Color Line Essay

The Color Line Essay It was the year 1903 when W.E.B DuBois stated that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." The border is the 21st century color line. (Common Dream.org) The color line was basically a line that reserved all the best jobs in the economy for a specific group of individuals. At the same time, however, these jobs were denied from and kept away from another group of people (Common Dream.org) This was done so through both private institutions and businesses as well as the law. Also affected several unions who had chose not to attempt to receive membership and jobs found themselves in an unwanted place which was the wrong side of the color line (Common Dream.org). I find it very helpful and relevant to the current discussion to include the fact that many people who stood behind the concept of the color line, its supporters, in the times back then defended the color line in terms that can be very easily described as economically populist (Common Dream.org). It was extremely popular in the South for those who were considered white populists (but not necessarily everyone) to argue and say that there was only manner in which they could avoid wages of white workers being driven downward to the level of those who were field hands. They claimed that this method was through white racial soliditary (Common Dream.org). However, in the Northern region of the United States, there were several white union leaders who denounced the corporate importation of black workers from the South, often to help break strikes. It was this same group of white union leaders who referred to and described the African Americans as a “scab race” (Common Dream.org). This was hardly fantasy as the systematic use of imported black workers as strike breakers was a standard tool of the new Robber Barons (Common Dream.org). The phrase color line was originally used as a reference to the racial segregation that existed in the United States after the