Toni Morrison’s Questions
Her famous Charlie Rose interview is instructive for today
Years ago, in an interview on the Charlie Rose Show, the Nobel Laureate, Toni Morrison asked and said what millions of people try to ask and say everyday about American racism.
Here’s an excerpt:
“What are you without racism? Are you any good?…Do you still like yourself?”
Morrison, in the same interview, also stated that she was not “a victim” and refused to be one (my parents always told all of their children to hold fast to this). She stated growing up she always felt she was morally superior to white people even though they treated her second class and denied her access to a normal life in America. It was an amazing response.
It is the question that yet is not faced collectively and individually in America. It is the question that African Americans and other Americans are talking about when they say, America has yet to deal with race or its racial past. This is because dealing with race, according to Morrison, has little to do with African Americans.
She refers to people who perpetuate racism, who practice it, and who are not trying to struggle with it, as “bereft.” They are suffering some kind of sickness, a “neurosis,” she said.
