Toni Morrison: Laying Bare the Wounds
I do not own the copyright/license to the visual media used below. Its inclusion is not solely for personal gain, but for educational purposes.
Many academics have criticized Toni Morrison for not challenging racism directly, but Morrison’s commitment to showing the personal pain that racism causes is a radical and painful maturity that many African Americans seem to either lack or avoid.
Let me disclose this: I am an UBER Toni Morrison fan. I just love her. I love the sound of her writing. It sounds like the stories that my grandfather and his cohorts told me while we ate a baked sweet potato or shelled peas on the porch. These stories were complexly layered, richly adorned, and always colorful, and totally engrossing. Animals were concerned, nature cried out in terror, and nighttime never seemed to lift. The animals talked, the children were intelligent, and white people were on the margins or either nonexistent. It was a magical, Black world where everyday things took on large significance, and nearing the age of 40, I’m still learning from those tales. That is the way Morrison’s stories read: personal, didactic, complex, sometimes painful, and with white people in a marginal position rather than a central one.
In the past, many Black academics criticized Morrison to the point of confusion and cliche. You should hear, reader, some of the ridiculous things I have heard: “Toni Morrison doesn’t like Black men.” “Toni Morrison is going to have to mature and formally address racism” (imagine some tenure-chaser telling the Nobel Prize winner to mature). “Toni Morrison is a lesbian.” “Toni Morrison hates lesbians and ignores them in her writing.” “Toni Morrison hates white people.” “Toni Morrison cannot not write about race.” “Toni Morrison is not universal.”
First of all, the artist is not obligated to give us anything other than what he/she is inspired to create. Second of all, even the charge of “universality” is racist. No one says of the Irish writer, James Joyce, that he is not universal. His stories of the Irish continue to resonate with readers all over the globe, and he was not charged to create something less Irish and more universal (also, I have to admit that I happen to LOVE Joyce and I do teach him). Third, authors tend not to focus on race, but upon the people and the places they know best. Did anyone ask George Orwell to not write about race? He was clearly writing about Europeans at a particular time in a particular place. In 1984, the central story takes place in London and I do not remember any major characters of color. These were white people creating wars against nonwhite people for the most part. And the word “savage” is still applied to nonwhite people. I know this book was published in 1949, but the word “savage” is not flagged as a racialized term. Ever. Fourth, even if I were to write a fiction piece, there would be no centering of white people — either to yell at them or to praise them. That’s just not the world I know. People in my community did not wake up every day talking about the white man, and they most certainly did not spend their whole day decrying racism. They did things like go to work, iron clothes, make love, cooked food, whipped children’s behinds, played baseball/basketball/Olympic Gold Medal relay team and hide-and-go-seek. They cried, laughed, worshiped, gossiped, lived, died, killed, and were all around lousy, glorious people. And almost none of that involved white people or white people’s opinions.
But, here’s the caveat, we hurt one another as a result of the oppression that we have experienced. Systemic oppression, of any sort, causes individuals and whole groups to psychologically and emotionally contort themselves in order to mitigate the psychic damage caused by being told that you are somehow “less than” due to phenotypical characteristics that were endowed to you by God Almighty. Oh, how African Americans struggle to mitigate an acceptance of the naturalized “fact” that a too-tight curl of the hair, a too-wide set of nostrils, a too-thick set of lips, and a tainch much of melanin in the skin makes a statement in our society about intellectual capability and even humanity itself. Note, I am invoking God here. God makes no mistakes as far as I am concerned. Note, I am explicitly talking to any society in which men are allowed to play God on the one hand based on false assumptions and made-up garbeldy-gook about other men, and violently cling to what they feel is their right to subjugate on the other based on their own garbedly-gook. It would be funny if it weren’t sad or did not lead to slavery, war, colonialism, death, land dispossession and unending daily microaggressions against people that the Lord made, too. Why on earth would an adult be afraid of hair? See, how funny that sounds? But it hurts literally. Scratch your head the day before a relaxer and there is going to be Hell to pay. How many of us have those scars on our scalps because we were trying to straighten those “resistant” naps “in the kitchen”? Why did African American straighten our hair in the first place? Because white Americans began to hire European immigrants who could not even speak English for jobs that were traditionally held by freed slave women. The hot comb, alongside deodorant and skin bleaching cream, was advertised as a sure-fire way to obtain employment and promotion. In a sense, the hot comb was African Americans’ first affirmative action program, but that’s another posting.
One of the mental contortions that African Americans have performed has resulted in internal strife and division: colorism or chromatism. Traditionally, especially during Reconstruction, those African Americans of lighter skin received better jobs and even education, because their physical appearance manifested some “civilizing” influence of whiteness. In fact, many of the elite private Historically Black Colleges and Universities were founded by white people in order to give the master’s Black children and kin an education that would set them apart from the average ex-field hand. Some cities had “blue vein” societies in which all lighter-skinned people could carve out a semblance of a Black elite/middle class On the one hand, look at a collection of Harlem slang, and there are dozens of words that disparage people of dark color, especially women. In some families, lighter-skinned parents would totally cut off or disown a daughter for marrying a man darker than her parents approved of. On the other hand, lighter-skinned people, no matter how nice or helpful they may be, are regarded with distrust, envy, and even maliciously hurt by darker skinned African Americans who most certainly do not share their privilege. I personally know many light-skinned people who are routinely called, “bitch,” or told, “you think you something” with absolutely no provocation (I also know some lousy light-skinned people. Hell, I know lousy dark-skinned people, so that’s nothing new to me. As a matter of fact, what do you call a person who is neither light nor dark? What do you call a person with extremely long hair but extremely kinky hair? Me. And no one could ever decide if I were pretty or not. But is another VERY PAINFUL posting.).
AND THIS HURT! Colorism/chromatism in families hurt! It hurt, sometimes, on a deeply personal level that still leaves some people wounded and bitter. There is still resonant dysfunction in many African American families because of colorism or hair texture bias or whatever Black families used to discriminate against one another. We have internalized feelings of inferiority from a condition of bondage and extreme racial discrimination, and we keep hurting/killing/being distrustful of one another as a result. In many instances, white supremacy and Black distrust/envy work hand-in-hand.
That is the beauty of Toni Morrison. She writes about the generational hurts that African Americans inflict on one another as a result of our conditions of bondage and subsequent oppression. But how are we supposed to heal from these ailments if we never bring them to light and air? Some wounds are not covered with a bandage and clothing. Some wounds are so deep that even doctors say it is best to leave them open. And for me, Toni Morrison just does that. She lays open the wounds that we wish to cover. And as we keep them covered, they fester and rot — oozing dysfunction into our families and breeding unhealthy jealousies. And African Americans are not the only ones who suffer from these things. Has anyone seen Sammy Sosa lately?
On an episode of Blackish, the cast laid open the deep, festering wound of colorism. For several seasons, we have watched the mother-in-law, Ruby, make hurtful, disparaging comments to Rainbow about everything from her skin color to her morals. In one episode, Bow just couldn’t take it any more. She DEMANDED to know why her mother-in-law made fun of her for being born with fair skin. Even Jr. said he could no longer endure the painful “jokes,” and felt discriminated against as a light-skinned man. Junior pointed out that if he were to tell these “jokes” about dark-skinned men, his father would be outraged.
Ruby, who is now a grandmother and stands as an example to two generations daily, did it: she opened her family album and revealed the source of all of her pain. Ruby tells the entire family that she is the daughter of a woman who was outcasted by her Creole family for marrying a dark-skinned man. According to her story, the darker skinned children were not even allowed in some people’s house. Ruby Johnson, the picture of strength and sarcasm, was deeply marred by “If you black, get back.” It was not cute. It was not harmless. It was not just a childhood rhyme. It was the source of generational pain and deep hurt. Ruby, the grandmother, reveals the wound, and the family was allowed to begin healing around skin color issues. Had Rainbow, the wife, never become angry with Ruby’s jokes, it is possible that Ruby and Dre would have gone the rest of their natural lives making divisive comments about people with light skin, sewing seeds of discord in the family, and continuing the painful legacy of colorism within their family.
Who can read The Bluest Eye without feeling this hurt? Pecola Breedlove is hurt: she is hurt by her mother’s repulsion, a father’s lovelessness and incest, and the Black community who has learned by painful measures to hate people who are her color. Her only two escapes are the house of three whores, who at least show some affection towards her, and her dreams of being Shirley Temple. To little girls like Pecola Breedlove, who the world would never see as a delicate flower but a dandelion, the Black community breaks her. It is the Black community she knows best, Black adults who talk and yell at her like she is an afterthought, Black children who call her “blackemo,” Black parents who are disconnected from her emotionally, and a Black father who rapes her. It is a Black community whose emotional/psychological soil is so poor, that it won’t even support the growth of a dandelion. And dandelions are hardy, heat tolerant flowers!
While people continue to debate the merits of Toni Morrison (and miss the mark, I say), I am proud of Blackish. I’m waiting on us in academia to mature the same way and understand what it is Morrison is saying. Morrison is telling us to deal with our hurt, uncover our shame, and face the past — with all of its deficiencies — as adults. Open the book and reveal the source of pain. It is the only way we will heal. Yes, we should hold racists responsible when they need to be, but wouldn’t it be marvelous if the bulk of our energy went to healing our own wounds and teaching our children?
