Summary Of Toni Morrison's Sweetness

Imagine being born into a world where not only society doesn't accept you, but your own parents don't either; just because of your skin color. Yes, just because you are “Tar” colored, and your parents are “high-yellow” you are treated differently. Your mother rationalizes being so cruel to you by saying she was trying to protect you from the world. And your father walks out on you and doesn't return. This is the plot of Toni Morrison’s “Sweetness”. The story follows the life of a darker skinned girl named Lula Mae during the Civil Rights Era, presumably in the south. Throughout the story, Morrison effectivity critiques the idea of “skin privileges” in society, and even in the black community; showing that is a hypocrisy. The idea that the …show more content…
If you had lighter skin, you were able to work in the big house, and do housework. If you had darker skin, you had to do arduous work in the fields and were subject to more harassment and injury. Having lighter skin meant you didn't have to do back breaking work, which translated to having an easier life as a slave. This created a divide among the slaves on plantations that continues to fester in the black community long after slavery, even to present day. Lula Mae’s mother says in the story: “Some of you probably think it’s a bad thing to group ourselves according to skin color—the lighter the better—in social clubs, neighborhoods, churches, sororities, even colored schools.”. This quote is proof that if you had lighter skin, certain doors were open for you that weren't necessarily open for darker colored people. You could get a better education and you even went to different churches in the black community, all because of the amount of melanin in your skin. Keep in mind that this was still in the Jim Crow Era, so blacks were also segregating themselves from each other, while whites were doing the same. My grandmother is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) , an African American Sorority. She went to school at South Carolina State University in the late 40’s, she has lighter skin than I do and one day I talked with her about her pledging experience. During the conversation she brought up this notion of the “Paper Bag Test”. She later explained that if someone were interested in becoming an AKA, they had to be lighter than a paper bag. I was appalled when I heard this. This also confirmed Lula Mae’s mothers quote about “the lighter, the better”. She later said “that's just the way things were”. This sort of cruelty is the same type that Lula Mae experienced growing up with her