Racism within Race

One of the most interesting and shocking idea that runs throughout the reading we've done in The Harlem Renaissance Reader is that of racism within the African American community. As we have seen in many of the works (Such Passing, Cane and The Blacker the Berry), beauty, which was defined by the white hegemony within the United States, had become based upon the pigment of your skin, even among African American communities like Harlem. To me, reading these works a hundred years later, this seems to be the most futile thing ever. A carry over of the ugliness of racism into the very communities that had suffered under that discrimination. It testifies to the level of hate that many suffered under. A form of Stockholm syndrome that forces the victim to engage in the same acts that the culprit is involved in.