Disallowing and Differentiation of the Same Race: Black Characters Dream of Indigenous Ethnicity in Toni Morrison's Paradise

Abstract

This paper will address the issue of disallowing and differentiation of the same race (shadism) in a bid to create a pure race throughout their experience and the remembrance of their previous generation's history. The remaining founding families established a new town in Ruby, which had a strict racial code that had to be followed by everyone in the town. Failure to do this resulted in punishment. Also, it uses the characters in the novel Paradise to show how their dream of an indigenous ethnicity fails due to the same issues they had experienced at the hands of the whites in their history of resistance. Discrimination between light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned blacks is evident. The disallowing event proves that even the black community despised each other on the basis of skin color.