A moment in the short story “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison, that exposed the issue of race into Twyla and Roberta’s story was the moment that Twyla describes her mom telling her, “she would stop dancing long enough to tell me something important and one of the things she said was that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny.” (1174) In this moment of the story, Twyla’s mom is setting up an idea in which distinguishes them from the others. She uses “they” to refer the other people and with her statements she is implying that the people who are different from them usually do not have good hygiene. As a kid, anything your parents says or tells you will influence your mindset to think the same, therefore, Twyla will be influenced to divide her and the kids who she meets at St. Bony’s. Defining someone by their skin pigmentation is not the only root of racism, but as well as the way people describe others whether if it’s how they look or how they speak. Though, during that moment we are not aware of who is the dark or light complexion character, but this moment can define a racial issue.
In this country being an immigrant or coming from a Hispanic or African American background will make you come across many racial, cultural and socioeconomic challenges. In my personal life, I don’t recall coming across a moment where I faced something like that, nevertheless, as Mexican-American my culture always faces those types of challenges. We are always receiving negative cultural comments, due to us being from a different country. I take pride into my culture and where my family comes from because not every immigrant comes to this country to do defective things, they come here to work and seek a better future and life for themselves and their family. These kinds of issues arose many conflicts to the people who are innocent of things. People start to do hatred acts that affects people who have no fault in this. This is all due to the creation of racism and the way people think and act towards others due to the place they come from, their skin pigmentation and the way they look.
Jeremy, Your comments make me wonder about how racism takes hold in children. In that first chapter of the story, Twyla and Roberta understand that they have different skin colors, but do they have inherent biases that will inevitably become racism?