We talked in our last class about W.E.B. Du Bois’ idea of the “Talented Tenth,” and how, as unfair as it may be, it is the talented tenth’s responsibility to uplift African Americans. Wallace Thurman’s characters in The Blacker the Berry seem to believe in a similar ideal, except they have interpreted the talented tenth as becoming as white as possible, to ingratiate themselves into white culture instead of to fight for racial equality. Emma Lou’s own family motto reflects that:

“Whiter and whiter every generation. The nearer white you are the more white people will respect you. Therefore all light Negroes marry light Negroes. Continue to do so generation after generation, and eventually white people will accept this racially bastard aristocracy, thus enabling those Negroes who really matter to escape the social and economic inferiority of the American Negro.” (37)

Naturally, by believing that black people should strive to be whiter in order to be respectable, black people themselves must believe that they are inferior. At one point, Emma Lou refers to her African heritage as “primitive” (44). The extent of the internalized racism is actually astounding. The black community has not only established hierarchies based off of the darkness of one’s skin color (as well as where a person is from, as we see in Emma Lou’s treatment of Hazel Mason), but also treats it like religious dogma. Even amongst college-educated people, the lighter a woman’s skin, the more desirable a woman is as a romantic partner/spouse because, as white society has instilled in everyone, light skin screams intelligence and respectability, while dark skin does just the opposite.