Theme Of Prejudice And Racism In Toni Morrison's 'Lorain'

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In Lorain, after getting marriage Pauline begins to miss her people. She has never lived around so many white people. She surprised that the black people living in the North are different than in the south. In the South, the communities were strongly isolated, and whites were over aggressive toward blacks. In the North, the whites and blacks are more integrated and racism is less overt and aggressive but still exists. As a result, outside pressure of white violence and attack does not connect the black community together and blacks can begin to identify the differences among themselves and racism develops among and between black's themselves and black community. “Northern colored folk was different too. No better than whites for meanness. They could make you feel just as no-concept I didn’t except it from them that was the lonesome time of my life” (117).
The white family's unhappy life shows that even though they fit the ideal on the outside, being white and rich, they are still unhappy. Pauline's view of whiteness as the ideal, however, is not changed by what she witnesses. The interaction between Pauline and the white woman captures a lot of the trickiness of racism and its complicated effects on communities. The white woman's sense that Pauline should leave Cholly is almost certainly correct. But the white
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She knows that the terrible guilt is shared by everyone in her community, including herself. She punishes herself for her part in the failure and makes clear that she will never be at peace with what she has witnessed. Morrison said about her novel that she wants her readers (white and black) to feel the victimization of Pecola’s life, not for the purpose of congratulating themselves for having compassion but rather for accepting their own responsibility for it. The tragic victim is neither a king nor even one little girl but the entire black

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