Just A Color

Toni Morrison is a hell of a strong women. Her only appearance reflects that. Even though the interview was about her new novel Mercy, she talks a lot about the essence of her writing and the main theme she touches, apparently in all her novels: race.

Charlie Rose asks her at one point if this recurrent theme was due to her own race and African-American ancestors, and she affirms it, she implies her direct relationship with racism and she sustains that this problem has “survived 3 hundred to 4 hundred years”. Although she evidently does not esteem the whites so much, she surprisingly does not blame them for their supercilious attitude towards the blacks. She even talks about them as victims of a law imposed in the XVII century that said “Whites can (…) and kill blacks for any reason” making the “poor whites feel superior” over the blacks. She blames this law for the racial hierarchy that was created. I agree with her that it is “just a fantasy” , “just a dream” and that it is “pathetic”. I think most of us, around the world, now feel the same about racism since there has been such a fight against it. And as Morrison and Rose were discussing, since Obama’s victory, a new era, regarding racism, has begun, hopefully. So Morrison even feels shame for the whites, “no matter how poor, and no matter how condemned a white person was, they were tricked into feeling superior than blacks”, thanks to that law, she argues. To feel diminish a person or a group of persons, backed up with another group of persons makes you feel powerful, you put down someone else and it makes you be more secure. Without racial hierarchy, without the color distinction and discrimination, the whites would end up in misery. It is much nicer and safer to diminish someone else. This point brings me back to the work we read about Freud, were he discussed about human’s necessity, or maybe instinct, to have a common enemy.

Linking this all to Song of Solomon, I would say that it relates to the whole novel, obviously, but I keep thinking about Guitar. Like the whites, which are fooled into thinking they ought to put down the black for their inferiority, he is completely convinced he has to kill random, innocent whites, for a greater good of the world, “‘But why?’(says Milkman) ‘I just told you. It’s a necessity; it’s got to be done. To keep the ratio the same.’” (Morrison p.155) No matter how absurd what he is doing is, from his core he believes it’s got to be done. To change someone’s so instilled ideas from their minds is very difficult. Milkman tried, and he has an advantage, he is also a black man and he is his best friend, it is not a random white guy defending his race, it is his own. And he fails to.
As Morrison does, I ask myself, all this mess, for just a color.