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Toni Morrison : Segregation and Racism in Lorain, Ohio

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In the novel, "Song of Solomon" Toni Morrison discusses a lot of issues on race, and how life has been problematic for African Americans due to the racists actions of Whites.

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Quote: ¨Who's going to live in them? There´s no colored people who can afford to have two houses,¨ Lena said. (Morrison 2).
Explain: In this case, we see how racism systematically affects American society, such that poverty runs rampant among the African American community. Since back then, life has already been challenging for African Americans, especially when slavery was around. African Americans had to work under White people, and overtime they were able to work under their own, but only then they were paid minimally. So as for most African Americans, they're profile has been stuck to be viewed as poverish due to the past lives of their ancestors.

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Quote: "A young Negro boy had been found stomped to death in Sunflower County, Mississippi. There were no questions about who stomped him-his  murders had boasted freely- and there were no questions about the motive. The boy had whistled at some white woman, refused to deny he had slept with others, and was a Northerner visiting the South," (Morrison 80).
Explain: This quote refers to the reality of a young African American male who was brutally beaten to the point where his face was unrecognizable, and in following, a cotton gin being tied around his neck by barb wire as a weight for where he was later drowned in a river. The motive behind this was Emmett Till was with his cousins at a liquor store, and as Emmett Till gazed upon a white women he whistled at her as she got into her car. And later that night he was kidnapped from his house by two white males, who later brutally murdered him. One question that remains is, "Would the outcome have been different if it had been a white young male instead who had done the same, and would it be as brutal or not?"

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Quote: ¨You was with that Southside nigger. That's what did it,...Splendid. I don't like those Negroes in town¨ (Morrison 246).
Explain: As you can see by this quote, there was a lot of of references to hatred towards African Americans. In certain towns, like when Milkman travels, he comes across people who frankly, don't like him specifically for his skin tone. You can also view this situation under many different circumstances no matter the specific town or race of a person. For example in the Japanese culture, they say "Gaijin" which means outsider or foreigner. In the Japanese culture, they prefer to be surrounded by their own people, and view other races as outsiders and not normal.

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Violence And Oppression Is What My Life Is

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Violence And Oppression Is What My Life Is

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Quote: "The racial problems that consumed Guitar were the most boring of all. He wondered what they would do if they didn't have the black and white problems to talk about. Who would they be if they couldn't describe the insults, violence, and oppression that their lives were made up of?" (Morrison 107).
Explain: Milkman can't relate to Guitar or to the barbershop congregants. He doesn't deny that "insults, and violence, and oppression" are part of their lives, but he doesn't understand why they aren't interested in talking about other things. To the congregants, these issues are peripheral, as though the congregants have a selection of issues to choose from and always end up choosing a discussion of "racial problems." Throughout history, especially during the Civil Rights Era, being harassed and oppressed by whites, it was a everyday fight for them to gain equality. It basically was naturally integrated in their lives as said.

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Quote: ¨...behaves like a white man, thinks like a white man...¨ (Morrison 22).
Explain: To stretch the explanation of this quote, some white people don't find African Americans a nuisance because of just who they are, but instead their actions. From a whites perspective, they dislike African Americans for them being illiterate, acting like animals, and maybe their skin tone in general. One may argue that if African Americans were to act more civilized, and more like whites, then maybe there wouldn't be some much controversy between the two groups. In a way, a sort of conforming together/ compromising to common act/ societal normalcy of how to act.

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Quote: "What I'm saying is under certain conditions they would all do it. And under the same circumstances we would not. So it doesn't matter that some of them haven't done it. I listen. I read. And I know that they know it too. They know they are unnatural, telling them they are depraved. They call it tragedy. In the movies they call it adventure. It's just depravity that they try to make glorious, natural. But it ain't. The disease they have is in their blood, in the structure of their chromosome" (Morrison 157).
Explain: Guitar says this in response to Milkman saying not all white people are racist towards African Americans. Guitar believes that the only reason some whites are not oppressive is because they do not have the opportunity. According to him "under certain conditions" all white people would do it. This is somewhat ironic because by calling all whites racist he is in fact being racist himself. Guitar refers to the white society as unnatural. Similarly in The Bluest Eye when Morrison suggests that the white standard of beauty is "unnatural".

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Quote: "He delivered both your sisters himself and each time all he was interested in was the color of their skin," (Morrison 37).
Explain: According to Macon, the patriarch of the Dead family, Dr. Foster, establishes an obsession with color of skin, and a reverence for lighter skin color. This obsession trickles down the family tree, haunting and infecting his grandchildren, isolating them even further. This obsession can viewed as the lighter your skin was the better your life probably would've have been. Basically the lighter your skin was the closer you were to being almost white. Most people didn't like African Americans for how dark their skin was, but if you were "light skinned" then you would be less harassed because the tone of your skin was nearly the same tone as some whites.