Whiteness and the Psychological Trauma of Alienation and Self-hatred: A Reading of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

Abstract

Abstract

The politics of color, since ages, has dominated the psyche of people so profoundly that color and lack of it makes a person more acceptable or alienable to their own selves as well as to the society. It constitutes the power to privilege one shade with all the prestige of the world and snatch from others the right to live a life of dignity. The historical success of white race has been taken as a proof of their superiority in every walk of life. Ironically, the whites exploited the blacks, intruded into their territory, dispossessed them unjustly of their lands, made them slaves and degraded them as an inferior human race .They not only exploited them physically but also infused in them a feeling of inferiority and worthlessness. One of the most destructive notions the White dominance instilled in the blacks is about their appearances that since they are black they are ugly and it is white that is beautiful. The Blacks seem to have internalized this predetermined concept of beauty so profoundly that long after their freedom, they still perceive themselves through the colonizers’ lens. The present paper intends to analyze Toni Morrison’s highly acclaimed novel The Bluest Eyes in the light of postcolonial perspective regarding the paradigm of normativity and beauty. Her novels explore not only the white VS black racism but also the hierarchy that exist within the black community on the color basis. She further examines how the false ideals of beauty imposed on the blacks result in the loss of a positive self-image.