Blue Vein Society

After reading "The Wife of His Youth" and thinking about Ryder's position in the Blue Vein Society, the idea of what being a member of a group like that would entail and connote started to interest me further.  We talked in class about how the purpose of these groups was to provide a place for mixed race citizens of a certain social pedigree to convene and establish a feeling of unity.  When I first looked at it for the group presentation, I saw this concept in a rather negative way.  As people of mixed races, it seemed like they should be more sensitive to the plight of the African American slaves instead of distancing themselves from them and suppressing that part of their heritage.  The function of the society seemed basically to be to allow the members to remind themselves and each other of how special and important they were.  But there's another side that didn't immediately occur to me.  People of mixed race can't have had an easy time of it in that moment in history.  Having even a trace of African heritage could cause people to associate you with the slave community and therefore view you as an inferior being.  Though each case was surely different, it had to have taken a good amount of struggle and hard work somewhere along the line to achieve the social standing of people in the Blue Vein Society.  Why wouldn't they want to recognize and celebrate that?  Identifying with the slave community would mean risking your position in society in addition to other things, including your own personal safety.  Speaking from a personal standpoint, I think that I've come to expect a lot from the protagonists in whatever pieces I'm reading, and it's easy to expect them all to act heroically.  The reality is that these are human characters with their own stories and flaws.  It may be frustrating at times, but it's what keeps literature interesting.