Whitewashing of African American Culture Exposed in Song of Solomon Ess

Whitewashing of African American Culture Exposed in Song of Solomon White culture would rather keep the African American culture at a distance and shape it into what the white culture believes it should be rather than accept the enrichment offered by the African American culture. This whitethorn be beca make use of of the white cultures fear of anything and anyone obviously distinct in appearance. However, it is not enough for the dominant culture to separate itself from the African American culture, it has to shape and redact that culture into the stereotype projected upon the minority culture. African American culture is shaped by the dominant/ white culture, among other things, through the white cultures use of fear within the minority group, the bestowing or withholding of innovations and wealth, and controlling the mobility of the African American. The white dominant culture uses fear to shape and control people and cultures different from them. In Toni Morrisons Song of S olomon, the fear evoked by the white, dominant culture comes from the thought of being lynched and beaten by any white person who magnate take offence at the presence or actions of an African American. While this is not an obvious, overlaying theme in the novel, it is present nonetheless in the existence of the septenary Days as the Black answer to the lynchings and murders of African Americans by whites, as Guitar said, when a Negro child, Negro woman, or Negro man is killed by whites and nothing is done about it by their law and their courts, this society selects a similar victim at random, and they execute him or her in a similar direction it they can (154). This fear of lynching or physical pain kept African Americans in the limited roles and geogra... ...ted Bjork, Patrick Bryce. The Novels of Toni Morrison The Search for Self and Place Within the Community. New York P. Lang, 1996. Bloom, Harold, ed. neo Critical Views Toni Morrison. New York Chelsea House Publishing, 1990 . Ellis, Kate. Text and Undertext Myth and Politics in Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon. LIT Literature Interpretation Theory. 6.1-2 (1995) 35-45. Furhman, Jan. Toni Morrisons legend. South Carolina U of South Carolina P, 1996. Middleton, David. Toni Morrisons Fiction Contemporary Criticism. New York Garland, 1997. Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York The Penguin Group, 1977. Peterson, Nancy J. Toni Morrison Critical and Theoretical Approaches. Baltimore Johns Hopkins UP, 1997. Rice, Herbert William. Toni Morrison and the American Tradition A Rhetorical Reading. New York P. Lang, 1996.