Research question: How does the “white gaze” affect Black families within The Bluest Eye?

Works Cited:

Roye, Susmita. “Toni Morrison’s Disrupted Girls and Their Disturbed Girlhoods: The Bluest Eye and A Mercy.” Callaloo, vol. 35 no. 1, 2012, p. 212-227. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/cal.2012.0013

• This essay has large parts in which it focuses directly on the relationships between the Black families and the white characters throughout the book. It shows the white families’ influence on the thoughts of the “opposing” Black families.

Wallowitz, Laraine. “Resisting the White Gaze: Critical Literacy and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.” Counterpoints (New York, N.Y.), 2008-01-01, Vol.326, p.151-164

• Although based around real world application, this article dives into the strength of the “white gaze” within Toni’s Morrison The Bluest Eye, showing off some student-led responses to the question at hand, giving different perspectives beyond that of my own or even the writer themselves. This allows for deeper thoughts to arise to the surface and allows for the access to previously untapped knowledge.

Peimanfard, Shima. “Othering Each Other: Mimicry, Ambivalence and Abjection in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” International journal of applied linguistics & English literature, 2018-06-01, Vol.7 (4), p.115-120

• This article focuses on a psychoanalysis of The Bluest Eye, primarily on the internally colonized mind of main character Pecola Lovebreed and the effects that this colonization has not only on her, but other Black characters around her as well. It challenges another essay, “Of Mimicry and Man” by Homi Bhabha, which speaks on the usefulness of mimicry to counter white supremacy as Pecola’s mimicry is what ruins her.

Bhabha, Homi. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” Vol. 28, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis (Spring, 1984), pp. 152-159

• A chapter of a larger text that is useful as a counter argument, giving life to the larger argument at hand by presenting counterable points of reference.

Debra T. Werrlein. “Not So Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in The Bluest Eye” Melus, 2005-12-01, Vol.30 (4), p.53-72

• A section of a larger body of text that focuses on how the “white gaze” and views of white people skew those of Black people, particularly children who are the most impressionable at a young age as their minds are still developing.

In 2011, 685,724 NYPD stops were recorded, 605,328 were innocent (88%), 350,743 were Black (53%), and 61,805 were white (9%). In 2011, 33.3% of NYC residents were white while 22.8% were black. Without even looking too deeply into these numbers, you can see the sickeningly disproportionate disparity in the frequency of frisks compared to population size. In case it’s too hard to put these numbers together, 18.8% of the black population of NYC was stopped while 2.3% of the white population was stopped even though their population size is significantly larger.

Why include these numbers? Well simply put, this shit is just unacceptable. Stop-and-frisk was one of the most controversial usages of “probable cause” ever implemented in the country, specifically New York City where a racial disparity became apparent immediately, reaching its fever pitch in 2011. Rankine’s lyric poem condemning the use of this purposefully racist policy rang too close to home for many victims of this abuse as the situation she described “fit the description” of too many cases of these stops. Often times they escalated far beyond the initial stop due to many reasons: police purposely agitating the victim during the stop, the victim’s increased annoyance during times in which they believed they shouldn’t have been stopped, onlookers commenting when their input was unwarranted, etc. The situation itself was seen as not only embarrassing for the person being frisked, but also the officers frisking the person as its racial biases were just too apparent. For some anecdotal evidence, when Hunter College was still open for in person classes, I passed by the stop-and-frisk table dozens of times and never got stopped once, however my Muslim friend who wears a hijab was stopped 4 times during her tenure as a student. It got to the point where she stopped wearing her bag on her back as she knew it was coming so holding it in her hand made it easier and quicker for her to put on the table to be inspected before, sooooo surprisingly and unexpectedly, being innocent of any wrong doings. This is all because of the fact that she is seen “as the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description”.

Rankine’s lyrics put this type of event as a “situation” as situation often refers to a negative event or occurrence that normally has an equally negative, irrational outcome as a result of a common misunderstanding. Many of these stop-and-frisk situations were just that: police with the inability to distinguish suspicion from black skin and instead intertwined the two to make black people easy targets for this abuse. For people who haven’t experienced being stopped, it’s easy to say “just stay calm, if you did nothing wrong then you should be fine” without understanding that the system is set up for tensions to rise purposely. One instance of this are stopping people in the subway system, a notoriously hot place, knowing that heat is a frequent agitator. Another instance is taking a long time to search the smallest of bags when people are clearly in a rush.

The video shot in conjunction with this situation shows scenes of young, black men in a store trying on clothes while audio of a random stop plays in the background. This is because these young men are often “the only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description”. The words that they say to each other are inaudible, which is purposely done to essentially give the reader the “cops’ ears” as pleas of obvious innocence from victims of the police tend to fall on the deaf ears  officers who know they’re in the wrong. As a means of ensuring that their time didn’t go to waste, they often detain people illegally and charge them with minor crimes they clearly didn’t commit. This theme of “abuse of authoritative power” is commonly used throughout Rankine’s book in many situations, ranging from police officers to court officials.

Stop-and-frisk was some bullshit and it’s about time we just face that fact.

(I apologize in advance for my lack of quotables, I can’t find my book)

In Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, Rankine speaks on a wide array of topics that encompass the ever extending range of issues, microaggressions, and scenarios that black Americans have faced in the past, deal with in the present, and will continue to have to withstand going into the fearful, unforeseeable future. The title itself, Citizen, can be interpreted in many ways, but I believe the best possible interpretation would be that black Americans often times find themselves outside of the boundaries of this word regardless of the legality in which its bounds encompass. To be a citizen is defined by Merriam-Webster as an inhabitant of a city especially one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman. One of these vast inalienable rights is the right to life, one which is so often desecrated by the ignorant, naïve white Americans who still decide to perpetuate the racial injustices and insecurities first started off by their great great great great you get the damn point grandparents. By removing this right to life, you remove a person’s ability to feel like they area citizen, to feel like they are an equal in a community of what is meant to be their peers due to proximity, boundary, and state lines. This makes someone feel as though they are an “other”, a second-class citizen and this feeling extends far and wide, beyond the boundaries set legally as the pain of a race effects the entirety of the race, not just the person in question.

As you read through Citizen in its most general capacities, you almost have a flashback, déjà vu moment as earlier in the semester we read Fanon’s The Fact of Blackness. This relates so heavily to Rankine that it is almost as if his spirit had possessed her intellect and guided her hands as she wrote her book-length poem. Fanon writes, “the black man among his own in the twentieth century does not know what moment his inferiority comes into being through the other”, relating back to this idea of being seen as less than by white people except the obvious answer is at birth. Black people are seen as inferior from birth, unlucky even, for being “cursed” with a darker skin complexion as though the choice were like choosing between the red and blue pill from the Matrix. Like Rankine reflecting on her own received microaggressions, Fanon speaks on his encounter with a white child whose fear of him stems not from birth like blackness does, but rather from being taught this archaic ideal of hating one just for the color of their own skin. Recalling the child’s fear of him without him having done anything to be fearful of, it shows his reduction into himself.

Where the disagree happens between Fanon and Rankine is on the idea of becoming “better than”. While Fanon seeks to remedy the situation by becoming a doctor or some other “respectable” field, Rankine speaks on the lack of knowledge from the perpetrators on cases such as Trayvon Martin in which even if the boy had been a renowned brain surgeon, he was only seen as a black male with a hoodie on at the moment of his death because George Zimmerman couldn’t “police his imagination”. This imagination is one in which all black people are a problem and the only solution is systematic, slow genocide to cleanse the America of them. Martin was a citizen, but wasn’t treated as such.

The novel ends with a particular painting that I’ve studied myself by noting the historical context, but by staring at it until the yellows became blacks, the blues became blacks, and the black got even blacker. Fanon seeing this painting would have no doubt understood its placement as he had felt and experienced it all too well: black Americans are not seen as citizens. They are seen as disposables long after the times in which being cast into the sea was the norm just as Fanon is seen as just “a dirty n***er” despite being both a physician and psychiatrist. Serena Williams showing emotion is seen as just another angry black women with the ability to contain herself rather than a fierce competitor who has the right to be upset with negative outcomes as she has dominated her sport for over a decade. Through all these means, Fanon may have inspired Rankine and continues to guide her pen up until the current times.

What implications does the consistency of racism have on the structuring of a family and treatment of specifically gendered children within this family?

Based on The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, it was almost like all the stars aligned across centuries for the IM to have his solo meeting with Brother Tarp at the time he did as many factors, contributions and allusions all came together at once and culminated into a beautiful father-son-esque conversation. In Ch. 18, the IM receives an anonymous letter that connects him back to what he consider his “past life” when he says, “Only my Bledsoe-trustee inspired compulsion to read all papers that touched my hands prevented me from throwing the envelope aside”, as his discovery of Bledsoe’s treachery put him on edge when it came to letters. This reference to the past can be seen almost like a “shackle” that hinders the IM from completing his full-on transformation as he lacks the ability to truly trust anything or anyone.

This leads directly into his conversation with Brother Tarp as Tarp essentially passes on the figurative “torch” by exposing a story about himself that he hadn’t told any of the brothers to that point: that he was a prisoner. The type of imprisonment Tarp went through was a rigorous chain gang system in which he was shackled at the legs to his fellow prisoners and forced to be denigrated back to essentially the same work and conditions his slave ancestors had faced not too many decades prior to the timeline of the story. His story was actually so relatable to slavery from start to finish that it was nearly unbelievable to the narrator, shown when he says “I couldn’t see it in his face or hear it in his speech, yet I knew he was neither lying nor trying to shock me”, as Brother Tarp was imprisoned just for saying “no” to a white man and had to forcibly escape and flee from the South to the North, much like many slave stories. The presentation of his own chain link to the IM was a beautiful gesture as he understands although his situation is different, the IM is also running away from his past, but is still stuck and looking for his own complete freedom.

The chain goes from being a sentimental item to a meaningful grasp on the generational fight for freedom that the black man in America has been attempting to achieve. The significance of it being broken is understanding that black men do have the chance to finally break the mold and are no longer chained down and limited to what white society decides for them. Because of the chain link’s aura of freedom, Brother Wrestrum found its presence to be problematic. He said that, “I don’t think we ought to dramatize our differences”, as unlike the IM and Tarp, he’s comfortable in the world that has been set up for him by the Brotherhood, almost like some rare cases of house slaves. He sees the link almost a threat to the order that has been setup and that he’s thriving on. The idea that a Brother could be seen being differentiated from the body as a whole and be their own man was appalling to him, which is why he wanted the link removed immediately from sight. Telling the IM to remove it was Wrestrum’s attempt to once again shackle and remove the IM‘s freedom as a means of putting him back into the group to avoid “otherness”, much like how a chain gang is linked together and all forced to do the same thing.

Overall, the chain Brother Tarp gave the IM could signify many things, however I believe it was a sign to the narrator that although at some points you may be shackled and bogged down by the weight of external forces bearing down upon you, it’s always possible to break free from those shackles and choose your own path for your own betterment.