"The Bluest Eye" and Internalized Racism

Paper Summary:

The paper examines how all of the characters in "The Bluest Eye" face life changing problems because of internalized racism in their society. The paper analyzes the mother of the Breedlove family, Pauline, the
father of the Breedlove family, Cholly, and the daughter, Pecola, who develops a strange and consuming form of internalized racism. The paper shows how Morrison directly approaches the issue of racial self-loathing brought on by the idea of white supremacy.

From the Paper:

"The mother of the Breedlove family is named Pauline. Pauline always struggled with low self esteem because at the age of two she stepped on a rusty nail that gave her a lame foot and an unusual gait to her walk which was the only thing to save her from "total anonymity" as Morrison puts it. Pauline is able to use her deformity as her internal excuse for the emptiness she feels, "her general feeling of separateness and unworthiness she blamed on her foot." This misdirection of blame is common to the psyche of a person suffering from internalized racism, the idea that the surrounding culture of white citizens look down on you as something less than human is too hard a pill to swallow so characters tend to avert their anger or blame on some other aspect of life. Pauline's image especially suffers when she moves with her husband Cholly to Ohio where the few black women she meets were "amused by her because she did not straighten her hair," or where makeup as they did."

More papers on "The Bluest Eye" and Internalized Racism:

• Book Review # 67487 : "The Bluest Eye" and Racism in America"
• Book Review # 104449 : "Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" and "Sula"
• Analytical Essay # 138419 : "Power and Impotence in "The Bluest Eye"

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