Discussion & Reflection

Reitano Chapter 10- A “New” New York

pp. 205-214

New York was going through some major changes at this time; changes in immigration, law, developments and even financial problems. Gotham’s population was steadily increasing after the 1965 immigration reform and by the 1990s, New York became more global than ever with communities from all over the world. By 2009, minorities were the majority of voters in Gotham. Soon after, the World Trade Center tragedy occurred and shook the entire world. However, New York defied the odds and rebuilt after this tragedy.

Residents were leaving New York but new immigrants were constantly taking their place reviving many cities. Russian immigrants moved in with difficulties but were welcome unlike the Chinese. The Chinese faced segregation from society. However, soon the Chinese began to dominate as thousands of Chinese came in, conquered businesses with their networks and impacted many communities. Koreans also came along and took places of other immigrants helping declining neighborhoods flourish again. Koreans dominated Flushing as the Chinese dominated other neighborhoods. Asians remained strong through tough circumstances and adapting quite well at the end.

Settling in new place is definitely not easy as we saw with the Asians and other European immigrants and it wasn’t any easier for Latinos. Like all immigrants, Puerto Ricans brought something to the table. Puerto Ricans enriched their communities through music, language, traditions and more.However, they still struggles financially as some moved up to the middle class but most remained at the bottom with lowest education levels and highest poverty in the nation. Puerto Rican immigration constantly fluctuated, going up and down as years went by. Soon, Dominicans outnumbered Puerto Ricans in New York and unlike some immigrants, Dominicans were able to go back home relatively easy and could even vote. This led to Dominicans seeking political power in New York. Dominicans also suffered economically as they got paid low wages due to their weak union ties. However, they got along pretty well with other minorities, women helped with this union.

West Indians were also a part of the newcomers coming into New York and they held many parades as well. Their first big immigration was during the 1920s amidst the renaissance. There were tensions between West Indians and African Americans but they soon diminished. West Indians adjusted quite well as they also had connections, they also spoke English so this led to them getting good educations.

pp. 221-226

The Social Contract was constantly changing in New York as some politicians favored helping he poor and other the middle class. Giuliani soon redefined New York’s social contract as he advocated the privatization of many facilities. Giuliani was not so concerned about the poor or helping them in any way and he even wanted them out of the city. Some of his decisions led to an increasing number of homeless and needy people. The lower class were treated extremely harsh while looking for jobs or even at their jobs as conditions were despicable. Giuliani continued to cute taxes that helped large wealthy corporations while hurting the poor. Giuliana also revolutionized school systems in terms of their security, education, and testing in some ways helping schools but on the other had, weakened them. He made many cuts to school funding and standards in schooling continued to be changed.

Another part of Gotham’s changing social contract was the support for the First Amendment rights of free expression and assembly. Giuliani also made cuts toward The Brooklyn Museum because of the “offensive art” which he called sick and disgusting. People began to accuse him of abusing his power and began to resist him because they believed that his views should not be allowed to limit creative institutions. However, Giuliani persisted because his strong tactics often worked. Giuliani and Laguardia were quite similar but also opposites, however Laguardia remained Gotham’s best mayor.

Reitano Summary 205-214, 221-226

First Edition of Book

Pages 205-214:

New York’s mayor, Rudolph Giuliani was an international figure whose complexity and spirit mirrored those of the city. Still, Giuliani can also be seen contradicting basic New York values. Throughout his mayorship, Giuliani made several questionable moves which included a call to blow up the education system and attempting to sell off the city’s water. However, his leadership during the events of 9/11 earned him the respectable title of “America’s mayor.”

Giuliani was known to spark personal and public controversy about several issues including race, law enforcement officers, welfare, education, the arts, and civil liberties. His mayoral decisions clearly indicate that he opposed minorities, labor unions, small street businesses and affordable public services. In spite of all of his questionable choices and goals, Giuliani was often compared to Superman and seen by many New Yorkers as an effective leader who helped to reduce crime in the city. Giuliani’s mayorship was one of substantial rise, fall and resurrection.

Living up to his superhero title, Giuliani was known to promote law and order and fight crime in the city — especially crime surrounding the Mafia. However, he failed to understand the Gothamites and their cherished liberties. Giuliani believed that the authority is the driving force of freedom and this contradicted the traditional New York view of freedom.

Giuliani was strict in combating crime using the “broken windows” theory and creating a “zero tolerance” campaign. He worked to reduce public offenses and disturbances, but some thought that, in the process, he showed a blatant disregard for the city’s struggling communities. In the meantime, courts were being filled with cases for petty crimes, suspects were being strip-searched, street businesses were being targeted and people were being held in jail before later being free of all charges. Giuliani was beginning to see public opposition for violating New York’s free spirit.

Giuliani was still effectively fighting crime by increasing the size and resources of the police force. He created the Street Crime Unit of undercover cops and started the Compstat program. However, issues surrounding racial profiling arose when there was an increase in stop-and-frisks of minority men.

Despite the efforts of the public and his colored co-workers to bring to light the issues with law enforcement and people of color, Giuliani missed the message that something was wrong. As a result, several fatal confrontations between minorities and the police continued to occur. Giuliani made some effort to address the issues when running for reelection but after he won, the issues were once again dismissed.

New Yorkers were fearful and angry. Their feelings led to public protests led by activists like Al Sharpton. Together, New Yorkers urged for political action regarding police brutality and justice for the innocent minorities who suffered at the hands of the cops. Throughout this public outcry, Giuliani acted callously by claiming justice had been done when cops were cleared and releasing criminal records of the deceased.

Giuliani made big strides to reduce crime by increasing policing but his excess pride and power abuse, along with the power abuse of the police force, eventually led to his transformation from a mayoral superhero to a mayoral supervillain.

Giuliani sought to make changes to public services by privatizing them. In the end, he hoped to reduce the role of the government in public service and increase its role in businesses. Giuliani opposed the welfare system because he believed such a system would encourage lazy dependents to live at the expense of the hard-working. He even urged for the poor to be moved elsewhere.

Giuliani encouraged other efforts. He created job centers and allowed welfare qualifiers to work for their stipends. He wanted the people to work for their privilege.

Second Edition of Book

Pages 221-226:

New York attracted many diverse peoples and was often the stage for conflict. The city was constantly changing and many people admired that trait of the city.

Giuliani worked toward his efforts and on the way, many people qualifying for welfare were denied aid until they got jobs. In addition, many of the workers had to work in unsanitary conditions without proper protection and safety equipment.

*The rest of this section in the second edition was a repetition from the first edition.

Second Edition of Book

Pages 205-214

In the 1990s, New York was changing as there was a large number of immigrants. In fact, at the time, approximately 37.8% of the population were made up of immigrants from all around the world. Small ethnic communities were popping up in New York and included people from the Caribbean, Asia, Latin America, and parts of Europe. These “minorities” had a large political impact.

Gotham was diversified. It had many different peoples and as a result brought together many different cultures, each with their own food, music, language and religion.

Among the new immigrant population were Russians who arrived in two consecutive waves. Many of the Russian immigrants who came to America at the time settled in Brooklyn. They didn’t face many issues that other poor, uneducated immigrants faced because they were educated and migrated from large cities. As a result, they became successful entrepreneurs in the United States.

Unlike the Russians, other immigrant groups had a difficult time assimilating into American culture. They settled and stayed within their ethnic neighborhoods. The Chinese immigrant population from Asia exemplified this because they lacked proper education and as a result, were forced to work in the industrial labor sector for cheap wages. Wealthier, more educated “uptown” Chinese separated themselves from their poor, uneducated “downtown” Chinese counterparts. They ended up settling in parts of Brooklyn and Queens.

Another Asian population that came to the United States was the Korean population. Although they were more educated than their Chinese counterparts, they still lacked the language skills needed to rise in New York. As a result, they projected their dreams onto their children who were more easily absorbed into American culture and had a better chance of becoming successful. They were still able to take control of previously owned Jewish and Italian businesses.

People were also coming from places near the United States. Immigrants from Latin America included Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. The Puerto Ricans came to join the industrial workforce after World War II. The Puerto Rican and Dominican population faced many challenges because they struggled financially and has poor educational backgrounds. Despite these challenges, immigrant Latinos, with the help of the women in their respective ethnicities, were able to create a sense of community and help other members of the Latino community.

West Indians were also a large immigrant group during the time. Like the Latinos, they strived to create an ethnic community. They joined together in social events and celebrations like the West Indian Day Carnival. However, the West Indian immigrant group faced many racial issues. They had dark skin colors and as a result, many people considered them to be blacks. Still, because they mostly spoke English and had a strong educational background, they were able to get respected jobs in the city.

The undeniably large immigrant population during this time period made changes in the New York; by 2010, minorities were beginning to play a large role in the politics of the city.

The Newcomers

The first part of Reitano’s Chapter 10 details New York City as “both changeless and changing” in many ways including immigration policies. Due to the 1965 immigration reform, people from the Caribbean, East Asia, Central Asia, Latin America and Russia flocked to New York and greatly changed the population of the city. In New York alone, over 110 different languages are spoken. Although many of these newcomers self-segregate in certain neighborhoods, they are able to interact with new kinds of cultures in New York creating a multicultural “cosmopolitan identity.”

As older residents were moving out of the city to the suburbs, the new immigrants came into these city neighborhoods and revived them. For example, the Russian Jewish émigrés brought Brighton Beach, Brooklyn back from it’s decaying state by living there and creating new businesses.

The Chinese immigrants faced problems of isolation upon coming to New York City. From 1882 to 1943, many Chinese people were barred from coming to the US. If they were able to come to America, they were excluded from most occupations and were left to work in restaurants, laundries, and in underground business. The Chinese were even kept out of American politics as they were controlled by the Chinatown Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA). When the Chinese immigration quota was raised in 1965, the population of Chinatown drastically rose. Most of the new Cantonese speaking immigrants were used as cheap labor in sweatshops with exploiting bosses while others immigrating from Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taiwan who were more educated and wealthy bought real estate and developed restaurants, stores, and sweatshops. When the Chinese were granted citizenship in 1943, they began to organize politically. The Flushing community elected John C. Liu as the first Chinese American City Councilman in 2001 and the comptroller in 2009 while two other immigrants from Hong Kong were elected to the City Council as well.

Although the city’s Chinese American community has grown politically and economically, there are still internal tensions along regional and class lines. The “model minority myth” stereotypes Asians as industrious, ambitious, and smart. Many accepted this image but the working class Chinese and Korean immigrants often felt ashamed if they could not live up to the standard due to economic issues. These immigrants later pushed the model minority myth on to their children so they can live the American Dream.

Due to the given American citizenship of many Puerto Ricans in 1917, they never became fully settled in either Puerto Rico or America. The Puerto Ricans were the first dominant Latino group in New York City. They enriched the urban environment with their culture and provided a large labor force for the post World War II industrial growth. They even became a political force in the 1960s when Herman Badillo was elected as Borough President and congressman. By 2000, Dominicans outnumbered Puerto Ricans in population. Since many Dominicans had dual citizenship, they returned to the Dominican Republic frequently and even voted in the elections there. Although much of their focus was split between the two countries, Dominicans did seek local political power and elected their first city councilman in 1991. The Dominican women also raised their role in the family by earning wages in America and developing leadership skills.

Another predominant immigrant group to New York City was from the West Indies. The first large migration to New York happened during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. While many West Indians used their British ties and British accents in order to distinguish themselves from African Americans, other figures such as Marcus Garvey and Claude McKay combatted historic American racism by emphasizing racial pride. During the civil rights era, tensions between West Indians and African Americans decreased as West Indian people won elective office in African American communities and their goals started to align more. Even though West Indians fates have aligned with the fates of African Americans, they did separately create a political identity and still continue to not be absorbed in African American politics.

The Social Contract

New York City’s political agenda has drastically changed with the turn of mayors. While LaGuardia, Lindsay, and Dinkins focused on serving the public and the poor, past Mayor Rudy Giuliani focused on the middle class and greatly defunded social programs. He believed that the “lazy” should not live at the expense of the hardworking. With new qualifying standards for welfare, Giuliani eliminated over 600,000 people from the program and was highly regarded for doing so. With a sudden increase in homeless people and attendance increase to food kitchens, it was proven that leaving welfare did not mean leaving poverty. To change the program for the better, Giuliani turned welfare centers into job centers to hopefully raise the people out of poverty. In addition, his tax cuts ultimately hurt minorities and the poor while helping wealthy private institutions and big business. He fought for control over New York City’s public schools and implemented citywide testing to raise standards and bring uniformity. Together, Giuliani and Badillo advocated the “standards movement” and drastically changed the education system of NYC.

After hearing of an art exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum called “Sensation,” Giuliani stepped up his fight to censor art at any and all costs. He threatened to cut public funding to the museum due to its “offensive” nature. Giuliani continued to use his mayoral powers to threaten different groups that were criticizing him and protesting against him. It wasn’t until the tragedy of 9/11 that he was able to be seen as a figure of strength and democracy during the aftermath. Throughout his term, he immensely changed the social contract of New York City.

 

Before identifying the influences of new ethnic groups into the New York City melting pot today, Reitano draws our attention to the overall picture immigration in New York City paints. Since the removal of national origin quotas with 1965 immigration reform, the city’s population soared, and by the early 2000s, 37.8% of the city’s population was foreign born. Minorities even comprised the majority of New York voters in the 2009 elections. Although Dominicans, Chinese and Jamaicans are the city’s largest immigrant groups, they only make up 30% of the total immigrant population. In fact, in New York City there are 110 different languages spoken. Such a culturally cosmopolitan and amalgamated city yields cosmopolitan identities among the youth of the large foreign born population and contributes to the “New” New York Reitano refers to in the title of Chapter 10.

With these final new waves of immigration that will define New York City, leadership is held by two distinct mayors. First, the Republican in the historically Democratic city, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Giuliani attempted and succeeded in implementing conservative reform and was praised for his crack down on urban crime and response to the September 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center. Mayor Michael Bloomberg succeeded Giuliani and restored the city’s self-confidence after 9/11 and helped the economy rebound.

Starting in the late twentieth century, Reitano points first to the Russian-Jewish immigration that transformed Brighton Beach, Brooklyn into a thriving community. Like many communities in New York City, the residents leaving for the suburbs or retiring gave immigrants a space to move into. 30% of Brighton Beach was vacant when Russian Jews filled in with their first wave of immigration in 1979 and their second wave ten years later after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Asians, on the other hand, as opposed to being absorbed into an area were excluded to one—Chinatown in Lower Manhattan. The Chinese were the first group to suffer exclusion as immigrants from 1882 to 1943. Not only were they prohibited from most occupations and the prospects of citizenship but were controlled by the Chinatown Consolidated Benevolent Association. After the repeal of immigrant quotas, Chinatown’s population exploded and Chinatown became the place where immigrants reunited with their families but was equally a trap with the exploitation of sweatshop labor for those that settled. In addition to these poorer, mostly Chinese immigrants that settled in Chinatown, there were “Uptown Chinese” immigrants that hailed from Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Geographically separating themselves from their poorer counterparts, the “Uptown Chinese” may have lived outside of Chinatown but they did invest and buy up real estate in Lower Manhattan. In 1943, the Chinese were granted the ability to become citizens and the Chinese American community flourished politically. Among the Asian migrants, Korean immigrants entered New York City very often with professional backgrounds. Similar to the Russian Jews in Brooklyn, Korean immigrants replaced retiring Jewish and Italian markets and groceries. Mid-Manhattan, with thriving Korean businesses and restaurants, would serve as Koreatown but in a commercial as opposed to residential sense.

The Latino presence in New York City was originally characterized by Puerto Rican immigration. Puerto Ricans proved to be the dominant Latino group in New York City since their major migration to New York to join the post World War II industrial labor force. However, Puerto Ricans live in constant conflict with their Latino culture and American identity. While their migration peaked in the 1950s, it has been on the decline as other Latino groups challenge their dominance, particularly Dominicans. Dominicans, like Puerto Ricans, are relatively close to their native land but do participate in New York politics and contribute to the economy. In the factory, with the upward mobility or departure of Jewish and Italian immigrants, Dominican women filled in; although exploited, factory work was still a means of social mobility for them. Dominican women preferred to stay in New York City while most Dominican men dreamed of one day returning permanently back to the Dominican Republic. It was the women who united the Latino identity by building cultural bridges between groups like the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans through involvement and interactions in public locations like church or community board meetings. The result is locations like Corona, Queens where an amalgamation of ethnicities unite to represent a single Latino community.

Like the united Latino identity, the West Indian American Day Carnival promotes a pan-ethnicity among West Indians and more. West Indian immigrants tend to be classified as Black although they come from nations and communities where color was never a defining feature. West Indians have been “learning race” since their first migration to New York City in the 1920s during the Harlem Renaissance. Often, they would embrace their British ties in order to elevate themselves above the status of African Americans. They quickly learned that race trumps ethnicity with police brutality under Mayor Giuliani due to racial profiling. In 1977, West Africans attempted to politically separate themselves from the African American identity with the first cross-Caribbean club in support of a political candidate.

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Giuliani, contrary to previous New York City mayors, reflected conservative values and focused his efforts on the middle class. He emphasized “individual initiative and private enterprise” over public activism and even advocated for the privatization of public services (221). Giuliani referred to the social programs promoted by mayors before him as the “compassion industry” that only served to increase laziness at the expense of the hardworking. He was the first mayor to actually propose that New York State reduce funding for the city’s welfare and Medicaid programs. In 1995, Giuliani reduced the welfare roles, rejecting scores of applicants and eliminating over 600,000 people already on welfare. In addition, he turned the welfare centers into job centers as all able-bodied adult welfare recipients were now required to work for their stipends—an approach long overdue.

Inevitably, these reforms were criticized for being heartless with welfare recipients not being properly protected on job sites where they were working for their stipends and welfare recipients in college having to drop out of school in order to put in hours to receive their stipend. Giuliani’s many tax cuts helped businesses and wealthy private institutions but destroyed groups like the Human Resources Administration and the Health and Hospitals Corporation where the main benefactors were minorities.

Giuliani also targeted schools in his efforts to reform New York City through regularization and control. His major achievements included shifting the supervision of school security to the police department and implementing city wide testing to institute a sense of uniformity to the public school system and raise student standards. However, Giuliani also weakened the school system by drastically cutting schools’ operating and construction budgets while increasing disbursements for books and computers. In areas like Brooklyn and the Bronx where he was confronted with fierce opposition, Giuliani shifted school construction funds to areas where he was supported like Queens and Staten Island. Giuliani appointed Bronx Borough President and congressman Herman Badillo as special education monitor in the hopes of implementing a “standards movement” to routinize teaching and standardize the public school system. Opponents of this “standards movement” believed that implementing standards were restricting opportunities, especially for minorities and the poor in the wake of Badillo’s targeting of CUNY’s open admissions policy.

Giuliani overstepped his boundaries on several occasions when it came to his position as mayor. In 1999, Giuliani threatened to cut the Brooklyn Museum’s funds and end its lease after it mounted a portrait of the Virgin Mary that used dried elephant dung and pornographic cutouts. Giuliani’s defense was that the government should not be patronizing “offensive art,” but his attempt at cultural domineering was confronted with resentful backlash. While Giuliani’s First Amendment initiatives were reversed by the courts, controversy surrounding any of his proposals and movements were overshadowed by 9/11. The mayor, in a time of utter chaos, remained calm, toured Ground Zero, attended funerals and served as the face and father of New York City during this crisis which defined his mayoralty.

The change of the century also brought along change in the Big Apple. Gotham, as Reitano refers to it, was accepting more immigrants than ever with 37.8% of the population foreign born. What was special about this new wave of immigration was that people were coming from all over the world. There were communities forming of people coming from the Carribean, East Asia, Central Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. With Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the 1990’s and early 2000’s consisted of turmoil regarding some of his civil and his education policies. But with the tragedy of 9/11, those seemed unimportant and Giuliani’s response to the attack over shadowed his harsh policies. It would take NY many years to recover from those unfortunate attacks.

One of the first groups of newcomers were the Russians. At the turn of the decade, Soviet Russia collapsed and many coming from Soviet ruled countries moved to America. Russian Jews came and settled in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. They were welcome here because the area was already occupied by Eastern European Jews but there were still culture and language barriers to face. However, coming from cities with skills and education, these immigrants were able to accommodate themselves easier than typical newcomers. They were able to become entrepreneurs and assimilate into the new culture while also maintaining the one from back home.

Other groups such as the Asians weren’t able to assimilate so easily, instead they isolated themselves in their neighborhoods. The Chinese were excluded for a very long time due to the Chinese Exclusion Acts therefore neighborhoods such as Chinatown remained as hubs for the Cantonese speaking Chinese who moved in the 90s. These Chinese didn’t have much education and settled for cheap industrial labor often run by their Mandarin speaking countrymen who considered themselves more superior. By raising the rents, the Chinese of Chinatown were forced to move and start neighborhoods in Sunset Park, Brooklyn and Flushing, Queens. Other Asian groups also settled in Flushing, Queens such as the Koreans. Koreans came to America with education and success from their coutnries, but due to their language barrier they were forced to give up a lot and instead transferred their aspirations to their children. This idea that their children could get the education and resources necessary to become successful was known as the “model minority myth,” the Asian version of the American Dream.  By 2009, Taiwanese born Chinese American City Coucilman, John C. Liu was elected as comptroller.

At this time there were also immigrants coming from places not so far from America such as the Latinos. Puerto Ricans and Dominican immigrants are able to travel back and forth from their countries making them transnational. However, these groups both faced serious problems when it came to facing low poverty and the lowest education levels in the country. But working together with people of the same language they were able to overlook national differences and work together to form alliances dedicated to helping out other Latinos.

The West Indians also learned to overcome national differences in order to band together as one community. The West Indian Day Carnival for example joins Trinidadians, Jamaicans, and even French speaking Haitians. One struggle that these groups of people faced was racism due to their skin color. Though they aren’t African American their dark skin color grouped them as one, and coming from countries where racism was never a problem it was a learning experience for most. But coming from English speaking countries and better education they were able to move into professional sectors of the city. Overall by 2010, NYC will have 51 minority city council members.

During this time period the Mayor was Rudolph Giuliani, and he changed the social contract of the city. Giuliani had little regards for the poor lower class and instead focused on the middle class. He tried to pass many drastic policies such as privatization of public services, defunding of welfare and Medicaid. He thought people should rely less on welfare and more on finding jobs therefore he started a new workfare program to help this situation. To those who didn’t find jobs he would place them in Work Experience Programs but this caused more harm then god. More and more people were losing the ability to continue school and poverty was increasing.

Giuliani also brought a lot of change in the education system. He tried to regularize public schools and did some good by laying the groundwork to get rid of the Board of Education and incorporating citywide testing in the system in order to raise education standrds. Meanwhile, he cut any school constructing budgets and trying to change the CUNY system with his counterpart Herman Badillo.

On the civil aspect, Giuliani tried many times to deny the First Amendment to the citizens of the city. He tried to shut down the Sensation exhibit in Brooklyn Museum because it was offensive to the Catholic community. He abused his powers as Mayor several times by letting the front of City Hall get used for events he approved of rather than ones that were important to the city such as HIV AIDs activist activity. But once the tragedy of 9/11 hit it was Giuliani who stepped up and became the hero of the city. He addressed the nation and brought back hope into the city in the midst of chaos. And although his previous years didn’t hold a kind track record his response to 9/11 made him more popular and lovable than ever. And for that is what he is remembered for.

Lucia Lopez

Is the protagonist, Emma Lou- like Irene- unreliable? (Choose 1 or 2 passages as evidence, if so)

In, “The Blacker the Berry,” Emma Lou describes her struggle as a very dark skinned African American woman living in a society where the lighter one’s skin is, the more value they have. However, as the novel progresses, one might begin to wonder whether Emma Lou is a reliable narrator, similar to Irene in the novel “Passing”. Her vision of what it means to have worth and her view of who the “right kind of people” are warped and cause her to have many moments in which she has hypocritical thoughts. In the beginning of the novel, Thurman describes the sorrow that came with being very dark at the time and the multitude of “solutions” Emma and her family would try.

“She wasn’t the only person who regretted her darkness either. It was an acquired family characteristic, this moaning and grieving over the color of her skin. Everything possible had been done to alleviate the unhappy condition, every suggested agent had been employed, but her skin, despite bleachings, scourg-ings, and powderings, had remained black—fast black—as nature had planned and effected.”

From this quote we can see that Emma Lou goes through a lot of  misery due to the color of her skin and it is implied that she wishes it wasn’t that way. However, as the novel progresses, we see another more critical side of Emma Lou. When she starts college at the University of South Carolina, she meets another very dark girl named Hazel. Although they go through similar struggles, Hazel is a much more jovial character, causing Emma Lou to reject her. Upon meeting her, Emma Lou reacted as such: “She resented being approached by any one so flagrantly inferior, any one so noticeably a typical southern darky, who had no business obtruding into the more refined scheme of things.”

Emma Lou, despite knowing the grievances that came with having very dark skin in a world where whiteness was worth, rejected Hazel because of her stereotypical behavior as a “southern darky.” Emma Lou had always purposely tried to prove that despite her skin color, she wasn’t really black in the sense that she was uneducated, jovial, etc. This is precisely what makes Emma Lou unreliable- she tries too much to prove herself to be different rather than criticize the stereotypes themselves.

I don’t know if I would exactly deem Emma Lou unreliable, but she certainly demonstrates a lot of ambiguities in her attitudes towards race that paint her as a pretty hypocritical and confused character.

For instance, she resents her dark skin and pure black features, yet she seeks black solidarity. While she hates being a dark-skinned girl herself, she has a strong desire to belong in the larger black community, which becomes clear when she goes to California to attend college. She expresses a strong interest in the black people living in California and really seeks out other black students at her university to befriend, yet when Hazel Mason befriends her, Emma Lou feels actual revulsion at her ‘vulgarity’ (Hazel says and does nothing vulgar, unless you classify imperfect English grammar and speaking loudly as particularly vulgar behavior) and does not want to be friends with her. Also, for someone who seems to care so much about establishing herself in and belonging to the black community, Emma Lou cares a lot about what the white students think of her, which can be seen in the way she monitors her speaking while talking to Hazel at the registrar’s office.

To be honest, I neither Clare nor Irene struck me as very admirable or sympathetic characters. In the beginning, I could definitely sympathize with Irene, but as the story progressed I found it harder to understand her and her hypocrisy.

However, given the choice between Clare and Irene, I would choose Irene as the more sympathetic character simply because she has some redeeming qualities to me that I just could not find in Clare. Clare’s blatant rejection of her own racial identity and her active way of othering black people in her social-climbing pursuits not only irritated me, but it also made me feel really uncomfortable with her. I could not bring myself to trust or like her as a character at all for this reason, let alone sympathize with or admire her. Yes, the black experience is an extremely difficult and unpleasant one, especially in America during the early twentieth century, but that doesn’t excuse Clare’s use of her ivory skin to pass as white so as not to have to deal with being an African American woman.

I can definitely sympathize with Irene’s anger at Clare and her husband John’s behavior when race comes up. Although Irene does take advantage of her lighter skinned, racially ambiguous appearance, at least she remains faithful to her sense of racial identity.

Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry explicitly discusses the phenomenon of intra-racial prejudice on the basis of skin color. Emma Lou was raised in a family of black elitists, who believed that they had more power, were more beautiful and were worth more than other blacks because of their lightness. Emma Lou despite her darkness, and filled with self loathing, carried on these beliefs well into her adult life.

The third chapter of the book is titled “Alva” after a character of that name. This character is a light-skinned, ethnically ambiguous, attractive man. He and Emma Lou meet…. the dichotomy of their “relationship” is heavily influenced by their perspectives of blackness and the value placed on different kinds of black people. In this respect, Emma Lou and Alva actually think the same, like many others: light is better, blackness is inherently bad. The closer one is to white, the better. So when Alva, a man who characteristically takes advantage of others for his own amusement and gain, appears to have noticed her, Emma Lou latches on to him. She is attached to him because to her, he is the perfect man– a person of color she could legally be with, but not black looking in the slightest– and the perfect man could only take interest in someone who is worthy of noticing. So his noticing her builds up a certain amount of confidence in her, as she began to imagine her life with purpose, someone who loved her for who she was and would fulfill her familial dreams of whitening her bloodline. However, of course at the end of the chapter doesn’t even remember her.

Alva’s chapter redirects the plot of the novel to the next chapter where she begins to reconstruct her understanding of herself, blackness and the way she views others.