The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman (Book Review)

The Blacker the Berry...
By Wallace Thurman
Published by Penguin Books, 2018
Price: $16

Emma Lou Morgan has a lot of insecurities about her skin color. You might even say she's obsessed. Not only is she the only black girl in her white high school graduating class, but her own family makes her feel inferior because she is DARK black. In the social milieu of her mom and grandmother, the lighter skinned you are the better. In fact, the goal of the matriarchs is to get whiter and whiter every generation until they can pass for white folk, BECOME white folk.  Emma's family actually ran off her dad because he was too dark. Emma's family even from when she was little, referred to her as "niggerish". She has become brainwashed into constantly judging herself and other blacks by their skin tone. She wants to get with a mulatto at the least. No matter how nice a guy is, if he's the wrong color, he is beneath her.

Figuring she will never meet a man of the proper skin color and intellect in her hometown of Boise, Idaho, Emma Lou attends classes at USC in California and then moves to Harlem, New York. Her hopes of escaping her blackness are dashed in both places. Black sororities only accept light colored sisters and in New York employers and potential dating partners are put off by her color as well.

I really enjoyed this book. In the end it's about hypocrisy and hatred of one's own race, one's own self. And there is a lot of that going around today. Emma Lou is completely clueless but I never was revolted or disgusted by her lack of self esteem or self knowledge. She couldn't help it. She was brainwashed since she could walk and talk and understand others. Her own family constantly ribbed her and insulted her about her skin color. She was taught that dark black women are low and useless. Unwanted. Her family would have been good propagandists in North Korea, so thoroughly do they destroy Emma Lou's self worth.

Emma Lou almost never gets the fact that the discrimination and prejudice she faces from lighter skinned black people, she returns it to other dark skinned blacks she encounters throughout the book. Everything she complains and laments about she practices on others. It's very similar to the current Leftists calling the Righties Nazis and then proceeding to initiate practices that Hitler would have found very familiar. Another funny thing is that in my life I've heard more black people say racist things about other black people than hearing whites criticize blacks. I think in the book it is referred to as "intraracial segregation". I wonder if this sort of thing still goes on.

I also feel our culture is currently being brainwashed into thinking that straight white males are lower forms of life. I really identified with Emma Lou. I feel that as a white man, the same thing is being done to us as Emma Lou. If you are white, straight, and male, you are automatically judged as having certain racist, sexist, and matriarchal agendas. All the current diversity movements are racist or biased for one ethnicity and yet the left doesn't see it. They are ignorant of their own hypocrisy just as Emma Lou is. The difference is that Emma Lou does have her epiphany, her moment of self knowledge.

An important issue that this novel brought up is that Emma Lou is actually without a shadow of a doubt discriminated against for her skin color. Solely on her skin color. There is no gray area. We read the thoughts of the people that deal with her. Too many times in the world today a person of color cries discrimination or racism without any proof. The race card is played pretty quickly. In this book, she does not get certain jobs because of her color, she does not get into sororities, she cannot be taken seriously by some men, simply because of her color. I mean, what can you do in that situation? You can't tell Emma Lou, just ignore what people say, ignore how they treat you, if EVERYONE discriminate against her. Wherever she goes it's the same story. Even if she accepts herself, others never will. It's a no win situation.

What I loved about this book is that it doesn't judge Emma Lou and so the reader doesn't either. Yeah, she's a hypocrite. She's a snob. But a lot of that came from her upbringing. And she has to go through all this crap to get to a better place, to gain the self knowledge she needs to get over color obsession. I just see her as a human being. With faults but always striving to make herself better.

My Grade: A+