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Racial Discrimination in Toni Morrison's God Help The INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN TONI MORRISON’S GOD HELP THE CHILD A. Painthamizh(18CAS1089) M.Phil (Research Scholar) PG and Research Development of English Vivekanandha College for Women Unjanai, Tiruchengode-637205. Namakkal (Dt) Tamil Nadu, India. Mail id:[email protected]. ABSTRACT Morrison writings are based on personal experience and observations. Through her novels she has highlighted the problems and issues of black Americans. Morrison describes the prejudices and exposes the explicitly and the long series of struggle that the blacks have against the exploitative tendencies of the white. Morrison presents a new interpretation of American history and their struggle to remake themselves in their struggle to remake themselves in their words. In the novel, God Help the Child, Morrison has created a new understanding of social justice questioning the matters related to African American women and their tragic condition in America. Her preoccupation with idea of loss and the dilemma of blackness predominates her writing. Racism is a type of bias that ideologically ingrained in the mind of white people that may not be easily cured. Therefore, Morrison strongly drives us to this point from her novel The Bluest Eye in 1970 and her last novel God Help the Child (2015). KEY WORDS: Identity, Childhood Trauma and Racial Discrimination. RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN TONI MORRISON’S GOD HELP THE CHILD Racism is a central theme of immigrant writing that creates in African American literature. Writers take an opportunity to attack and tackle racism and its consequence from different angles religion, culture and historical. African American literature is a good way for restoring the power of expression and speech of black people has been suppressed long and promising a reversal of trend and reconstructing womanhood. Morrison seeks to expose the explicitly and the long series of struggle that the black have the exploitative tendencies against the white. Morrison was Volume 8 Issue 10 2019 63 http://infokara.com/ INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 the first black women to receive the noble prize for literature. Her novel Song of Solomon 1977 won the National Book Critical Award and she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved 1987. She is the recipient of the Condorcet Medal, the National Humanities Medal, the Coretta Scott King Award and the Enoch Pratt Free Library Literary Achievement Award. In 1933, she was awarded the Noble Prize for literature. Morrison’s ancestors were slaves and she herself was a victim of racial discrimination. Through her novels Morrison describes the blacks and their experience in America. Morrison writing is deeply rooted in black cultural tradition. African American was always considered as second class citizens and was always marginalized. Morrison presents the pain of being black, perspective of female writer on black female experience and the revolt against the hegemonies of domesticity, subservience and nurturance. Morrison portrays the black women experience in America by the patriarchal American society. Morrison’s work highlights racial discrimination and its negative and horrifying consequences and how the African American strives to create a new society through their vision, strength and strong determination. Morrison’s writings are based on her real life experience with in the poorer part of the African American community along with her experience and observation in her own childhood. Her novels provide insight into the miserable condition of the suffering and oppression of her people. It is observed from the first novel, The Bluest Eye to her last one God Help the Child, the attempt of Morrison is to problematize the dilemma of being black in America. Therefore, blackness is the key force that shapes this novel and among many other. The black central character being out the profound suffering and struggle for countering racism. Creating a black woman–voice, Morrison counters the mainstream portraying the abuse, marginalized and dehumanization of her people. Morrison reflects the novel God Help the Child, throughout the episode in protagonist’s life. It starts from the birth delivery of Lula Bride. From the moment of her birth, her mother is repelled by her as she has skin so black that it scares her mother, Sweetness explains “Midnight black, Sudanese black”(3). Lula Ann is abandoned and ill- treated by the light skinned parents who are ashamed of her. Sweetness’s husband Louis could not afford to love a child with a black skin. Lula Ann’s father did not accept her and viewed her like “A Stranger more than that an enemy” (16). Lousis refuses to hold his daughter, blames his wife’s “infidelity” and treats Lula Ann as an enemy. Both Sweetness and her husband not bring himself to love a child stands at the antithesis of the ideal beauty. The couple argued about their daughter skin colour until Sweetness argued that the blackness might be from Louis family, not hers. “Hercolour is cross she will always carry”, mother concludes with a deadening lack of subtlety, “But it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not” (7). Sweetness neglected to touch the black skin of her daughter and she refuses to hug like other mother does. Lula Ann was deprived even from pronouncing the smoothest word of Mama, as her mother forced her to call “Sweetness” instead of “Mother” or “Mama”. Sweetness did not take care of her daughter. Lula Ann is longing for her mother’s love Volume 8 Issue 10 2019 64 http://infokara.com/ INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 and care. Sweetness did not take her daughter outside because when she pushes her daughter in the baby carriage, friend or strangers would lean down and peek in to say something nice and then give a start or jump before frowning that hurt lot to Sweetness. Lula Ann’s childhood was soaked in hunger and shame, craving, love, fondness and acceptance Lula Ann leaves home, changes her name to “Bride”, and acquires a second skin to her pitch black hue by wearing anything in white. Surprisingly, Bride discovers that men find her extremely attractive and her blackness in “the new black”. Sweetness, with her ironic name, rears Lula Ann in a patriarchal authoritarian way. Lula Ann grows up bereft of affection and love, which destroys the mother-daughter bond. Patriarchal motherhood prevents sweetness from developing the necessary emotion and affection ties with her daughter, critical during the first years of a child’s life. Lula Ann remembers her mother loathed touching her dark skin. Lula Ann also recalls how she made little mistakes deliberately so that her mother would touch her hateful skin. Lula Ann actually feels glad when she soils her bed sheet with her first menstrual blood and her mother slaps her, being handled. Morrison depicts a very strong child as the central character who struggles with lost innocence and lost identity. Based on Bride’s thinking and probing into the mind of her mother, she remembers her joining with a medical student’s friend who introduces her to his white family. Racially “She is vividly rejected and driven by the parents to the train stop”(37).Later, Bride had a relation with Booker, she states six months into the bliss of edible sex, free style music, challenging books and the company of an easy undemanding Bride. She disappointedly further reveals “the fairy tale castle collapsed into the mud and sand on which its vanity was build. And Booker ran away” (135). She feels that she loses the only handsome man who known her and her dilemma of the partiality in the country. She remembers her complaining about her mother’s ill- treatment to her lover, Booker and his reply “It’s just a colour. A genetic trait- not a flaw, not a curse, not a blessing nor a sin” (143). He adds “Scientifically there’s no such thing as race, Bride, so racism without race is a choice” (143). Bride and booker got breakup. She is searching Booker, on that journey she has been loved by Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths to look for Booker. Moreover, Bride’s love story with Booker is significant and considerable. At last she finds her lover Booker. The novelist locates racism in the past era referring to the story of Sweetness’s mother and her suffering, striving for livelihood for her and her daughter working as a slave. In the narration of the mother’s experience, the author focuses on discrimination and racism giving example of the two bibles that are for whites and Negroes. The black has no right even to touch the bible of white. But at the end of the novel, everything has been changed, Booker, the white lover agrees to marry the black girl, Bride after she informs him of her pregnancy by him. Therefore, Bride’s aim is to tell the new generation of her marriage with Booker and their new portrayal of success. Bride also sends a letter to her mother, Sweetness, explaining the matter of her pregnancy that leads her mother to remember the growth stages of her daughter with all its suffering. Finally, her mother thinks that everything did not all Volume 8 Issue 10 2019 65 http://infokara.com/ INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 will not be changed even after her daughter becomes “a parent”, uttering her simple words “God luck and God help the child” (178). Morrison concludes sense of race, urgency and advocacy of racial problems is rooted in her belief to affirm the unapplied rights of her people. Morrison focus among many diaspora writers, is to produce the unwritten and ignored history of women, ethnicity, minority and slavery.
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