How It Feels to Be Colored Me

What mainly can the reader infer about the state of race relations during zora’s time in Florida (paragraph 5)?

Paragraph 5

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Once she moves to Jacksonville, Zora's life changes. Her race and the color of her skin unfairly define who she is.... she is no longer seen as an individual and the rules of life change..... Fortunately, Hurston, herself, refuses to give up her identity, and she doesn't allow herself to be defined by others, she continues to define herself.

5. But changes came in the family when I was thirteen, and I was sent to school in Jacksonville. I left Eatonville, the town of the oleanders, a Zora. When I disembarked from the river-boat at Jacksonville, she was no more. It seemed that I had suffered a sea change. I was not Zora of Orange County any more, I was now a little colored girl. I found it out in certain ways. In my heart as well as in the mirror, I became a fast brown--warranted not to rub nor run.


6. But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more of less. No, I do not weep at the world--I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

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How It Feels to Be Colored Me