we can see racism ingrained and policed in our most basic systems, as in within the literal police force. Racial profiling, for instance, is now more relevant than ever. From 2015 to May 2020, Black people were killed at 2.6 times the rate of white people in fatal shootings (Lett et al. 1). The Fields Sisters, Matthew Wilson, Reinhold Martin, Daniel Worden—the theorists all implore us to recognize that as long as we consciously and unconsciously participate in the “rituals” that recreate the fiction of race, it will continue to have real and devastating physical consequences (Fields and Fields 115).

-MD