The Message

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Morrison presents a Black woman aspiring to white beauty but not just a vague, abstract white beauty. Jean Harlow is the anchor for Morrison’s claim that “physical beauty” is “probably the most destructive idea in the history of human thought.” It is a grand pronouncement, made grander by use of contrast: the superlative (most destructive) enhanced by the chancy (probably), like sea salt over dark chocolate. Morrison’s “probably” is irony—an understatement that understates nothing. But what grounds these ideas is the specificity of how they land in the life of Pauline, the particulars of her story and language—the part and curl in her hair, the candy breaking her tooth, the pregnancy, and the simple, devastating declaration “everything went then.” Here is a woman whose condition is defined by a Jim Crow order, defined still further by a Jim Crow story—“A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment.”