Dear Reader,
One of Toni Morrison’s go to themes is racism; its lasting effects on an individual, the mental burden it creates, everything about it. Yet, up until God Help the Child, every single one of her stories remained firmly rooted in the past. It was extremely surprising for me to begin to read this story and see the diction Morrison feels accurately represents this time period. Perhaps to cause the emotional response which I felt, she uses words like “Nigger” and “black cunt” and describes an atrocious life for her main character - Bride. In fact, although free from slavery, Morrison seems to describe Bride in her own chains… Chains of oppression forged by people constantly abusing her. In fact, it gets to a point in the story where Bride acknowledges that she can’t even stand up for herself anymore.
It was in this description, meant to describe our modern times, that I was taken aback. I personally had never experienced anything like this, and although the news has captured the abuse of African Americans in communities like Ferguson, I always perceived those as isolated events. Because of Morrison’s message about the impacts, individuals within society can have on a person, and Bride’s demonstration of these effects, I had to know whether society today was the innately oppressionistic regime which Morrison described it to be… And if so, I needed to see how far it extended.
At first, my research was solely concentrated on the African American community. However, with case study after case study suggesting that American society, even unknowingly, demonstrates a bias against African Americans which undermines them and takes away their constitutional equality. Coming to this resolve, I was shocked that such a large population in the United States held, even subconsciously, biased opinions against African Americans. Perhaps it has just been my time in Evanston, or my families personal beliefs, but this is something extremely strange to me and I had to understand it… I wanted to see if Morrison’s ideas about oppression and the lack of equality within the United States were founded in other social groups as well. As a result, I targeted two more groups which, albeit, were extremely easy to identify, and came to similar conclusions. With a little bit more research, I tried to figure out just how many separate communities or entities claimed they felt the oppression of American society. Among the other groups that felt this way were the feminist movement, the immigrant workers movement, and many others as well. After analyzing all of these, I began to see something truly remarkable… It appeared that more than half of Americans today felt oppressed by society, and the only ones truly escaping from this societal lack of equality were white males… AKA me.
This surprised me, I understood that racism and inequality had been parts of America’s past, however I never actually considered the fact that it was alive and affecting society today. I always considered the incidents on the news to be freak occurences because one individual refused to get with the times.
Seeing this all unfold before my eyes because Toni Morrison choose to write a race related novel in the present was breathtaking. But more importantly, it made me want to write something associated with this cause. I wanted my Multi-Genre assignment to reflect the oppression within American society and the lack of equality there is for most individuals. As a result, I choose to thread [my golden thread] oppression into every single one of my pieces and transition that oppression from a racist hatred, towards acceptance and equality. It is through this transition, that I wanted to convey that we can change… I reaffirmed this idea that we can change through constantly referencing America’s past and how it has continued to make steps to overcome tragic beginning. Between each of the Multi-Genre pieces, there are headlines from newspaper articles which reflect this tragic past within America and show the transition of overcoming it. Tying the present to what has already happened… Almost as if to say that “if they can make forward progress, then so can we”.
What resulted from this effort was, in my eyes, a completely unified Multi-Genre piece that strove to demonstrate one connected message about the importance of unity and equality within the United States. Our Founding Fathers instituted equality as the ideal this nation was intended to be founded upon and although we have not reached it to this day, we must continue to make steps towards reaching this goal. Because only then is America truly the “Land of the free, and the home of the brave”.
Sincerely,
Nutella + Tostitos
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