The Wife Of His Youth

“The original Blue Veins were a little society of colored persons organized in a certain Northern city shortly after the war. Its purpose was to establish and maintain correct social standards among a people whose social condition presented almost unlimited room for improvement. By accident, combined perhaps with some natural affinity, the society consisted of individuals who were, generally speaking, more white than black. Some envious outsider made the suggestion that no one was eligible for membership who was not white enough to show blue veins.” 

The unwritten rules of the Blue Vein Society are informed by internalized racism and class distinctions based on skin color. Chesnutt uses verbal irony to make this point.

“[I]f most of their members were light-colored, it was because such persons, as a rule, had had better opportunities to qualify themselves for membership.”

One of the enduring impacts of slavery is that people who more closely approximated whiteness had better economic, professional, and educational opportunities. This quote reflects that reality.

“There were those who had been known to assail it violently as a glaring example of the very prejudice from which the colored race had suffered most; and later, when such critics had succeeded in getting on the inside, they had been heard to maintain with zeal and earnestness that the society was a life-boat, an anchor, a bulwark and a shield,—a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, to guide their people through the social wilderness.” 

This quote includes an ironic allusion to God’s guiding the Israelites out of Egypt during their Exodus using miracles of nature and signs. The implication is that the Blue Vein Society, with its color and class distinctions, has become an idol to its members’ racial hypocrisy.