Impact of Whiteness on Blacks in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye Essay

The Impact of Whiteness on Blacks in Toni Morrisons The Bluest centerfield Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye does not focus on direct smock oppression of a threatening community, that rather how whiteness is ingrained in the minds of the black community and serves as a destructive force. There are some white characters introduced in the book, but whiteness and the cultur in ally accepted perfection of whiteness as an indication or measure of beauty is forever evidence. Morrisons kickoff page, The spear and Jane story, is a clean, simple and perfect example of whiteness. Mother, Father, Dick and Jane are the family and they live in a pretty house with a cat and dog. This is whiteness. Whiteness is nice, clean, happy and simple. Turning the page we soon chance upon that perfect simplistic whiteness can turn chaotic and destructive. This first shocking introduction to whiteness not only foreshadows the end of the book, but is also the first of many direct examples of whiteness and its potential to train the mind and destroy the spirit. Within the first few pages of the book we bring out Shirley Temple and a white baby doll, both pretty with their dark look and creamy skin. That both of these symbols of whiteness are young and introduced to wee black children is very significant. Whiteness is kn give and begins to warp around and claim hold of them from the beginning. They are never allowed to entertain or contemplate their own beauty because they are shown early on symbols of pretty and they will never measure up. White baby dolls are loved and Shirley Temple is adored while their black skin, wool like hair and brown eyes are merely tolerated. We learn from Claudias example that the only way to storage area the whiteness from destroying y... ...whiteness is potentially damaging. It is also effective because is demonstrates how black communities self imploded if they internalized the white ideal. This is very postful. That notion that whites did not need to by physically present but merely symbolically represented in order to step down the stability and self-image of a black community. Whiteness then did, and does, have the power to destroy if it is internalized and accepted as the ideal--an ideal that is unobtainable and therefor all the more damaging. Works Cited and Consulted Davis, Cynthia. Self, Society, and Myth in Toni Morrisons Fiction. Draper 222. Draper, James P., ed. Contemporary literary Criticism. Toni Morrison. Michigan Gale Research Inc., 1994. Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York, New York Plume, 1994. Steiner, Wendy. The Clearest Eye. Draper 239.