Racism creates hatred non only of self but of "the other," which, in this case, is the duster person. For the colored female narrator of the figment,
It had begun with Christmas and the gift of dolls. The big, the special, the loving gift was continuously a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll. . . . Adults. older lady friends, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs---all the realism had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl electric razor treasured (20).
However, the narrator cherishes the rewards of her own culture, poor as it whitethorn be, and hates the blue-eyed, blonde-haired dolls so much that she destroys them. It is assumed that she wants what the society at striking cherishes---the images of the white world. But she actually desires something far more real, something which the dusky culture takes for granted and the white culture would consider unusual at best: "I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama's kitchen with my lap broad of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me wholly" (21). In such familiar cultural reality the girl finds "security" and "warmth," while the images
of the white world bring nothing but hatred and misery.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. refreshful York: Washington Square, 1972.
The white-run, capitalist society is built and perpetuated on the sentiment of selling images of what it subject matter to be happy and successful, and those images have to do with being white and wealthy. Every day in hundreds and thousands of ship canal poor blacks everywhere have pounded into them the idea that they are wanting(p) because they are poor and because they are black. Morrison makes clear that this sense of unfavorable position is not natural at all. It is created by society through and through its culture and advertising, its institutions and the ideas and beliefs and values which it pounds into its citizens every day and night.
The narrator reflects on the natural, self-loving state of children before they have been corrupted by white, capitalist society to think negatively about themselves:
over again and again, however, Morrison is intent on showing that self-hatred is the most crime result of racism and capitalism. The indigence which capitalism forces on the faded and poor and propertyless in society is a poverty which eats away at the mind and heart and soul, and this is peculiarly true of poor blacks, who suffer double discrimination in capitalist society. Morrison focuses on poor, black female characters for the most part, which means characters who suffer on the third level of sexism.
You said, "Suffer undersize children to come unto me, and harm them not." Did you forget? Did you forget about the children? Yes. You forgot. You allow them go wanting, sit on road shoulders, crying close to their dead mothers. I've seen them charred, lame, halt. You forgot, Lord. You forgot how and when to be theology (143).
In Soaphead Church's letter to God, thither is a calm anger expressed with regard to how it seems God has abandoned victims of racism and capitalism:
This is not a novel which points out the wrongs of capitalism and racism
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