Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry tells us the story of a dark skinned African American girl who cannot seem to come to terms with the skin she was born with. Emma Lou the main character of the story grew up in a town where all the people in the black community praised being light skinned. Though having a light skin mother, Emma Lou gets her dark skin from her father’s side, and because of it she is told by her mother and grandmother that she will never make it anywhere in life. That her skin color defines her. Though the story is told through a third person narrator, just like in Passing with the story being told through Irene, the story is mainly told through the eyes and mind of Emma Lou. What makes Emma Lou so unreliable though is the fact that she always contradicts what she says.
Emma Lou has so much hatred for the lighter skin colored people that treat her differently due to her skin, yet she doesn’t like to be associated with any darker skinned people either. Take Hazel for example, she is a dark skinned girl just like Emma Lou, and just like Emma Lou she is starting college looking for friends. But Emma Lou doesn’t want to be Hazel’s friend because of her skin color, and the way she acts, because she doesn’t act “white.” She says, “No wonder people were prejudiced against dark-skin people when they were so ugly, so haphazard in their dress, and so boisterously mannered as was this present specimen,” (p. 17). Emma Lou is in no position to judge Hazel the way she does because she is no different than her.
Another example of Emma Lou being a hypocrite is her ending her relationship with John. When she first moves to Harlem, John is kind enough to help her find a home and show her around. She takes advantage of his kindness and uses him to her advantage. As soon as she finds herself a little more stable she ends their relationship because he is also dark skinned and not good enough for her. Once again she is treating someone unfairly just the way she doesn’t want anyone to treat her.
Furthermore, every time does get respected by someone who is lighter skinned, she believes that that person is just pitying her. With her there is no win win situation, and everything that happens always comes back down to her skin color. To me she is selfish, contradictory, and a hypocrite and it makes her opinion hard to believe. That is is why she is certainly not a reliable narrator.
