Ryder is willing to abandon his racial heritage, which would mean his very own identity, just to clear his colored status. For a high class person, who has earned his place solely with effort, to agree to this trade shows the tremendous pressure and discrimination society has placed on colored people. These terrible acts of racism, legalized by the Jim Crow’s laws, were evident and can be observed in the picture of a Black American drinking from a fountain specifically labeled “COLORED”. In the South, where the Jim Crow’s laws and Black Codes were enforced with an iron fist, equality was a false promise. Like the filthy fountain the man was forced to drink from, all the public facilities provided to African American at this time were inferior to those of white’s: restaurants, restrooms, public transportation, etc., were all unmaintained and unsanitary. The discrimination also extended to job and education with many high paying jobs denied to people of color; schools for Blacks were also overcrowded, underfunded, and inadequate. Under these conditions, life for African Americans were comparable to slavery. It is not unexpected of Mr. Ryder and other members of the Blue Veins Society to wish for the disassociation with their racial origin; since for them that is the only way to escape the …show more content…
Ryder and many other African Americans, who shared the same circumstances, were actually striving for a better future. There were little choice for them: they can remain faithful to their color and be doomed to the bottom of society or they can rid themselves of any connection to their past and embrace the white culture. The ironic situation where the oppressed, in order to escape the oppression, must be willing to become the oppressors themselves was a sad reality that actually happened in the South following the emergence of the laws of