Thieves in the Night

The Bluest Eye is heavily invested in depicting and examining feelings of inferiority experienced by black people, brought about by living in a world where white supremacy is baked into the very fabric of society. These feelings of inferiority however have a much greater reach and impact than just damaging the psyche of the oppressed; they are an integral component in the continuation of these racial demarcations. Institutions, especially those that perpetuate inequality, are as powerful as they are in large part because they are upheld by individuals one would not expect to support them. White supremacy draws support from both the oppressors and the oppressed, a support which in most instances is passive, even unconscious in the case of the former and contradictory in regard to the latter.

Over the centuries most Americans have lost the stomach for blatant racism; Incidents of racial violence are of course greatly diminished from their mind-numbing frequency in prior eras, and while the use of slurs is still very prevalent it cannot be compared to yesteryears. This indicates a diminishment of active resentment from the white majority towards people of color. Now even the vilest bigots often hold their tongue or fists for fear of admonishment, admonishment that would not exist in a society that was actively resentful, as the hatred would overcome the desire for decorum (or rather, their hateful acts would not go against decorum). Yet racial stratification remains a key feature of American and other western societies, implying that the physical and psychological violence and the hatred they arose from were and are not necessary components to maintain the order, beyond perhaps what is necessary to implement it in the first place. Instead of hatred, the racial hierarchy is enforced by an even more powerful agent: the desire to preserve the status quo. In a 1966 article for The Nation, MLK wrote “Negroes have benefited from a limited change that was emotionally satisfying but materially deficient. As they move forward for fundamental alteration of their lives, a more bitter opposition grows even within groups that were hospitable to earlier superficial amelioration. Conflicts are unavoidable because a stage has been reached in which the reality of equality will require extensive adjustments in the way of life of some of the white majority.” The unease that would come with the dismantling of the system, both materially and existentially now serves as its primary driver. The latter form of dread does not solely apply to the oppressors, however.

An institution’s ability to make itself seem natural and immutable is another major source of strength. As the famous words go it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, and I believe nearly everyone who has studied the history of race as a concept was greatly surprised by how recent of an invention it is. This second great power of institutions is a large part of why they can draw support from the people they victimize: the toppling of said institution seems too great a task, and so the best course of action is to seek advancement within the current system rather than dismantling it. There is a passage in the novel that reads “He… tried to get kids to stick around as long as possible. White kids; his mother did not like him to play with niggers. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers… colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud. He belonged to the former group… his hair was cut as close to his scalp as possible to avoid any suggestion of wool… the line between colored and nigger was not always clear; subtle and telltale signs threaten to erode it, and the watch had to be constant.” The mother is highly aware of the inescapability of blackness yet chooses to distance her and her son from it as much as possible so as to meet the standard of whiteness, going as far as to create gradations of blackness (an incredibly ironic practice in a country where the one drop rule exists). For the mother and society at large, whiteness is prosperity, however her directions to her son only serve to further that belief.

The prosperity she seeks via proximity to whiteness very much has a glass ceiling, ultimately just a cushier form of subjugation liable to vanish on a whim. Blackness is inescapable, and the signs that threaten to erode the categorization she has made are in truth only interpretable by white people. Later in the novel when describing a character whose family is partially descended from British colonists in Jamaica, Morrison writes “The men studied medicine, law, theology, and emerged repeatedly in the powerless government offices available to the native population.” Ironically enough it seems that the greatest way to entrench a system of oppression is to give the oppressed a means of ascension within said system, rather than totally subjugating them. Take the contrasting examples of the United States and Latin America with their approach to racial categorization. The United States was and is far more draconian with its definition of blackness, with the one drop rule, (only outlawed in 1967) defining someone as black even if they had 1/8 black ancestry. Compare that to Latin America with its far more complex and fluid racial hierarchy that did and continues to give gradations to blackness, as well as means of escaping it entirely.

The draconian classification of race seen in the United States actually strengthen civil rights movements, as all persons with black ancestry are lumped together and thus forced to have solidarity with one another. Many of the most famous figures in the fight for racial justice were mixed (Frederick Douglas being a notable example). Whether or not they would have taken up this cause had they been born further south is very much debatable. Whether they would have had the same identification with their blackness at all is debatable. Latin American conceptions of race allowed one to escape their blackness through other ancestry and allowed their descendants to escape their blackness via interracial marriage. The most extreme case of this is seen in Argentina, which managed to almost totally eliminate their black population in large part via state endorsed miscegenation. A similar project was attempted in Brazil, though it failed to whiten the population as thoroughly as Argentina. Brazil’s conception of whiteness instead shows the ability to escape from blackness, with a greater focus on appearance rather than ancestry. Many, if not most self-identified white Brazilians acknowledge some nonwhite ancestry and would fail to qualify as white in the United States. The system devalues ancestry to such an extent that two siblings can end up in different racial categories because of their appearance.

The same myopic and uncritical tendencies that cause one to be unable to envision the end of an institution also cause one to loathe themselves. If blackness is to be distanced from or escaped entirely in the name of prosperity, then that leaves whiteness as the only acceptable mode of being. This creates self-resentment in those who are both unable to escape their blackness and unwilling to examine why they seek to escape in the first place. Take Mrs. Beedlove, the mother of the novel’s central character. In a most revealing passage, Morrison writes about her that “The slightly reeking fish that she accepted for her own family she would all but throw in the fish man’s face if he sent it to the Fisher house.” Here we see an acceptance of her own inferiority to the Fishers, and an acceptance of the institutions that plant that idea of inferiority in the first place, which only serve to further it. Would the fish man still serve her and others in her community slightly reeking fish if her and other like her demanded the same quality? Of course, institutions cannot be toppled through demands for equality alone, but they certainly will not fall without at least that much.