Swtiching Races, Defying the Color Line

Twain’s story shows the fluidity and unreliability of race in creating a social order. Blacks were supposed to be by nature inferior because of their assumed limitations of intellect and their propensity for immoral behavior. However, the real Chambers, though white in skin tone and in status by his family heritage, is portrayed has having Negro characteristics of being deceitful, self-serving, and easily taken in by immoral vices, which in this story is gambling and theft. We know much of what it means to be Negro in Dawson’s Landing through Roxy’s attitude. She attributes Chamber’s mischievous nature as stemming from his Negro heritage. Twain’s point is that Chambers was raised as a wealthy white man, educated and taught the attitude of entitlement and invincibility. His character was shaped by his environment. The real Tom was taught how to be “Negro”, to perform the role of slave, of an inferior race. His fair skin tone, as Chestnut would remark, is what makes him illegitimate. Tom is the product of an abominable act whether through the sexual violence normal in slavery or of a consensual interracial union. His whiteness is a taboo for it contradicts all attempts at establishing a strict color line for the preservation of the Anglo-Saxon race and the justification for its domination of other races. It is his mother’s slave status and his African heritage that deems him inferior and fit for slavery. Yet, his character is humble and kind. For example, we see at the end of the story how despite Roxy’s actions he continues to give her a stipend. Isn’t the honorable character only that of a white man? Roxy also presents a contradiction. Twain paints her as an uneducated, illiterate slave but also intelligent, cunning, and brave. Chambers goes to her for advice repeatedly. Once Chambers is found out, he and Tom immediately switch races with neither knowing how to perform their new roles. Du Bois said the Black man is “looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” Both Chambers and Tom’s identities are forged by how the other world sees them. They cannot define themselves nor have a “true self-consciousness” as Du Bois says. The slave sees himself or herself through the eyes of her master and the master through the eyes of the slave. Race then becomes a tricky construct to keep up. Twain and Chestnut pick apart the idea of skin color being a logical categorization of humans. Twain’s use of fingerprints emphasizes the individuality and uniqueness of every human being making racial grouping a foolish social fabrication. A follow up to Chestnut’s question could be, “Is there such thing as a pure race to begin with?” Maybe whiteness cannot be defined because it does not exist. It was created.