Who Is Toni Morrison Identify Racial Self-Loathing?

Toni Morrison was born February 18, 1931 and is one of the most prominent authors in world literature, having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for her collected works. She was born Chloe Anthony Wofford and was the second of four children in a working-class American family. In 1949 Morrison entered Howard University to study humanities. While there she changed her name from "Chloe" to "Toni," from her middle name, Anthony. Morrison received a B.A. in English from Howard in 1953, then earned a Master of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1955. After graduation, Morrison became an English instructor at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas (from 1955-57) then returned to Howard to teach English. In 1958 she married Howard
In this book, Ms Morrison attempts to make a statement about the damage that internalized racism can do. She evaluates racial self-loathing; its causes and effects by following the experiences and interactions of several members of the small community of Lorain, Ohio in the early 1940's. She shows us how the prevalent cultural beliefs of the day; that white is beautiful and black is ugly and bad can be believed so innately that it literally drives people to self destruction and madness. Morrison discusses this in the afterward as she explains her desire to understand "the damaging internalization of assumptions of immutable inferiority originating in an outside gaze". (1) It is the outside gazes of all the townspeople that help to destroy the character of Pecola Breedlove, but more importantly it is the established cultural white norms that inculcate the minds of each of the characters in this story. This is the demon that is really responsible for creating a situation where each of these black characters are supported to feel ugly and stupid and inferior. This is the demon that allows the white characters to feel better and smarter and