Pecola: Portraying the Injustices Faced by Black People

Pecola Breedlove stands as not only the main character of Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye; Pecola Breedlove stands as a representation of all the injustices put onto black people in America. Spanning from economic to social to emotional, the consequences of having non-white skin were constant and inhumane. In "The Adolescent Complexities of Race, Gender, and Class in Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye"", Paul Douglas Mahaffey introduces three components of Pecola's struggle; her blackness, her female identify, and her class statues. Pecola was black, a girl, and was poor. It should be noted that Pecola Breedlove was far from the only American who experienced hardships rooted in race.

The entire African American population had been set back by hundreds of years of slavery, resulting in economic, social, and even emotional inequalities which are still relevant today. The Bluest Eye takes place in approximately 1941. America is still highly segregated, and race-based inequalities pulse through Pecola's town, as well as all of America. Although each of these identities make her life harder, Pecola's blackness was the most important factor in making her life as difficult as it was.

Not only was Pecola black, she was extremely dark-skinned. Despite also being black, Pecola's classmates still shamed her for her dark skin. In one instance a group of boys surrounds Pecola and harass her, calling her a "black e mo". Their blackness does not matter, for Pecola was blacker and therefore less valuable. As Morrison puts it, "It was their (the boys') contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth. They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn (...)."

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As Paul Douglas Mahaffey explains in his article "The Adolescent Complexities of Race, Gender, and Class in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye", Pecola's struggles all take place within a community that has internalized the dominant culture's racist ideas of superior goodness associated with 'whiteness' and a physical and mental ugliness associated with 'blackness'." Unfortunately there certainly stands a belief that blackness equates to dirtiness and ugliness, even within the black community.

Another jarring example can be found in the home of a character named Geraldine. Geraldine lives in the town where our story takes place, but lives a different lifestyle than her neighbors. Like many in her town, she is a black person. However she prefers being referred to as a "colored person", consciously separating herself from the lowly "niggers". Morrison explains the difference; "They were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud." (Morrison, 87).

Just a few sentences later, we see the fearful tension between "colored persons" and "niggers"- "The line between colored and nigger was not always clear; subtle and telltale signs threatened to erode it, and the watch had to be constant". (Morrison, 87). The watching referenced here is upon one's self and perhaps one's family. A colored person must watch himself to assure he does not let his hair be kinky, skin ashy, or voice loud. Any of these faults would connect a "colored person" to their "nigger" counterparts, making them too dirty and unimportant. Pecola is a pinnacle of what "colored people" don't want to be: dirty, poor, dark-skinned, and eventually even inappropriately pregnant. The internalized racism present throughout The Bluest Eye is a result of Pecola's blackness, and she is the ultimate target of this shameful dynamic.

This leads us to our next, and most subtly forceful, cause for Pecola's troubles; white idealization. I argue that the issue explored above- racism internalized by black communities- appears hand in hand with white idealization, although white idealization is more subtly harmful. The Bluest Eye is saturated with the idealization of white people, starting with the title. The blue eyes Pecola dreams for, and partially obtains, are just one of many symbols of whiteness and its lifestyle that these colored people dream for. A poignant example of the romanticization of whiteness is Pecola's interaction with a Shirley Temple cup. Shirley Temple, a white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, was adored by many during this time.

She was innocent, cute, and delicate- everything Pecola wanted to be but was not. Pecola drinks three quarts of milk, certainly an absurd amount, just to use the Shirley Temple cup and examine her delicate face. Shirley Temple serves as an example of the weight of Pecola's blackness, above her gender and class. Even if Pecola was a poor girl, so long as she was white, she would be somewhat connected to Shirley Temple and the white-praising culture that surrounds her.

Pecola is inadequate not only in comparison to her own town, due to her especially dark skin, but in comparison to the entire country, which praised white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Pecola's blackness creates an unavoidable barrier between the culture that she envies so greatly, displacing her far more than her gender or class do.

The Bluest Eye, particularly the shaming of Pecola, brings a poetic spotlight to the issue of racism and inequality, drenching it in raw emotion. Pecola's blackness serves as the root of her economic, social, and emotional turbulence. For readers, especially for non-black readers, The Bluest Eye gives insight into black experiences in America. Observing Pecola's struggles and desires, non-black readers can develop understanding and empathy for fellow black Americans.

Works Cited

1. Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. First Edition, Vintage International, 2007, New York.
2. Mahaffey, Paul Douglas. "The Adolescent Complexities of Race, Gender, and Class in Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye"".
3. "Race, Gender & Class Journal". Volume 11, No. 4, Jean Ait Belkhir, 2004, pages 155-165, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43496824, accessed November 6th
   2017.

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