Racism In The Bluest Eye

Pretty Blue Eyes An unexpected twist, that Pecola’s bright, blue eyes would be the source of her blindness. Nothing pummeled at her mind more than her inexorable yearning for a physical trait exclusive to white culture. The porcelain-skinned children of storybooks taught her that beautiful, sparkling blue eyes were the golden key to beauty, and she retained this information well. She wasn’t the only one. Girls of colored skin have been pressured for years to strip themselves of their culture—mentally, emotionally, even physically—and not much has changed. Toni Morrison forces us to confront the formidable oppression pressed onto people of color by people void of it in her novel, The Bluest Eye. Pecola is a quintessential example of the pressure colored women often feel to shed themselves of their own heritage. We see early-on in the novel that she has an affinity for white culture as she gazes

The blue eyes themselves can be seen as a form of resolution to racism, whether that be gaining the cachet of whiteness or eliminating the ignobility that seemingly swarms around black culture. Additionally, it is important to note that—although Pecola is perhaps the perfect example of the dissension orbiting race—she is not the only character to desire repudiation of her own skin color. Soaphead sees Pecola, “a little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes,” and believes that her ambition is “the most poignant and the one most deserving of fulfillment” (Morrison 174). He sees the reasoning behind her desires, and abides by them, because he believes they are more justifiable than any other wish he’s been asked to grant. This is true credence in the removal of bigotry from