Inter and Intra Racial Hostility in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to explore inter and intra racial conflicts in black white relationship with the reference to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye with Michel Foucault’s concept of power and discipline, and the impotence of manhood to explore the African American feminity. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison focuses on the Afro-American communities in the Ohio state during the forties, a time when the life within the black communities was affected by race, class, and gender hardships. The study of African-American literature can not be isolated from the racial issues because African-American writers try to explore the experiences of blacks which has been characterized by the formidable forces of racism. Racism affects the lives of both blacks and whites in the course of social dealing. The discrimination made by the whites to the blacks on the basis of skin colour on one hand and the conflicts within blacks especially between the light-skinned and dark-skinned on the other, is the result of the white's hegemony and the cultural oppression which has forced the average blacks to internalize the white's cultural norms so that they can attain the social recognition in the racialized American society. The problem with the American values is that it cherishes outward success that forces the blacks to seek power, beauty, and material affluence by interlizing white's cultural norms and values. Blacks at present are suffering from the white's hegemony and cultural oppression. Such situation has led to the division of their self and, thus, they try to find prosperity in whiteness and identity in black skin. It is the point from where the blacks' tragic story begins.