Classism, Racism, and Structrual Violence

In class on Monday, something that kept popping up was “internalizing racism”. This explains a lot with how the parents in The Bluest Eye treat their children. Because they have been oppressed for their entire lives, they pass this through to their families.

For example, Mrs. Breedlove has learned to love whites and hate blacks, and this is obvious in the interactions she has with her family. While she is kind and sweet to the little white girl she watches over, she is short-tempered and unforgiving towards her own daughter. When her daughter spills a cobbler that was made for the white family, Mr. Breedlove doesn’t pay any mind to her daughter’s safety, only her clumsiness. She orders her out of the house while she tends to the little white girl, and promises to make her another. Mrs. Breedlove doesn’t want the little girl to get upset; she has learned that the white population controls her future in terms of occupation and reputation.

Another example of passing on hostility is found in the scenario with Geraldine and her son. Though Geraldine is black, she forbids her son from associating with lower-class African-American folks. She has grown up seeing that colored people were “inferior”, and did everything she could to bring herself up in the world. She passed this on to her son, teaching him not to be in the company of people lower on the social ladder than himself.

Cholly Breedlove passes on violence in another way. When he was young, he was caught having his first sexual encounter by some perverted white men. His anger was immense, but he could not direct it to the white men or the white population in general, they were above him socially. He focused his anger instead on the girl he was with, and then on black women altogether. Because he could not effectively vent his feelings for the men, he was forced to live with his shame. His family was the next victim of his unrequited animosity. He beats his wife and sexually abuses his daughter.

This physical and structural violence experienced by the adult characters is passed along through society and to their children. It seems that when they accept their lower status, they keep the violence going in a cyclical pattern. Perhaps Geraldine was doing something she felt as right, trying to break her race’s mold and climb the social ladder a bit, but she ends up putting more people down than she encourages to rise up out of their “fate”.

It was not until the Civil Rights Movement that racial superiorities were leveled out politically, but the differences remained for quite some time in society. There was actually something that could be done about unfairness after the movement, though, so internalized racism was not as common.

It still does exist today, but is more commonly seen in classism. The poor and oppressed could not speak out against their higher opponents, and people were stuck in the “circle of poverty.” People who were told for years that they couldn’t do anything to defeat corporations and their all-controlling CEOs are now realizing that together, they do have a voice. This is taking America’s spotlight with the Occupy movement. I see this as a Civil Rights Movement of its own, people preventing the structural violence that happens every day from progressing.