The Bluest Eye: Internalized Racism

beauty in her culture, Pecola must do the impossible: find white beauty. Toni Morrison shows

Despite knowing that they are "nicer, brighter," they cannot ignore "the honey voices of parents and aunts and the obedience in the eyes of [their] peers, the slippery light in the eyes of [their] teachers" when Maureen is around or the topic of conversation (74). The way Maureen dresses and behaves in front of adults is not the only way she affects Claudia and Frieda. With racist comments such as, "What do I care about her old black daddy...[and] you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute," she infuriates the girls, for in their eyes Maureen is black too. Racist attitudes like Maureen's affect the poorer, darker blacks and can eventually lead them to think racist thoughts of their own.

Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and what she would be subjected to in a media contrived society that places its ideal of beauty on the e quintessential blue-eyed, blonde woman. The idea of what is beautiful has been stereotyped in the mass media since the beginning and creates a mental and emotional damage to self and soul. This oppression to the soul creates a socio-economic displacement causing a cycle of dysfunction and abuses. Morrison takes us through the agonizing story of just such a young girl, Pecola Breedlove, and her aching desire to have what is considered beautiful - blue eyes. Racial stereotypes of beauty contrived and nourished by

The novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison presents the certain type of beauty admired by the main character in this fictional story, which seems to be the main content of the novel. The first thing that the people judge is the physical appearance, no matter from which part of the world anyone comes from. The stereotype of defining a beauty in a certain way still prevails in our society. On the other hand, human beings being a social animal, cannot remain secluded from the society. They shape themselves into the societal beliefs, values, trend, culture etc. of the society. Especially, the ones who do not have the tendency or ability to contend are easily influenced. Likewise, the main character, the young black girl self-loathes up to the point

every girl child treasured.” (1.39) 11. Back then, “to be white” was everything to desire. But who would have known, that in a couple years race doesn’t matter.

The dominance of the white race is evident through the power that it holds in a traditional society. Throughout The Bluest Eye, Claudia and Frieda, two young black girls, gradually begin to hate Maureen Peal, a lighter-skinned “friend” with whom they attend school. Claudia and Frieda despise the beauty that other members of society see in Maureen and attempt to figure out the reason for Maureen’s power over themselves. Claudia argues that “Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred,” and that the only thing they had to fear was “the Thing that made her beautiful and not [them]” (Morrison 74). When Claudia references the “Thing to fear,” she is addressing Maureen’s lighter skin tone and acceptance into society, and not her own blackness, despite the fact that Maureen is not a part of the white community. Claudia’s hatred toward Maureen illustrates the power that light-skinned, and primarily white, individuals have over blacks to deceive people as well as place themselves above everyone else. The ability for the white community to assume its position at the top of the social hierarchy

“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, is a story about the life of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who is growing up during post World War I. She prays for the bluest eyes, which will “make her beautiful” and in turn make her accepted by her family and peers. The major issue in the book, the idea of ugliness, was the belief that “blackness” was not valuable or beautiful. This view, handed down to them at birth, was a cultural hindrance to the black race.

The desire to feel beautiful has never been more in demand, yet so impossible to achieve. In the book “The Bluest Eye”, the author, Toni Morrison, tells the story of two black families that live during the mid-1900’s. Even though slavery is a thing of the past, discrimination and racism are still a big issue at this time. Through the whole book, characters struggle to feel beautiful and battle the curse of being ugly because of their skin color. Throughout the book Pecola feels ugly and does not like who she is because of her back skin. She believes the only thing that can ever make her beautiful is if she got blue eyes. Frieda, Pecola, Claudia, and other black characters have been taught that the key to being beautiful is by having white skin. So by being black, this makes them automatically ugly. In the final chapter of the book, the need to feel beautiful drives Pecola so crazy that she imagines that she has blue eyes. She thinks that people don’t want to look at her because they are jealous of her beauty, but the truth is they don’t look at her because she is pregnant. From the time these black girls are little, the belief that beauty comes from the color of their skin has been hammered into their mind. Mrs. Breedlove and Geraldine are also affected by the standards of beauty and the impossible goal to look and be accepted by white people. Throughout “The Bluest Eye” Toni Morrison uses the motif of beauty to portray its negative effect on characters.

Racist ideology is institutionalized when how people’s interactions reflects on an understanding that they share the same beliefs. However, in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the topic of racism is approached in a very unique way. The characters within the novel are subjected to internalizing a set of beliefs that are extremely fragmented. In accepting white standards of beauty, the community compromises their children’s upbringing, their economic means, and social standings. Proving furthermore that the novel has more to do with these factors than actual ethnicity at all.

To begin the novel, Morrison quotes a “Dick and Jane” book, a children’s book describing an ideal, happy family. Immediately, Morrison provides an example of how American children are bombarded, as soon as they learn how to read, with ideas about what it means to be beautiful. As well, in the first chapter, she exemplifies how American children, both black and white, view beauty, from Claudia and Freida giggling when they are called the names of beautiful white actresses to Freida and Pecola’s admiration of Shirley Temple. In contrast to the broad examples of Polly’s and Cholly’s childhoods, the examples of these 1940s children are discrete and relevant to the period which Morrison wrote the novel. Evidently, Morrison criticizes the effect of the whiteness of American ideals on children, in particular American movies which define societal standards; however, Morrison also makes an important point: these effects are not the same for every individual.

The Bluest Eye concentrates on the key contemporary American issues: racial and sexual politics. More distinctly, the novel centres on the impact that socially constructed views of race have on gender relations within the black community. As Butler-Evans highlights, “race rather than gender had become the overriding sign for the oppression of black people” and Morrison’s novel responds to this political issue by focusing on this in correlation with the Eurocentric society setting of the novel. The racial oppression suffered by the black community shape ideas of black masculinity based on male feelings of inferiority and consequent sexual oppression of black females. Morrison systematically explores the relationship between the racial oppression of black males and sexual oppression of black females. The main focus of this essay will be an exploration of how racial oppression experienced by black males, specifically Cholly and Junior, relate to the sexual oppression they enforce on black females.

Like most characters in the novel, Geraldine displays her desire to conform to society’s standards of beauty by trying to be as respectable and white as possible. Geraldine is a “sugar-brown girl” who is a respected, well mannered, educated woman. Morrison describes these sugar-brown girls as, “thin brown girls…[who] live in quiet black

Racism in The Bluest Eye "There is really nothing more to say--except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how." When bad things happen to us, the first thing we ask ourselves is "why"? Most of the time however, the answer to "why" is not readily available to us, and sometimes there is not an answer at all.

The middle class black society and the lower class black society, for example, are quite different from each other and are constantly conflicting. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison distinguishes these divisions and their tensions through characters like Geraldine, Junior, and Maureen Peal, who represent the privileged division of black culture. On the contrary, the less privileged division is represented by the MacTeer family and the “relentlessly and aggressively ugly” Breedlove family (The Bluest Eye 38). Tension between the divided African American society is clearly represented by such characterizations throughout Morrison’s novel.

Toni Morrison offers a means for a little black girl to feel worthy of love even if the world tells her differently. She uses Claudia MacTeer to illustrate this idea. Claudia feels worthy of love because of her family. For example, Claudia tells us “I had only one desire: to dismember it… to find the beauty… all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink- skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (22). She mentions later I destroyed white baby dolls” (22). White baby dolls are symbols of beauty. Claudia dismembers the white baby dolls to find out what is inside of them. She finds nothing inside of the dolls to justify their beauty, only the white skin on the outside. She learns that being black means you are not beautiful and unworthy of love. In order to be beautiful according to society, you must be white. Claudia destroys white baby dolls because she wants to destroy the idea that you have to be physically white to be beautiful. Despite society considering Claudia not being beautiful, she still feels that she is unworthy of love. For Christmas, Claudia wishes she could be with her grandmother and grandfather in the kitchen. This shows that