Toni Morrison uses the racism of the sass’s and shows that “It is the blackness that accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes”. Characters that faced uncomfortable racism include Claudia Macerate, Pectoral Overlooked, and Geraldine. Many female characters were discriminated by the white is beautiful idea, Claudia states, “the dismembering of the dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls.
The indifference with which I could have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so. To discover what eluded me: the secret of the magic they weaved on others. What made people look at them and say, “Pawpaw”v;u. ” but not for me? The eye slide of black women as they approached them on the street and the possessive gentleness of their touch as they handled them” (Morrison 22). Claudia hates Shirley Temple, unlike Pectoral who dollies her, and does not understand the fascination black adults have with little white girls.
Claudia new isn’t detached or simply emotional; its jealousy that drives her curiosity to know why exactly one set of racial features would be privileged over another she hated that being white is what is considered beauty. Morrison presents the white view of blacks as the other and the blacks’ experience of themselves as other (in the following tote she refers to the other as a pariah, which means an outcast or a despised person or animal): “There are several levels of the pariah figure working in my writing. The black community is a pariah community.
Black people are pariahs. The civilization of black people that lives apart from but in juxtaposition to other civilizations is a pariah relationship. In fact, the concept of the black in this country is almost always one of the pariahs. But a community contains pariahs within it that are very useful for the conscience of that community’ (Toni Morning’s). Pectoral faces much racism against people of her own race “It had occurred to Pectoral some time ago that if her eyes… Were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 38).
Pectoral worships the beautiful, white icons of the 1 sass: she drinks three quarts of milk at the Macerate;s house so that she can use the cup with Shirley Temple’s picture on it, buys Mary Cane’s at the candy store so that she can admire the picture of the blond haired, blue eyed girl on the wrapper. The fact that Pectoral, and Claudia must struggle with the fact that hey do not fit white society’s idea of beauty is part of the racism toward blacks that has existed ever since they were brought to the united States as slaves.
She is repeatedly called “ugly” by nearly everyone in her life, from the mean kids at school to her own mother this describes Pectoral Overlooked. Pectoral is constantly humiliated throughout the novel. She is teased by Bay Boy, Woodrow Cain, and Maureen peal. Claudia accidentally punches her in the face; she gets piping hot blueberry juice all over legs; and young Junior throws his cat in her face, then kills it in front of her. Pectoral is also a symbol of the black community’s self-hatred and belief in its own ugliness.
Others in the community, including her Mother, father, and Geraldine, act out their own self-hatred by expressing hatred toward her. “Her ugliness has made them feel beautiful, her suffering has made them feel comparatively lucky, and her silence has given them the opportunity for speaking But because she continues to live after she has lost her mind, Piccolo’s aimless wandering at the edge of town haunts the community, reminding them of the ugliness and tater that they have tried to repress. She becomes a reminder of human cruelty and an emblem of human suffering” (Watkins).
As much as Morrison concentrates on the aspect of white racism, she includes other aspects of racism that involve black attitudes toward each other as well as white attitudes toward blacks. Geraldine is a middle-class African American woman has devoted her life to removing any sort of “Funk,” whether it is dirt, disorder, or sex. Geraldine has sacrificed any pleasure she could have had for this “beauty. ” She, in fact, maintains this beauty because she is fixated with society ideal of what makes a person beautiful.
She associates beauty with skin color in much the same way as Pectoral does, and therefore has learned to hate her own skin because she is not white. “She is so full of self-loathing that she wants to eliminate any trace of her color, in favor of pale skin and straight hair” (Assets). She also decides to eliminate what she considered to be the emotional characteristics of blacks, in an effort to change her color. In her mind, the elimination of blackness meant “the careful development Of thrift, audience, high morals, and good manners” while getting rid of “passion… Tauter… [And] the wide range of human emotions”(Colon). So she devotes her life to changing herself, and makes a “successful” transformation. She is now as pretty as a doll, and as soulless as one. Geraldine did not want to consider herself a black female do to the fact that the community saw black as ugly and dirty, she noninsured her a higher class African American woman because she did not to be seen as Pectoral everyone saw her as dirty and used her as an example to make them look better.
These characters are all African American and all three of them have faced racism towards white beauty standards and try to make another look bad in order for them to satisfy what beauty was considered to them. Therefore, Morrison uses wrong and discomfort to show the crushing consequences that come from racism in The Bluest Eye she shows ways in which white beauty standards hurt lives of black females, blacks that discriminate on each other and the community’s bias on who you were.
