Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns” gives three personal accounts of African Americans who moved from the south to the north during what is now known as the Great Migration. I found this to be one of the more interesting things I’ve had to read because of how little I knew about the subject and the personal aspect of it.
From reading the opening section, I would think that the Great Migration would be taught more because of the vast number of people who moved and the effect that it had, but prior to reading these excerpts. I had only learned about the Great Migration in one other class. I’ve learned about the great waves of immigration to the U.S. but not about the huge movement within the country. As the book says, the Great Migration was a turning point in history and cities, in both the south and north would be really different had it not been for the migration. This makes me wonder about what other events in American history I haven’t really learned about that have changed and shaped urban cities.
Something that I found interesting was at the end of the first excerpt, was when it she wrote about the distortions of the Great Migration. The people who migrated from the South were blamed for the problems in the cities they moved to, but studies now show that compared to northern blacks, southern migrants were more likely to raise children in a two parent household, had higher incomes, lower levels of poverty, and other things that seem to suggest that they were better off and were not the source of problems. I would like to know why this was so, especially the statements regarding work and economic issues. I would have guessed that Northern blacks would have a higher labor participation rate and higher incomes because they had been there longer so they could have worked more and people would be more willing to hire them.
In the second excerpt, the part about Miss Theenie not approving of the two men because of their dark skin and how she would prefer a man with lighter skin made me think about how much looks have mattered and still mattered and the preference of looking more like white. This makes me think about how many Asians get double eyelid surgery. I can’t say for sure, but I do think it influenced by the white standard of beauty and how they want to look more “white” with larger eyes.
The biggest thing these excerpts made me think about is how times have changed, but also how there is still a long way to go. There was a lot of hardship and struggle and outward discrimination back then for African Americans, and while there may longer be discrimination in the law and it isn’t so outright, discrimination and racism does still exist, not just for African Americans, but for other races as well. I know that the country has come a long way in a short time, but I wonder if every race will ever truly be thought of as equal.
