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Racism In Toni Morrison's God Help The Child

2637 Words11 Pages

Recurrent racism, its social impacts, is a central theme of immigrant writing that creates many landscapes in contemporary literature. The immigrant writer takes an opportunity to attack and tackle racism and its consequence from different angles – religious, cultural and historical. The writer does not randomly preoccupy with and write about her/his intricate experience in the new land, but explicitly unfold his/her race/gender experience with its ups and downs. This type of writing has created a new understanding of theories such as racism/gender/ethnic/counter-narrative and post colonial studies among many others. This alternative genre is maneuvered by political, psychological, social and cultural processes of power that is influential to its construction. Various multiple meanings and definitions are located for racism, its relevance, to contemporary situation reflects the work of …show more content…

God Help the Child opens with an abrupt beginning of defiance and self-identification. The novel starts with the voice of the mother, Sweetness, saying: “It’s not my fault. So you can’t blame me. I didn’t do it and have no idea how it happened” (3). She discloses from the beginning a big dispute that happened between her and her husband because of the colour of the child, Lula Bride, that is not in her hands and cannot be individually controlled. In God Help the Child, Toni Morrison’s emphasis on colourism creates a strong voice to Sweetness, a woman recounting herself as “light-skinned with good hair, what we call high yellow”. From the very beginning, Sweetness describes her depressed situation expecting the future victimization of her baby. She says, “It didn’t take more than an hour after they pulled her out from between my legs to realize something was wrong. Really wrong. She was so black she scared me. Midnight black, Sudanese

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Rationale This written task is related to the study of Language and Social Relations. This topic includes the issue of racism in the society. After reading the book Citizen, we discussed a lot about racial discrimination in the class. This book shows how racism influence black people in many ways such as racism in sports.

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Throughout history a vast collection of literature and other media forms accumulated, widely encompassing different literary aesthetics. Thus shaping representations of society, and laying groundwork for the different approaches to social changes evident in history, and in present times. The concept of social constructions of differences and race is an intricate and prominent matter developed through history which is key to understanding the literature and analysis laid out in this paper. The whole ideology of this social construction will be at the root of analysis as this paper delves into a text from Richard Wright, Blueprint for Negro Writing, and then takes the concepts and shows its interconnectedness to a more modern experience, a film,

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Racism is the discrimination of different race(races) and is thought to believe one race has more abilities than others. A lot of racism still existed but it wasn't until the 90’s where it was able to lessen down , but now with certain media outburst of people making racial comments , racism has once again risen. People are finger pointing at certain races if they aren't like them or think like they , making certain comments of each other races and beliefs . In the first article by Niala Mohammed who is a journalist spoke about her experience of racism at first hand. Ms. Mohammed had an unpleasant experience when she was asked to leave a airplane because of some type of safety regulations , when a male flight attendant felt threatened by Naila and her friend over a complaint they made about being stuck on a plane waiting for about 5 hours and just being offered water ,but in reality she was asked to be removed because the are both muslim.

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More than thirty years after its release, Toni Morrison’s novel, Song of Solomon, still affects society. Every time anyone reads her tale of Milkman, Guitar and her other characters, new speculations are created as readers try to comprehend the main idea of the novel. Through all the shifts and turns of the many characters in Song of Solomon, some readers contemplate that the novel’s main focus is on financial segregation of characters, referencing characters such as the middle class Milkman and lower class Guitar, while other readers define the novel as a cultural reflection of racism in the United States, detailing the racism that is put on display several times throughout the novel. Ralph Story, one of many readers, chooses to see the novel as a critique of early 20th century society which adopts the “seven days” group as a link to actual groups that were present during the time.

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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison explores the story of multiple characters from different perspectives while centering around the story of Pecola’s life as she faces racism, rape, and desertion. The novel is set in the 1940s where racism was prevalent in all communities and amongst all people. Throughout the novel, Morrison shows how African American communities face both symbolic and institutionalized racism, even from their own race. Middle class African Americans like Maureen and Geraldine are clouded by the idea of whiteness being the ideal beauty as they bash lower class African Americans. Additionally, most characters face institutionalized racism as the division between within black societies leads to tension and conflicts.

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‘Recitatif’ holds all the quality of a great literature. It is well thought provoking piece of work by Morrison that talks about the taboo topic, racism. Morrison tells the tale of two young girls with a broken home and the suffering they had to go through and the troubles they faced. The writers beautifully sewed it together with the issue of race. Whatever the girls faced throughout their lives was somehow connected by their racial background.

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As a rising intellectual, I believe Toni Morrison’s discussion of the beginnings of race and blackness, in addition to the unpacking of African Americans’ internalized oppression which has resulted in colorism, make The Origins of Others a necessary and thought provoking reading--despite its flaws. The Origins of Others is written on a bases that questions the meaning of race, its purpose, and how it has been projected onto individuals so extensively that it has become a social norm throughout the world; Morrison develops these questions in way that allows room for the reader to form his or her own opinions without feeling stifled or led on. Morrison dives right into her topic from the beginning by asserting that, “Race has been a constant arbiter of difference, as have wealth, class, and gender--each of which is about the power and necessity of control” (3). In other words, race, like many other categories of division in capitalistic and patriarchal societies, was created as means of power and control and throughout the novel Morrison builds on this concept. She chooses to define race as “the classification of a species” (15)--chooses because race is no longer defined that way--to say that race itself is not the issue because it does not apply to the color of one’s skin but simply what kind of animal one is classified as (upon which the human race would be classified as homosapiens).

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Racism occurs when a minority group is defined, negative characteristics are associated with them, and they are kept at a disadvantage to others. The most interesting aspect of racism is how people justify making their classifications. Race is a socially constructed term. This means people of a society made up race without any real backing or evidence to do so. One’s race is based mostly on their physical characteristics like skin color or hair type, or lineage.

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