Cherub Chopp Stewart posted about her experience as a substitute teacher yesterday on another social network wall in light of Dr. King’s birthday, but also applies to characters in The Bluest Eye. How do her students’ actions compare/contrast with the children in The Bluest Eye? Have you experienced something similar?
“so i taught 3rd grade for 5 years, and 1st grade in the last of the 5th year, now i make music and have liberated myself from the failing system…so for now i stay in touch wit the youth thru occasional substitute teaching and etc. (i wont list my current resume)…well the story begins here, it never fails…every time i go sub, and when i taught full time, there would always be a black child calling another darker skinned child “you black!” as if it were an insult, also i am always asked by some outspoken sprout, with a hopeful tone, “what are you?!” and i proudly respond “im black, black on both sides”…and
usually the child looks saddened by my lack of whiteness or says “you black?!”…it happened today, yesterday and the school days last week…to this “you black” i usually respond with a quick story of lineage and statements about how we all originated from the very deepest of blacks…ALL OF US, including white folks, i encourage them to research this…i also remind these beautiful black babies that if they dislike the variations in color of others then they are in turn expressing self hatred. the once hopeful face, turned sad, becomes inquisitive…please teach these babies about race, its origin, and its true nature (ultimately as a social construct)…all the ends and outs…cuz yo, we…we aint there yet, ya know to the place dear bratha Martin spoke of”
-Cherub Chopp Stewart
1 comment
Ambata says:
Feb 7, 2013
Ah yes, years ago I was chatting with one of my fourth grade students during lunch. Kind of out of the blue she said I was pretty and she wished she looked like me. I laughed and said she was pretty too. She said, “I know, but your skin is lighter like my mama’s. I wish I had lighter skin like you.” In an effort not to get too “preachy” and risk losing her attention, I simply told her she had very pretty brown skin and that I had always wished my skin had more of a “sun-kissed” tone. True, but what I should have also said is that she is beautiful because she is the way God made her and I am the way God made me and we are perfect just as we are because God doesn’t make mistakes. She’s a teenager now and I hope and pray she loves everything about herself and because of that she in turn loves everyone else as they are.
Morrison shows this type of attitude towards light skin in the character Maureen Peal. Everyone adores her. She’s pretty, but even if she wasn’t all that cute she would still be adored because she has light skin, yellow like the filling of a meringue pie, as Claudia says. But then of course they also kind of hate her because of that pale skin. They assume she is better than them because of it, and Maureen assumes it too. What Morrison shows in that scene though is how Maureen is a victim as well. We may roll our eyes over the idea of the “tragic mulatto,” but it is sad for Maureen too because, judging by the brief glimpse of her we get, she doesn’t seem to have any real friends either. She is seen more like a doll than a real person. Loved and hated for something she has no say over.