Internalized Racism

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Author of “Facing the Black Shadow”, Marlene F. Watson defines internalized racism as the running inner dialogue we have with ourselves all day long about our fears of being inferior as black people and consequently our longing to be less black. Throughout Toni Morrison’s “The Blues Eye” we can see the detail picture of the internalized racism in the form of self-hatred. But she not only portrays the pathetic sufferings of the victims of internalized racism through the character like Pecola Breedlove but also she illustrates an outstanding fightback against oppression and self-hatred via rebellious character Claudia MacTeer. Being a rebel figure in the novel, Claudia fights back against the falsehood of color ideology. Her presence in the novel…show more content…
Claudia is a headstrong nine years old girl growing up in a loving family of Lorain, Ohio. She is an inquisitive and warm-hearted, but she is also an angered and violent fighter against injustice. She recognizes her inner worth and instinctively feels threatened by the black community’s distorted admiration of whiteness. As a narrator she doesn’t give any concrete description of her own physical appearance that reveals her disregard for the standard of beauty set by the society. Unlike her older peers, she has the ability to see and judge what happens around her more clearly and rationally. She takes an active stance against every actions that she perceives as threat and shows the bravery to criticize the hypocritical behavior of the town’s people, including herself. Though in certain cases Claudia’s actions are childish and often doomed to failure, she is still an examples of vigorous responses to…show more content…
She does not think that she is ugly or inferior. She does not hate herself that plagues so many people in the community. She explains that her ignorance of self-limitation makes her brave by saying, “Nobody paid us any attention, so we paid very good attention to ourselves. Our limitations were not known to us—not then” (Morrison 191). According to famous writer Bell Hooks, if a woman want to validate her existence, she has to achieve the ability to identify her inner worth and tendency of not compromising self-respect in any circumstances. In her “Ain't I a Woman”, She posits, “I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance” (Hooks 43). Claudia clearly shows this tendency of not bowing down to the so-called social values that threaten to destroy her psychologically. This enormous strength of resistance against the cultural belief that whiteness is beautiful and superior and blackness is ugly, makes her a survivor figure in the

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