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While the exact number will never be know, historians estimate that about twelve million African slaves were imported to North and South America. Of that twelve million, six hundred thousand were transported to the United States and grew into the forty million people who identified as African-American in the 2010 census. Contrary to popular belief, for black people to go from not being considered human in one century, to receiving equal rights in the next century, and have a black man as the current leader of the free world is an enormous amount of progress. Black people are a strong, enduring, and intelligent race. One of the largest problems facing the black community is a lack of unity. That divide can be attributed to many things. However, …show more content…
Set on the fictional, historically black Mission College campus, the movie follows four people from different social circles and how they interact with one another. Dap, a militant activist who is very critical of the university and of Greek life, is in a relationship with Rachel who has decided to pledge one of the Greek organizations despite being considered a “jiggaboo”. Julian, who serves as chapter president of Gamma Phi Gamma fraternity and has contempt for Dap’s opinions, is in a relationship with Jane, who is the leader of the “wannabes”. There is a sharp division on the campus that explores how black women feel about their skin color and how black men choose women as it relates to skin color. This division reaches back to the establishment of …show more content…
An occurrence that stuck out particularly was the way the media gushed over his daughters Malia and Sasha. Everything about them from their curled hair, to their J. Crew outfits, and their happy smiles received positive commentary. On inauguration day and in the week that followed, the two most adored girls in the world were black. Professor Cheryl Wall discusses how this observation affected her lesson plan behind Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970). The novel follows a young girl named Pecola, who has deeply-ingrained beliefs about the inferiority of her dark skin and coarse hair. While the story is an extreme one, there is heavy evidence that shows that young black girls develop strong notions about color from an early age. This is evident in the 1954 doll test that was used to display the harmful effects of segregation. The study, conducted by psychologists Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark, used two pink and two brown dolls to demonstrate how even children between the ages of three and seven have developed severe notions of inferiority for their own race. By a landslide majority, black children from all regions generally preferred the pink dolls to the brown dolls. These notions of inferiority and what it means to be superior based on color will carry on into these children’s adult lives and restart the
Not many classes have topics of which students can relate to easily and can find something to help them understand the ideas better. In our class we watch the show Freaks and Geeks to help us better understand sociology. At first, I wasn’t quite sure how this show set back in the 1980s would help me understand what we were discussing in class, but it turned out to really be a valuable asset in helping the class. The show perfectly displays the themes of the self, the looking-glass self, and in and out groups which we confered about.
This essay will be explaining the definition of sociology, the sociological factors of obesity using Symbolic Interactionism Theory and the Functionalism Theory and a description of the medical condition obesity and how it may affect individuals suffering from it.
Toni Morrison's novel "The Bluest Eye", is a very important novel in literature, because of the many boundaries that were crosses and the painful, serious topics that were brought into light, including racism, gender issues, Black female Subjectivity, and child abuse of many forms. This set of annotated bibliographies are scholarly works of literature that centre around the hot topic of racism in the novel, "The Bluest Eye", and the low self-esteem faced by young African American women, due to white culture. My research was guided by these ideas of racism and loss of self, suffered in the novel, by the main character Pecola Breedlove. This text generates many racial and social-cultural problems, dealing with the lost identity of a young African American women, due to her obsession with the white way of life, and her wish to have blue eyes, leading to her complete transgression into insanity.
“In the late 1960s, a television producer named Joan Ganz Cooney set out to start an epidemic. Her targets were three-, four-, and five-year-olds. Her agent of infection was television, and the “virus” she wanted to spread was literacy” (Gladwell 89). The Tipping Point is a book on the study of epidemics- including mental epidemics and trends. Sesame Street, still one of the most iconic shows to date, is an epidemic; the splurge of knowledge that appeared in children after it began to air is undeniable. The show started production in New York in 1968. Shows for children such as Sesame Street support children in school and throughout life by teaching them memorable lessons from helpful muppets. Nevertheless, how and
The 1985 film, The Breakfast Club, takes place during a Saturday detention in a Chicago high school. Five students, all from very different backgrounds, must serve this detention together for a nine-hour period. Everyone is at the detention for diverse reasons but throughout the course of the day, they soon discover they are not as different as they thought they were. The Breakfast Club analyzes how social interactions between students and their social contexts lead to the prevalence of discrimination and prejudice within the high school environment. Demonstrating how it is contrary to other films of the era, The Breakfast Club particularly examines these social issues through the establishment of cliques which were founded based on the hierarchy
Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye provides social commentary on a lesser known portion of black society in America. The protagonist Pecola is a young black girl who desperately wants to feel beautiful and gain the “bluest eyes” as the title references. The book seeks to define beauty and love in this twisted perverse society, dragging the reader through Morrison’s emotional manipulations. Her father Cholly Breedlove steals the reader’s emotional attention from Pecola as he enters the story. In fact, Toni Morrison’s depiction of Cholly wrongfully evokes sympathy from the reader.
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison describes the absurd and racist standard by which the characters are judged. And through the actions taken by each character, that absurd standard becomes more defined, the conflict more poignant. In this particular work, it is the American ideal of beauty that makes Pecola resign her self-image as ugly and it is Pecola's reaction to this standard, her futile wish to become beautiful, that drives her into madness and thus completely exposes the absurd and wrongful nature of this standard. And yet who created this standard? It is present in movies, on candy wrappers. It is completely visible, yet the creator of this standard is somewhere else, never appears as a character.
In the novel “The Bluest Eyes”, by Toni Morrison, Racial self-loathing and hatred is a major theme through the text, and is even evident in the title. Instead of making the plot center around events over racism, the book shows a deeper portrayal of racism, emphasizing on the way racial self-hatred and loathing plagues the black characters. The novel shows an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards distort the lives of the black characters. The author shows this by having African Americans who have lighter features, Maureen Peal, Geraldine and Soaphead Church, and characters with darker features, Pecola and her Parents Cholly, and Pauline Breedlove. Through them we are able to see racial self-loathing, there
Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye contributes to the study of the American novel by bringing to light an unflattering side of American history. The story of a young black girl named Pecola, growing up in Lorain, Ohio in 1941 clearly illustrates the fact that the "American Dream" was not available to everyone. The world that Pecola inhabits adores blonde haired blue eyed girls and boys. Black children are invisible in this world, not special, less than nothing. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you lesser was cultivated by both whites and blacks. White skin meant beauty and privilege and that idea was not questioned at this time in history. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you less of a person contaminated black people's lives in many different ways. The taunts of schoolboys directed at Pecola clearly illustrate this fact; "It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth" (65). This self hatred also possessed an undercurrent of anger and injustice that eventually led to the civil rights movement.
In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, the struggle begins in childhood. Two young black girls -- Claudia and Pecola -- illuminate the combined power of externally imposed gender and racial definitions where the black female must not only deal with the black male's female but must contend with the white male's and the white female's black female, a double gender and racial bind. All the male definitions that applied to the white male's female apply, in intensified form, to the black male's, white male's and white female's black female. In addition, where the white male and female are represented as beautiful, the black female is the inverse -- ugly.
The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison is an African American writer, who believes in fighting discrimation and segregation with a mental preparation. Tony focuses on many black Americans to the white American culture and concludes that blacks are exploited because racism regarding white skin color within the black community. The bluest eye is a story about a young black girl named Pecola, who grew up in Ohio. Pecola adores blonde haired blue eyes girls and boys. She thinks white skin meant beauty and freedom and that thought was not a subject at this time in history. This book is really about the impact on a child’s state of mind. Tony Morrison has divided her book into four seasons: autumn, winter, spring, and summer. The main characters in this book are three girls, Claudia and Frieds McTeer, and Pecola Breedlove. Why was Pecola considered a case? Pecola was a poor girl who had no place to go. The county placed her in the McTeer’shouse for a few days until they could decide what to do until the family was reunited. Pecola stayed at the McTeer’s house because she was being abuse at her house and Cholly had burned up his house. The first event that happens in the book was that her menstrual cycle had started. She didn’t know what to do; she thought she was bleeding to death. When the girls were in the bed, Pecola asked, “If it was true that she can have a baby now?” So now the only concern is if she is raped again she could possibly get pregnant. Pecola thought if she had blue eyes and was beautiful, that her parents would stop fighting and become a happy family.In nursery books, the ideal girl would have blonde hair and blue eyes. There is a lot of commercial ads have all showed the same ideal look just like the nursery book has. Pecola assumes she has this beautiful and becomes temporary happy, but not satisfied. Now, Pecola wants to be even more beautiful because she isn’t satisfied with what she has. The fact is that a standard of beautyis established, the community is pressured to play the game. Black people and the black culture is judged as being out of place and filthy. Beauty, in heart is having blond hair, blue eyes, and a perfect family. Beauty is then applied to everyone as a kind of level of class.
A reader might easily conclude that the most prominent social issue presented in The Bluest Eye is that of racism, but more important issues lie beneath the surface. Pecola experiences damage from her abusive and negligent parents. The reader is told that even Pecola's mother thought she was ugly from the time of birth. Pecola's negativity may have initially been caused by her family's failure to provide her with identity, love, security, and socialization, ail which are essential for any child's development (Samuels 13). Pecola's parents are able only to give her a childhood of limited possibilities. She struggles to find herself in infertile soil, leading to the analysis of a life of sterility (13). Like the marigolds planted that year, Pecola never grew.
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 mass media contribute to the status at which young African American girls find themselves early on and throughout their lives.
Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and a brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when concerning gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society. Because of these preconceived notions, the racism found in The Bluest Eye is not whites against blacks. Morrison writes about the racism of lighter colored blacks against darker colored blacks and rich blacks against poor blacks. Along with racism within the black community, sexism is exemplified both against women and against men. As Morrison investigates the racism and sexism of the community of Lorain, Ohio, she gives the reader more perspective as to why certain characters do or say certain things.
In Toni Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye, she explains how internalized racism can damage a not only a whole community, but the entire youth of young African American girls. Claudia says, “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs – all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (30). This quote shows how insecure the young girls are. They had a view that a “perfect” girl was white, and they were deemed ugly. They didn’t see that maybe to some people, that was not what the perfect person was. The doll represents what humanity believed was the ‘ideal’ person was. The belief that black people were inferior to whites was drilled into the minds of many young children at that time. To be w...