scholarly journals Ethnic Discrimination in The Bluest Eye

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-206
Author(s):  
Anisha Dahiya
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Ethnic Discrimination ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
The Novel ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Great Role ◽  
Ethnic Stereotypes ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
Human Difference ◽  
Blue Eyes

Ethnicity is one of the most debatable topics in contemporary times. Human culture is divided along ethnic and national lines. Ethnicity and Race function as most powerful language of human difference and human community. An ethnic group that is dominant often tends to make its own culture specific traits normative in that society. The Bluest Eye is one of the landmark novels of Toni Morrison in which the markings of ethnicity play a great role. The aim of this paper is to explore the traces of ethnic discrimination of the African Americans at the hands of dominant White Americans in the novel The Bluest Eye.  It illustrates how ethnic stereotypes propagated by White Americans for their selfish purposes victimised the black people at that time. Particular emphasis is given on the psychological effects of the oppressive environment on the protagonist Pecola. Morrison portrays Pecola as a marginalized and oppressed character who yearns to have blue eyes to have a respectable position in the community.

scholarly journals The Influence of Social Contexts towards the Identity Development of the Main Character in The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nana Sofiani ◽  
Sabarti Akhadiah ◽  
Emzir Emzir
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Black People ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
The Social ◽  
Data Validity ◽  
Blue Eyes

This research aimed to show how the social contexts influencing the main character of The Bluest Eye, Pecols’s identity development, and the stage of her identity development with the help of Erikson and Marcia’s theories. The research used qualitative research through the literary psychology approach. The data collection had been taken from the novel entitled The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, selected and sorted to find out how many among them were supporting the research. The steps were data analysis and data validity. The results show that social contexts greatly affected Pecola’s life, and therefore her identity cannot be developed.; racism, thus, has an influence on all aspects of the black people. Pecola undergoes multiple oppression and abuse as a result of racism, which leads to her self-loathe. She, thus, believes that having blue eyes is the only hope to escape from the suffering she undergoes. It is a warning of identity confusion since she wants to change her identity and becomes white. It pushes her to insanity. Racism and abuse ruin a person’s life by creating hatred and damaged to a person’s soul, and segregate society into groups. It results in the division of groups through the use of terms such as ‘them’ and ‘us’, implying that they are not equal.

“They Always Get the Best of You Somehow”: Preston Sturges in Black and White

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krin Gabbard
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Ethnic Stereotypes ◽  
Black And White

There is no question that the films of Preston Sturges present racist stereotypes. But we must remember the profound racism in America when Sturges was working. There is even evidence that Sturges respected his African American actors, making sure that they were treated as professionals. Several blacks even became members of his repertory company, working alongside a group of actors who often embodied a range of ethnic stereotypes. And in many of his films, Sturges’s blacks actually express a wry suspicion of white Americans, thus advancing the satiric projects of his films. Rather than concentrate on Sturges’s habit of presenting racist images of black people, we should be attentive to what his African American characters actually say and do.

scholarly journals Yearning for Beauty. The Expression of Melancholy in Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”

2018 ◽  
pp. 79-86
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Kozłowska
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Education System ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
White Americans ◽  
White People ◽  
Specific Point ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Blue Eyes ◽  
The U.S

The purpose of the paper is to discuss the sources and results of melancholy in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye with reference to Dominick LaCapra’s theory based on a distinction between loss and absence. LaCapra claims that the former concept refers to a particular event, while the latter cannot be identified with any specific point in time or object. What is more, LaCapra admits that absence may result in melancholy, i.e. the state in which the individual remains possessed by a negative emotion because there is no possibility of working it through. The idea of absence causing melancholy is exemplified by the protagonist of The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove. The girl dreams about acquiring blue eyes that belong to the prevailing white model of beauty which excludes African-American features. The feeling of absence is intensified by the U.S. education system aimed at promoting the lifestyle and characteristics of white Americans, her own mother who prefers serving white people to taking care of her own children, and the peers that constantly stigmatize Pecola for ugliness. Consequently, she becomes obsessed with the unattainable blue eyes. Since there is no chance for her to be accepted and thus cope with the absence of white features, the girl suffers from melancholy which leads her to insanity and exclusion from society.

scholarly journals A Du Boisian Reading of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 121-127
Author(s):  
Sediqeh Hosseiny ◽  
Ensieh Shabanirad
Keyword(s):  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Black People ◽  
The Other ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
The Novel ◽  
White People ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
Black Characters ◽  
Different Types

Due to the color of their skins, Blacks were always subject to different types of disrespect and insecurity in their society. Among different groups of people, writers and critics knew it as their responsibility to act as Black people’s voice and talk on behalf of them, as these people were labeled as ‘The Other’ by the Whites. Du Bios created a kind of new trend of dealing with African-American culture by innovating the concept known as “double consciousness”, and arguing that these black people were trapped between dual personalities. As an American writer, Toni Morrison carried this specific burden upon her shoulders to reveal all those oppressions Blacks had to bear in their life, like what she depicted in the novel The Bluest Eyewith portrayal of the main black character Pecolla who is being blamed for the color of her skin. This article intends to elaborate some inherent postcolonial traces in Toni Morrison’s outstanding novel The Bluest Eye and examine how European power and white people were dominating the whole system of the society and what kind of regretful complications Blacks had to endure, and at the same time working on how Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness can be analyzed in black characters.

scholarly journals The Blue Eyes vs Untrue Ideas: A Postcolonial Critique of Pecola’s Persistence to Fit in the White American Society in The Bluest Eye

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
A.K.M. Aminur Rashid
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
White American ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
The North ◽  
Racial Tension ◽  
American Society ◽  
Blue Eyes

Set in Ohio, the north side of America, the tone in The Bluest Eye features post-colonial treatment to its central character, Pecola Breedlove. This paper discusses how she experiences a sense of being completely ruined after she is raped by her father, and her quest for the blue eyes meets merely untrue ideas. The plot, as described in the paper, provides a post-colonial background of two racial conflicts regarding the blackness, and the white beauty in America. This paper critically draws on the idea of physical whiteness as being the only American standard of beauty while Pecola’s physical ugliness draws on how black people get seriously marginalized for their blackness of their own bodies. The storyline progresses to show how Pecola‟s tragedy becomes the central theme regarding the issue of seeing, and of being seen. The paper presents a binary opposite through the portrayal of black Pecola on one side, and Mary Janes, or Shirley Temple on the other. Consequently, the conflicts meet hardly any positive solution. Pecola receives exactly the behavior that the black slaves were used to receive from the whites in the past. From the historical perspective, The United States experienced inequality between the whites, and the blacks at that time when Morrison wrote this novel. She saw that the black race got segregated from the whites in the case of superiority. Racial tension also influenced the children in the schools, where the black ones were ridiculed there. However, the acceptance of the fair skin, actually, tormented black people both psychologically, and left a scar on them like Pecola Breedlove experiences.

scholarly journals Differend in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Mehdi Amiri
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
The Novel ◽  
White People ◽  
Bluest Eye

Through the process of passage of man's life, there are some conditions and situations wherein he remains silent and he cannot do anything in the response of others. A postmodern French thinker, Jean-François Lyotard articulates that man is forced to be silent in confronting to some situations and conditions. Lyotard states that man is incapable of representing and expressing his own inner emotions and thoughts in some conditions. This situation of unrepresentability and unanswerability is named differend by Lyotard. Due to Lyotard's differend, through reading Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the reader can notice that there are some conditions in which some characters are unable to represent and state their own feelings and ideas. In this sense, some black people or characters of the novel are surrounded by the conditions that they cannot utter themselves when they face others, especially white people. 

scholarly journals The Dilemma of Being American as a Consequence of Ethnic Segregation in Toni Morrison's Beloved

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-68
Author(s):  
Novia Sekar Ayuningtyas ◽  
Mohamad Ikhwan Rosyidi
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
American People ◽  
African American People ◽  
The Novel ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Ethnic Segregation ◽  
Her Family ◽  
American Society ◽  
De Man

Slavery was a central institution in American society and was accepted as normal and applauded as a positive thing by many white Americans. America was full of Negro slaves when there were many injustice actions done by white people to black people. Beloved is a novel written by Toni Morrison in 1987, explores the hardships endured by a former slave woman and her family during the slavery and the Reconstructions eras. This study aims to explain the dilemma experienced by the main character of being American and its correlation between the main character’s dilemma and ethnic segregation by the White Americans against the Afro-Americans as portrayed in Beloved novel. The method used in this study is a qualitative study analyzed by deconstruction theory of Paul de Man. Meanwhile, the method of data analysis is based on the dilemma experienced by African-American people in the novel and its correlation between the dilemma and ethnic segregation. Morrison’s novel shows that the dilemma experienced by the main character in the novel is divided into the episodes of control, gender role, and humanity service. The correlation between the dilemma and ethnic segregation is portrayed through the struggle of Afro-American people fight against the domination of White Americans. In conclusion, ethnic segregation in America creates dilemma for Afro-American or black people and it should be removed to vanish any differentiation and live in harmony.

scholarly journals Persuasive Strategies towards Racial Appeal in Tony Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Somayeh Shabani
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
Persuasive Strategies ◽  
Blue Eyes ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

Racism is the main theme in Toni Morisson’s The Bluest Eye. The little black girl’s long lasting yearn for blue eyes has been linked to the standards of America’s society in 1940’s which associated beauty to being white. Although instances of racism are rampant throughout the story, previous studies have not attempted to determine the type of persuasive strategies used by Toni Morrison to justify racism in the novel. In this paper, the author made use of Aristotle’s concepts of ethos, logos, and pathos, as 3 main dimensions of persuasion to determine the strategies used in the novel by the narrator-Claudia. Descriptive qualitative analysis of the novel’s text revealed that the author has made use of all these strategies. Pathos was observed in form of feelings of fear, anger and hatred. Logos was observed in the logic of the grown up society of America about being white and ethos was found among the black who themselves credited the whites over their own race.  

scholarly journals Accessing the public workforce: Organisational recruitment practices and the inclusion or exclusion of individuals of immigrant origin

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Lang
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Qualitative Case Study ◽  
Ethnic Discrimination ◽  
German State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethnic Stereotypes ◽  
Recruitment Practices ◽  
Public Workforce

AbstractOrganisations are important gatekeepers in the labour market inclusion of immigrants and their children. Research has regularly documented ethnic discrimination in hiring decisions. Aiming to further our understanding of the role of organisations in influencing the professional trajectories of individuals of immigrant origin, this paper investigates the recruitment practices of public administrations. Drawing on approaches from organisational sociology and a qualitative case study of public administrations in the German state of Berlin, the article identifies three crucial elements of organisational decision-making affecting the recruitment of staff of immigrant origin: decisions regarding advertisement strategies, formal criteria, and individual candidates. Further, the article shows the underlying decision-making rationalities and the role of organisational contexts and ethnic stereotypes for recruitment-related decisions.

scholarly journals Adapting Wives and Daughters for Television: Reimagining Women, Travel, Natural Science, and Race

Adaptation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gill Ballinger
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Black People ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
The Novel ◽  
African People ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Abstract This essay examines the depiction of women, travel, natural science, and race in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters (1864–66) and Andrew Davies’s BBC adaptation of the novel (1999). It argues that the adaptation offers a recognizable transposition of Gaskell’s text, but makes some significant adjustments that reveal its contemporary reimagining of the novel’s gender and racial politics. In particular, Davies transforms Gaskell’s unexceptional female protagonist Molly Gibson into a proto-feminist naturalist adventurer, and revisions the casual racism the novel expresses towards black people in line with late-twentieth-century sensibilities. Each text, novel and film, reveals the period-specific ideological forces that shape its portrayal of Englishwomen and African people.

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