The Internalization Of Racial Discrimination:A Study Of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye And Beloved

The suffering of the African-Americans has not ended by slavery abolition; instead it has converted to a new version of injustice which is the racial discrimination. The internalization of racial discrimination is not only conducted by the white supremacy, but also by some African-Americans as they conform to the dominant group's principles. The argument aims to explore how the black people are influenced by the dominant power's ideology, and to discover how the conversion of hatred turns against the black people rather than against the whites. The argument also aims to analyze the problems and issues resulting from racial discrimination, and to find out how these issues affect black people socially and psychologically through Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Beloved.The theories that support the present thesis are a combination of critical race theory, black feminism, and psycho-analysis within the frame of postcolonial studies to conduct the analysis of Morrison's two novels. As racism is spread in the fabric and system of the American society, the paper aims through the critical race theory to identify the power structures that are based on white supremacy and white privilege, which maintains and perpetuates the subordination and marginalization of black people. Through Black feminism the paper targets the process of understanding the experience of being a black woman. This process cannot be conducted in terms of being a black or being a woman. Although each concept is considered independently, the interactions which reinforce each other must be included. Morrison is concerned with the fate of black people in her novels, especially the humiliated and oppressed black women like Pecola Breedlove who is oppressed by her family and her community. Through the lens of psycho-analysis the argument focuses on investigating the characters'behaviors in The Bluest liye and Beloved. The characters'personality development, like Sethe, is governed by forgotten events rather than by inherited traits alone. Characters'behaviors, experiences, thoughts, and attitudes are mainly influenced by irrational drives that are rooted in the unconscious.The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter is basically about the beauty standards that are set by the dominant power to discriminate against and oppress black people. This issue is well represented in The Bluest Eye through several incidents that the female characters experience, especially Pauline Breedlove and her daughter Pecola. These two characters have been suffering from the ideal beauty standards of the white hegemony, which leads to conflicts and problems and finally causes the confusion and destruction of their self-esteem.The second chapter is about racial feminist issues including self-hatred, black female subjectivity, and black womanhood. Self-hatred is one of the themes recurring in Morrison's novels. Such kind of hatred is not only directed against oneself, but also against one's own people. The black female is subjugated to follow orders from the white supremacy, and she is always considered as an inferior subject, owing to her failure to meet the western standards of the dominant culture. The black female's womanhood is denied and treated as the objectified other. The dominant culture has created controlling images in order to keep black women marginalized, which finally breaks their social relations.The third chapter deals with child treatment in both novels from a different perspective to show in the circumstances and environment where the African-American children grow up, as well as the influence of the weak relationship with their parents. The relationship between children and parents has always been cut off during slavery, because they are sold by masters in the form of commodity. Despite the fact that slavery was abolished later, children's sufferings have not ended due to the lasting racism. Mistreatment takes place not only in families but also in schools and communities, because the dark-skinned color itself associates people with dirtiness and filthiness, which fails to match the standards of "white culture." This results in the breakdown of children's personality and leads to tragic endings.