Victimization and Racial Boundaries - Essay Example

Victimization One of the strange characteristics to have grown into the American culture from its predominantly European past was an emphasis on the purity of skin color as an almost exclusive measurement of beauty. European women who worked in the fields naturally gained some coloring from the sun, but those who were pampered and well-bred had only nominal contact with the sun and were thus presented with the clearest, whitest skin possible. This made them cherished as the most prized possession a man could have. With the advent of colonization and interaction with other races and darker skin tones, this concept of ivory white skin remained the hallmark of beauty even before the ugly side of race relations reared its head in America. However, with the long span of history between the whites and the blacks, this connotation grew ever stronger, creeping even into the culture of blacks as they struggled against the restrictions their own skin color brought upon them. Lightness of skin tone became more than just a badge of beauty, but also represented a certain power and freedom that had long been denied black people. For black women, lighter skin meant better husbands, more comfortable lives and perhaps even a greater opportunity to experience what it was like to be white. For black men, having the power to seduce a white woman meant he had a power all his own, a means of defeating his oppressors and bringing the white devils down a peg or two. This concept of whiteness as a standard of beauty, power and control is found throughout Chester Himes’ novel “If He Hollers, Let Him Go” and Toni Morrison’s novel “The Bluest Eye” as they each relate how issues of skin color have served to victimize the entire community. The concept that white is right is laced throughout Himes’ novel as Robert (Bob) Jones struggles to maintain balance and still get the job done in a work environment that unofficially discriminates against the black workers in numerous ways. The story opens with an introduction to Bob as a black man living with a black family in a barely adequate home and terrified of the race issues that he sees erupting around him in World War II Los Angeles. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that Bob is one of many Southern blacks who have moved to L.A. in the hope of finding his fortune in the wartime boom of production needs coupled with the shortage of white men available to work the necessary jobs. On the job, he has had some success, being the only black man to have been appointed to the position of leaderman, although he has no true authority and is frequently frustrated at the various insidious controls placed upon him by his white co-workers, both male and female. As a semi-autobiographical novel, hints of this treatment can also be found in Himes’ own memoirs, as cited by Itagaki (2003): “It was the lying hypocrisy that hurt me. Black people were treated much the same as they were in an industrial city of the South. They were Jim-Crowed in housing, in employment, in public accommodations, such as hotels and restaurants.... The difference was that the white people of Los Angeles seemed to be saying, ‘Nigger, ain’t we good to you?’ (73-74).” He is loose about his relationships with women, but considers Alice, a wealthy light-skinned woman, his girlfriend. However, it is primarily due to his association with a white woman, Madge that he runs into trouble. The Harrisons begin to illustrate the concept that the definition of beauty can be found only in the relationship one has to the color white. As Bob sits down to talk with Mrs. Harrison, it becomes obvious that she has completely abandoned any association she might have had with her own race and works instead to try to integrate more fully with the white race by profiting from the struggles of the black. Himes describes Mrs. Harrison as “a very light-complexioned woman with sharp Caucasian features and glinting gray eyes. Her face was wrinkled with countless tiny lines and sagged about the jowls. She wore lipstick but no other make-up, and her fine gray hair was bobbed and carefully marcelled. She was aristocratic-looking enough, if that was what she wanted, but she had that look of withered soul and body that you see on the faces of many old white ladies in the South” (49). In this description of Alice’s mother, Himes indicates that perhaps because of her lighter skin tone, Mrs. Harrison has found it possible to mingle somewhat with her white neighbors enough to begin taking on many of their less attractive characteristics. She styles her hair in the same way as the white people do, values the same kinds of things valued by the white people and makes no attempt to associate herself with the black community that has made her rings and other luxuries possible – those black individuals who are described as overpaying for the services of her husband, the doctor, who spends more time chasing other women than taking care of his community. “In these unflattering descriptions, Himes portrays both Harrisons as social and economic parasites on the African American community, smug and complacent in their exclusive entrée into white society” (Itagaki, 2003: 6). While Alice, Bob’s girlfriend, is not portrayed as quite the same kind of parasite, she is also portrayed as a woman who would forget her black heritage in favor of the social benefits and comfortable living of the white community. She is described early in the book as Bob continues to wake from his opening dream and sees her picture by the side of his bed. He writes that he is “Proud of the way she looked, the appearance she made among white people; proud of what she demanded from white people, and the credit they gave her; and her position and prestige among her own people” (6). Bob considers her a prize beyond reckoning thanks to her light skin and her accomplished ways, an opinion that is partially shaped by Alice’s own efforts. While Bob continuously compares her to Bette Davis (i.e. 53), Alice herself encourages this comparison by striking movie poses designed to have an effect upon him (i.e. 90) and telling him often of the places she enjoys going to with her white friends. “Alice, however, snobbishly enjoys the vicarious thrill of slumming on Central Avenue: Socially, she can pass as white, and economically she is richer than those African Americans generally frequenting the Avenue’s entertainment spots” (Itagaki, 2003: 6). However, when she is forced to admit to her black heritage, as occurs when she is pulled over by the police driving Bob’s car. Although she presents a cogent, intelligent argument regarding the way she’s been treated and the language used to describe her (the police call her a coon), Alice and Bob are arrested anyway and Bob is forced to pay a cash bail before they can return home. It becomes obvious that for all her supposed intelligence and work with Social Services, she has little concept of the true nature of how black people are treated in L.A. as she tells Bob, “I never had anybody talk to me like that … People have always respected me” (64). These elements of Alice’s character emphasize the different treatment and experiences she’s had as a result of her lighter skin in a society that places a great deal of value on the beauty of the light and the ugliness of the dark. Within the context of the novel, however, there is a white woman who plays a significant role in how Bob’s life is to be shaped. Madge is a white woman tacker who works on the same ship Bob works on. Although she doesn’t start the trouble Bob has with white people, she is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back when she tells him she won’t “work with no nigger” (27) and Bob responds with a similar slur, “Screw you then, you cracker bitch!” (27). This interchange gets him demoted from his protected job but has no effect upon her even though she was the one in the wrong by refusing to do a job and by initiating the racial name-calling. “Their [Bob and Madge’s] close proximity in the workplace, and the fact that Bob and Madge frequently come into contact where, as Bob terms it, she ‘performs’ her fear of him, pushes him unwillingly into the stereotypical role of a black man rapaciously desiring a white woman” (Itagaki, 2003: 11). He finds himself alternately attracted and repelled by this woman, even when in her apartment in the middle of the night. Looking down on her after they’d struggled for several minutes, Bob comments, “She looked like hell. She was really a beat biddy, trampish-looking and pure rebbish … I wondered what the hell I’d seen in her in the first place” (146). However, when she opens her robe to reveal her naked white body, his attitude again changes: “Just the notion; just because she was white. But it got me, set me on edge again” (147). It is not surprising then, for Bob to experience an instinctive fear when he finds himself locked in a small cabin with her, knowing that when she yells rape, he will be punished regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Through the portrayal of the Harrisons and the incongruities of Madge, Himes illustrates how society viewed white as right and as the only way to defeat the racism and ugliness of the world in order to live in the light of the beautiful and worthy. The concept that white is the only way to experience the beautiful life is also illustrated very convincingly in Toni Morrison’s book The Bluest Eye. The story begins with nine-year-old Claudia as narrator who lives with her ten-year-old sister Frieda and their parents in a small house that is the worse for wear toward the end of the Great Depression just as the family is about to take in a new boarder, Mr. Henry Washington. As the story progresses, the family also takes in another young girl named Pecola who idolizes Shirley Temple and the images she receives from the movies. Much of the story then focuses upon the major events of Pecola’s life as they are told by Claudia. Pecola returns to her violent family in which her father drinks, her mother fantasizes about living a white-person’s life and her brother continuously runs away. Pecola is convinced that she is ugly because of her very dark skin as compared to the beautiful people she sees on the movie screen who are all white. This idea is confirmed by her society as she is looked over by adult members of the community, boys make fun of her and her one white friend betrays her trust by laughing at her ugliness as well. As the history of Pecola’s family is revealed, it is discovered that her mother, Pauline, has similar notions of beauty as being something white while her father has suffered his own loss of identity as a result of white men’s actions. Finally, Pecola’s father comes home drunk one day and rapes her, impregnating her and Claudia and Frieda plant marigolds in an attempt at magic to help Pecola. In the end, Pecola goes mad trying to gain blue eyes and blonde hair so that she might be loved, her father dies and the marigolds never bloom in keeping with Pecola’s miscarriage. Throughout this story, the definition of beauty is consistently linked with the concept of white and the white man’s world. As the story opens, Claudia introduces one of the main themes regarding the beauty of whiteness when she mentions the way that Henry Washington greets the girls upon meeting them, “You must be Greta Garbo and you must be Ginger Rogers” (16). He instantly relates them to something they can never be, white movie stars living the glamorous life of the rich and famous. While they might eventually find a way of becoming rich and famous, they will never be the white movie star that they dream of. The idea that the movies were forming impressions of what true beauty is for these girls is then quickly reinforced by Pecola’s fascination with Shirley Temple. “She [Pecola] was a long time with the milk, and gazed fondly at the silhouette of Shirley Temple’s dimpled face. Frieda and she had a loving conversation about how cu-ute Shirley Temple was” (19). While this all seems relatively innocent thus far, the theme becomes dangerous as it is explored in the narration regarding Pauline, Pecola’s mother. Having become lonely in her capacity as a housewife and soon-to-be mother, Pauline “decides to go to the movies and is thus seduced by the ideas of physical beauty and romantic love” after comparing it to her own life back home (Merriman, 2007). This begins to define for her, as it does for most of the characters in the book, a sense of what beauty is from a very biased physical standpoint, preventing her from finding it anywhere else afterwards. “She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen” (122). That this is a learned response gathered from the very way in which these films presented physical beauty is illustrated by the way that Claudia hates Shirley Temple because Shirley dances with Bojangles who should be dancing with Claudia. The process by which this self-hatred based on physical skin tone works itself out is illustrated in the life of Pecola as she encounters Maureen. Maureen is a white girl who attends school with the girls. Maureen and the girls get into an argument and, to defend herself, Maureen runs across the street, placing physical distance between herself and the other girls, and shouts back at them, “I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos! I am cute!” (73). “From this scene, two ideas are presented: the idea of blackness and the idea of beauty. Already, Morrison is telling us that these ideas are not self-evident. A scene is required. The girls are struck by Maureen’s insistence of superiority” (Merriman, 2007). As the girls remain stunned by this revelation of why Maureen is cute and they are not, the logical process of reasoning begins. “We were sinking under the wisdom, accuracy and relevance of Maureen’s last words” (74). As they realize that Maureen was cute because she was white and that this automatically defined them as not cute because they were not white, the girls begin the process of self-loathing that characterizes Pauline in later years. They cannot blame Maureen for this, either, as they each realize “all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us” (74). In other words, only by being white could they consider themselves beautiful and, since that wasn’t going to happen, they had to become consigned to the idea that they would never be beautiful. More than simply a question of outer beauty, though, the concept of beauty goes far deeper than skin tone within Morrison’s novel. For Pecola, this realization that beauty means white translates to mean that she will never be loved until she has the blue eyes and blonde hair of the cute white girls and this becomes her destructive goal from approximately this moment forward. Outer beauty is also equated, through the narration regarding Pauline, with inner virtue and worth (Merriman, 2007). As it is shown in the movies strong enough to influence Pauline, so it is strong enough to influence the rest of society as well. This is demonstrated as “the honey voices of parents and aunts, the obedience in the eyes of our peers, the slippery light in the eyes of our teachers when they encountered the Maureen Peals of the world” (74) that were not present when the black girls were found in the same situations. It is also demonstrated in Pecola’s experience at the grocery store. On her way there, she is seen to be a part of the world around her, noticing the various little things that make it hers. “She owned the crack that made her stumble; she owned the clumps of dandelions whose white heads, last fall, she had blown away; whose yellow heads, this fall, she peered into. And owning them made her part of the world, and the world a part of her” (47-48). This is contrasted with the way she sees her world upon exiting the grocery, after her experience of the grocery clerk who refuses to see her. “All things in her are flux and anticipation. But her blackness is static and dread. And it is the blackness that accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes” (49). After this encounter, she is disconnected from the world, the dandelions “do not look at her and do not send love back” (50). This disconnection with the beauty of the world symbolizes a disconnection with herself. No longer are these girls able to love themselves the way they should because so much of themselves is covered with the dark skin that causes so many others to look upon them with distaste, or to ignore their existence altogether. In both Himes’ and Morrison’s novels, then, the concepts of black skin translates to mean ugliness and hopelessness as contrasted with the bright promise and beauty of the lighter skinned. The ideas are so pervading within the greater society that there seems to be no escape from them. Bob is railroaded into a commission with the Army, forced to give up his lovely, light-skinned girlfriend and his wonderful plans for college and a future family. Pecola is driven to madness by her desire to be worthy of love, something that can only be accomplished with white skin and blue eyes. Other characters are also seen to be significantly affected by the concept of white skin equals beauty and goodness while black skin equals ugliness and evil. Claudia and Frieda in Morrison’s book are seen to start off with good impressions of themselves, but hints are provided throughout the text that these opinions change as a part of their maturity. Black characters in Himes’ book either embrace their blackness and consign themselves to be wicked people telling dirty jokes in front of women and playing around or reject their black heritage and try to pass themselves off as being white. In both cases, the only true difference between people can be found in their skin color, but this difference reaches deep inside their being and changes them. For some, as in Himes’ book, this means self-destruction as the result of the frustration and anger that builds up at the injustice of it all. For others, as in Morrison’s book, it means an even greater destruction as individuals become dissociated from the rest of the world and from themselves, no longer able to find beauty in life unless they are able to attain a white person’s lifestyle and respect. Works Cited Himes, Chester. If He Hollers, Let Him Go. New York: Thunder Mouth’s Press, 1946 (reprint 1985). Itagaki, Lynn M. “Transgressing Race and Community in Chester Himes’ If He Hollers Let Him Go.” African American Review. (Spring 2003). August 23, 2007 Merriman, David. “Dismantling Ideas: Beauty, Blackness and Romantic Love in The Bluest Eye.” Associated Content. (June 1, 2007). August 23, 2007 Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970 (reprint 2000). Read More