In the earliest days of America’s lifespan, European colonialists were facing an unprecedented challenge. Many Europeans at the time were experiencing cultural diversity en masse, something that was entirely foreign to them. At that point, Europeans controlled what would eventually become America, politically and economically. However, with such a novel amount of different cultures interacting with one another, including intermarrying and creating children with one another, the colonialists determined that there needed to be a system to identify “white” people from “non-white” people. Thus, the race system as we know it today was born. Scientifically, there is no difference to be found between people of different races. On the contrary, there is likely to be more genetic diversity between two people of the same race than …show more content…
She shows that in the innocence of childhood, skin color is irrelevant compared to the contents of one’s personality. However, as racial prejudices are established, both by parental and societal influence, the personality of another person can become overshadowed to onlookers by their skin color. In Morrison’s short story, she discusses these racial implications without ever stating the race of either character, leaving the reader to make their own assumptions based on stereotypes, portrayed through setting and dialogue. While scholars have noted that “Recitatif” shows how race and parental influence impacts social behavior, how lifelong relationships shape our character, how racism became normalized in American literature, and how disabled characters are often viewed as weaker characters, they have overlooked the importance of how Morrison’s use of authorial obfuscation regarding the character’s races forces readers to evaluate their own usage of racial