Discrimination In The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

It would seem as though all of the odds are stacked against a young, poor, dark-skinned African-American girl living in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which tells the story of one such girl named Pecola, is set during a time when racism is still widespread in American society. White standards for every aspect of life – from personal and familial relationships to socioeconomic status to beauty – are imposed upon all children from a young age, and as a result, white and black adults alike develop internalized racism. As black people are taught to hate blackness, they in turn learn to hate themselves. “I knew that some victims of powerful self-loathing turn out to be dangerous, violent, reproducing the enemy who has humiliated

One of the lighter-skinned African-Americans in Lorain, Geraldine despises everyone who is darker than her and tries to distance herself and her family from what she considers to be their “lifestyle” as much as possible. For instance, she refuses to allow her son Junior to associate with any darker-skinned children: “His mother did not like him to play with niggers. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud” (Morrison 87). In addition, she does not tolerate any visible signs of “blackness” in her son: she cuts his hair close to his scalp to keep his coarse curls from growing and applies lotion to his face to prevent his skin from becoming ashen. As well as being lighter in color, her family is more well-off than Pecola’s family and the rest of the darker-skinned black people in the town. In Geraldine’s opinion, her neatly decorated house, well-groomed son, perfectly straight hair, mellow mannerisms, and restrained emotions bring her as close to the “lifestyle” of white people as possible. Therefore, it is not a surprise that her reaction to finding Pecola in her house one day is viciously unfriendly; with her unkempt hair, torn dress, and muddy shoes, Pecola represents everything that Geraldine loathes about her darker-skinned

A frequent movie-goer, Pauline has come to believe that she is truly ugly because all of the women who are represented as “beautiful” in the movies are white, with features that are almost the exact opposite of hers. She sees that the women in these movies are wealthy, have nice houses, and are treated well by their white husbands, and since she associates their seemingly ideal lives with their beauty, she associates her own less-than-ideal life – her low-paying job, small home in an abandoned storefront, and abusive husband – with her self-perceived ugliness. For a long period of time, she tries to emulate their appearance: she straightens her hair, applies makeup daily, and spends all of her extra money on fashionable clothing. However, after losing her front tooth and giving birth to two children, she realizes that the “beauty” she has striven to achieve for so long is unattainable, and she turns to her job as a servant for the Fisher family as a more practical way to live out her fantasies of the perfect life. The Fishers are a wealthy white couple who treat Pauline with generosity and genuinely appreciate her work. Every day, Pauline has the chance to escape from the poverty in which her family lives to the Fishers’ luxurious home, where she cleans their spacious rooms, organizes their expensive possessions, and takes care of their daughter, who is similar in