“Colour Consciousness is a constant presence in Tony Morrison’s The Bluest Eye”. Discuss.

 The Standards of Beatury: The valorization of white over black is not a recent phenomenon, it goes back in history in ancient time. Mani, a third century Persian, founded an Asiatic religion Manichaeism which was based on the duality of two principles: God and matter or the light and darkness.

According to Charles S. Johnson, an American context the idea of blackness has always been perceived in unfavorable light. Some of the phrases which suggest the emotional and East headache implications of the idea of blackness are: ‘Black is evil’, “Black as sin”, “Black as the devil”. In the popular thinking the evil and ugliness of blackness has always been put in contrast with the idea of goodness and purity of whiteness. In this respect one can say that the idea of blackness and whiteness not just a matter of colour but also has certain moral connotations.

According to Charles S. Johnson, an American context the idea of blackness has always been perceived in unfavorable light. Some of the phrases which suggest the emotional and East headache implications of the idea of blackness are: ‘Black is evil’, “Black as sin”, “Black as the devil”. In the popular thinking the evil and ugliness of blackness has always been put in contrast with the idea of goodness and purity of whiteness. In this respect one can say that the idea of blackness and whiteness not just a matter of colour but also has certain moral connotations."

Even today the idea that the people with white or light complexion are superior to the people of dark or black complexion, exist not only in United States but also elsewhere. Knight Dunlap, a Professor at the prestigious John Hopkins University at Baltimore, reaffirmed the notion of the superiority of the white people. He said:

‘The type which is highest in value tends to approximate the European type, wherever the European type becomes known. All dark races prefer white skin.

The broad flat nose and the thick wide lips are often repulsive because they suggest the African, if or no other reason. But I suspect that the thick lips also a defect because they are in themselves a hindrance to efficient speech”

The political connotations attached with the whiteness, makes it powerful and dominant. In the modern world, with modern technology of communication is these ideas have actually taken the route into the psyche of all Americans, especially in the psyche of African Americans. According to W.E.B. De Bois, is with double consciousness that African Americans see themselves–this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.’” When a black person internalizes this content the result is disastrous and it shows that the expressions of self-loathing, psychological oppression, loss of identity and worse. In this regard Toni Morrison says that “the concept of physical beauty as virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the western world.” The disastrous effects of this notion are more on women than men, and this is apparently clear in the opening chapter under the Winter section. 

Is this obsession with physical beauty, that there is a steep rise in the market of cosmetics, which are supposed to make complexion lighter, straighten hair and achieve other results. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye revolves around this idea off colour and its association beauty.

Changing Attitudes To Color And Their Treatment In Black Fiction 

 Before we go ahead to explore the idea of beauty in the novel it is important for us to take a look at the way in which black people look at themselves. Broadly speaking there are three attributes to color which must be looked at.

(a) Black is ugly and repulsive. One must not associate oneself with it and should be ashamed of it if the association does happen. Assimilation can be considered as one solution to this. 

(b) Black is beautiful. 

(c) Black is neither ugly not beautiful, black is.

Assimilationism

Bernard W. Bell defines assimilation as “the process by which different ethnic groups are absorbed into the larger community. It projects the image of America as a melting pot of nationalities. . .” Popular assumption, in this notion was that blacks have lost their culture and their color and if they want to become a first-class citizen of American then they must first become white in Outlook if not physically. George Schuyler considers that it was assimilation made the survival of black people in America possible.

Black is Beautiful

This notion of blackness is exemplified in the Langston Hughes poem “I, Too”. In this poem the black speaker says: 

I taught her brother.

He goes on to say: 

They’ll see how beautiful I am 

And be ashamed. 

I, too, am America 

Apparently one can see there in the first and the last line there is an echo of Walt Whitman. Use did not like the idea of black people desiring whiteness – “The desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible”. During 1960s, at the time of Black Nationalism movement, the idea that black is beautiful became very important and crucial. Hoyt Fuller talks about that in this book “Towards Black Aesthetic”. He says:

Across this country, young black men and women have been infected with a fever of affirmative. They are saying: ‘We are black and beautiful.’ . . . After centuries of being told, in a million different ways, that they are not beautiful, and that whiteness of skin, straightness of hair, and aquilineness of features constituted the only measures of beauty, black people have revolted. The trend has not yet reached the point of avalanche, but the future can be clearly seen in the growing number of black people who are snapping off the shackles of imitation and are wearing their skin, their hair, and their features ‘natural’ and with pride. In a poem called ‘Nittygritty’ . . . Joseph Bevans Bush puts the new credo this way:

. . . We all gonna come from behind those

      Wigs and start to stop using those 

      Standards of beaut! which can never

      Be a frame for our reference, wash 

     That excess grease out of our hair,

     Come out of that bleach bag, and get

    Into something meaningful to us as

    Nonewhite people-Black people…

Black is Neither Ugly Nor Beautiful,

 Wallace Thurman expresses this notion and is novel, The Blacker the Berry. The central character of the novel is Emma Lou, who is tragic quest for love and respect brings the realisation that:

“What she needed to do now was to accept her black skin as being real and unchangeable, to realize that certain things were, had been, and would be, and with this in mind begin life anew, always fighting, not so much for acceptance by people, but for acceptance of herself by herself”

This attitude can also be seen in the short stories by Paul Marshall and Gloria Naylor. In Marshall’s story the central character, while talking about her plans for children says: ‘I will feel that I have done well by them if 1 give them, if nothing more, a sense of themselves and their worth, and importance as black people. . . . Thy! Must have their identifications straight from the beginning. No whitedolls for them!”. In Naylor story Mrs Brown tells a daughter: “I am alive because of the blood of proud people whocraped or begged or apologized for what they were. They lived asking only one thing of this world-to be allowed to be. AndI learned through the blood of these people that black skin isn’tbeautiful and it isn’t ugly black is. It’s not kinky hair and it’s not straight hair—it just is” 

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