I have not read this book as yet but I intend to do so shortly. From the reviews I have read I feel I have a general idea of the book. I am interested in how the author covered these issues during that era (around 1955) and what has changed since then. If anyone has read this book, please comment.

-Ayinde

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BOOK:

Black Bourgeoisie: The Book That Brought the Shock of Self-Revelation to Middle-Class Blacks in America : by E. Franklin Frazier
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684832410/ref=nosim/theorderofthesel

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Black Bourgeoisie at 50: Class, Civil Rights, and the Cold War in Black America
March 1 , 2005
John Munro

EXTRACT:

Black Bourgeoisie can only be understood against this historical backdrop. Frazier’s indictment of the black middle class hinges on his juxtaposition between “the world of reality” and “the world of make believe,” which structures his two-part argument. Frazier describes the black bourgeoisie as white-collar workers whose education orients them away from the African American working class, and encourages an emulation of the white propertied classes. Reaffirming his earlier work on cultural survivals, Frazier argues that “the black bourgeoisie has been uprooted from its ‘racial’ tradition and as a consequence has no cultural roots in either the Negro or the white world.” Having abandoned black workers, the black middle class in Frazier’s view use their new found pecuniary success to indulge in a false sense of superiority behind the segregated veil of the larger society. As one of the most powerful sectors of black business, the black press claims to speak for the entire African American community while only advancing bourgeois interests within it, one example being editorial timidity when covering international colonial issues. In the end, unwilling to face the economic underpinnings of segregation, members of the black middle class feel acute insecurity, anxiety, and self-hatred in their unfulfilled quest for inclusion into the white world of property.

Full Review
http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/commentary/53_comm1.html

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A comment I saw on Amazon:

The Time Is NOW!, May 27, 2005

Reviewer: Journey (Chicago, IL)

I am not afraid to look the reality of colorism in the eye and acknowledge that it does exist within the black community. It is my greatest hope and dream that someday the dark skinned black and the light skinned black will be seen as one family in the future. I want so much to love the lightskinned sister and brother as my own reflection and not be divided from them or made to feel that one is treated better than the other, but sadly, that day is not here and this book bravely and powerfully illustrates that point to the fullest.

I am a medium brown colored woman, my mother was very dark skinned and I have witnessed the evils of skin color prejudice all my life. In most situations, it was Black Men who were prejudiced against myself and the women around me beccause of our coloring. These men felt no shame or limit in their racist intra-family prejudice and measured their entire lives by how many light skinned or white women they could attain and how light brite their children could come out. It's everywhere and anyone who denies it is both a fool and a liar.

That is why I highly recommend THE BLACKER THE BERRY by Wallace Thurman. There is no truer portrait of the self-hatred among our people than the one extolled in this book, and what makes it even sadder is that this book was written in the 1920's. So that only shows how deep this kind of evil runs.

Lately, I have become very interested in this subject and I have searched for other books that explore this subject with intelligence, honest, beauty and wisdom and I have found several that I consider to be classics on the subject of Colorism.

(1) MARITA GOLDEN'S book "Don't Play In the Sun" is definitely the most modern up to date book of the bunch. It expertly weaves the story of her life experiences in the 1960's Black Power movement with the current struggles of women like Serena Williams and India Arie to find their way in the world, even in the midst of being shunned and ignored by the black community itself. The book's analysis of the Hollywood casting system and the "Mulatto Follies" of BET and MTV is priceless.

(2) "The Bluest Eye" by TONI MORRISON is by far the most riveting and painful book that I have read on this subject of colorism. I believe that her book, more than any mother, gets to the psychological and historical root cause of the problem and exposes the mode in which we pass the problem on generation to generation. The destruction of an innocent black girl named Pecola Breedlove will leave you heartbroken and shocked as you see the bold naked truth unfold right before your eyes. You can't ignore this book, because the story being told is the one that you are all too familiar with no matter what color you are.

(3) "Flesh and the Devil" by African novelist KOLA BOOF is another deeply powerful book that examines colorism, but not out in the open. This book is unique in that it focuses on a very enchanting love story between a Black Prince and Princess and follows their reincarnations through history as they struggle to find their way back to each other. Through detailed moments in black history, both in Africa and the United States, the provocative author highlights the way that black people originally viewed their beauty and humanity and then juxtuposes it against the way they see themselves now in the modern world. The result is nothing less than devastating. I love this book so much, because the storytelling is so rich and the depth is so sweeping and grand. Anyone who loves good writing and is proud to be descended from the Black race will find themselves literally changed forever by the powerful images depicted in this very poetically moving story.

(4) "The Color Complex"--VARIOUS AUTHORS, is a very simple, straight forward analysis from a sociological point of view. Much research and statistical facts are used to illustrate that our communities are infested with these issues.

(5) "The Darkest Child" by Dolores Philips is another great novel that shows us the poor blacks who live under the poverty line ingesting these complex social hierarchies based on color and how they not only expose their children to them, but force the entire community to live by the "color code". Everybody is used to it from slavery and the system goes on and on unchallenged. In this book, Tangy Mae, the darkest of 10 children by the white-looking mother Rozelle, struggles to find her dignity and confidence in the midst of her evil light skinned mother inflicting one horrid abuse on top of the other. One thing I will say for the evil white-looking mother, Rozelle, is that she treated all of her children hiddeously and with contempt, from the whitest to the blackest. But she killed the child who was born looking.