"And he also told Emma Lou, during one of their usual private talks, that it was only in small cities one encountered stupid color prejudice such as she had encountered among the blue vein circle in her home town.

'People in large cities,' he had said, 'are broad. They do not have time to think of petty things. The people in Boise are fifty years behind the times, but you will find that Los Angeles is one of the world's greatest and most modern cities, and you will be happy there.'"

Uncle Joe (the "he" in this passage) basically expounds upon the idea that racism just doesn't exist in big cities. (Yeah, we know. It's hard not to roll our eyes a little at that one. But stay with us.)

Sadly, Emma Lou takes this all in, hook, line and sinker. Which is why she's on her way to Los Angeles—USC, to be exact.

Okay, it may be tough to swallow the whole idea that "only in small cities" does "one [encounter] stupid color prejudice." Especially since the beating of Rodney King and the death of Oscar Grant, just to name two examples.

But what Uncle Joe tells Emma Lou isn't so weird if you consider that, historically, big cities like New York did offer freedom to slaves. That whole idea was one of the driving forces behind the Great Migration. And so although Los Angeles wasn't part of the original promise of big city freedom, it was part of the expanding West, where the South's rules surrounding slaves and ex-slaves didn't always apply.

The promise of Los Angeles's "broad"-ness wasn't exactly far-fetched. Plus, who can resist palm trees swaying in the year-round sunshine? We can't.

This passage is supposed to be a conversation that Emma Lou recalls with her Uncle Joe. But is it just us, or does this sound like the most stilted, formal conversation ever?

Uncle Joe may be a cool uncle. Especially to the often misunderstood and unloved Emma Lou. But he talks—at least in Emma Lou's head—like the dean of some posh private school.

We're thinking that when he says, "'The people in Boise are fifty years behind the times, but you will find that Los Angeles is one of the world's greatest and most modern cities, and you will be happy there,'" he really could have loosened up a little.

You know, add a contraction here or there. Particularly because he and Emma Lou are tight, you'd think they'd be talking to each other more like, well, family.

But Uncle Joe, Emma Lou, and Wallace Thurman had other ideas. We're guessing the thinking behind this stuffiness went something like this: If a small-town black Southerner was trying to leave his past behind, what better accent could he acquire than that of an urban(e) dean from some expensive private school?

Exactly.