The Origin of Others

(The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)by Toni Morrison(5 total)

America’s foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What mot

Characters

Toni Morrison (5)

There are so many opportunities to reveal race in literature— whether one is conscious of it or not. But writing non-colorist literature about black people is a task I have found both liberating and hard.

— Toni Morrison, amazon.com

Race Bias Race relations Race and Ethnicity Writing and Expression

In other works, such as The Bluest Eye, the consequences of the color fetish are the theme: its severely destructive force.

— Toni Morrison, amazon.com

Race Bias Race relations Race and Ethnicity

Since no one is born a racist and there is no fetal predisposition to sexism, one learns Othering not by lecture or instruction but by example.

— Toni Morrison, amazon.com

Race Bias Race relations Race and Ethnicity Sexism

One purpose of scientific racism is to identify an outsider in order to define one’s self. Another possibility is to maintain (even enjoy) one’s own difference without contempt for the categorized difference of the Othered.

— Toni Morrison, amazon.com

Race Bias Race relations Race and Ethnicity

Race has been a constant arbiter of difference, as have wealth, class, and gender— each of which is about power and the necessity of control.

— Toni Morrison, amazon.com

Racism In America racism classism

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