Emma Lou Identity

“More acutely than ever before Emma Lou began to feel that her luscious black complexion was…a liability….a decided curse. Not that she minded being black…but she did mind being too black. She …couldn’t comprehend the cruelty of natal attenders who had allowed her to be dipped , as it were, in indigo ink when there were so many more pleasing colors nature’s palette” (Thurman, 1929, p.9). In this excerpt of the novel’s first chapter, Emma Lou, the protagonist, displays her sentiments of being a dark skinned female while mirroring common negative associations of dark skin. Historically, colonialists have conserved the value of whiteness by instilling negative racial stereotypes about dark skin. While white skin was attributed to positive qualities such as “civility, rationality, beauty and superiority”, dark skin was linked to “savagery, irrationality, ugliness and inferiority.” Consequently, light skinned slaves benefitted from these associations in that they garnered assets that were …show more content…
208-209). Despite the fact that light skinned blacks also endured discrimination since as pronounced by the one-drop rule during the Jim Crowe era they were not considered white, the discourse of white privilege manifested as light skinned privilege within the black community. Early examples are the brown paper bag test, a commonly held practice by the light skinned blacks during the post-slavery era in which entry was denied into social societies such as fraternities, churches and night clubs to those who were darker than a brown paper bag. Similarly, the blue vein societies were exclusive to those whose skin was light enough to expose their blue veins (Jaynes, 2005). Thurman offers insight into these kinds of developments in that Emma Lou too finds herself rejected by her light skinned peers after trying to belong to one of the black sororities (Thurman, 1929,