Toni Morrison -Recitatif

WOW! After Mondays class my mind could only think of the way Toni Morrison was able to confuse people with her descriptions of both girls in her well thought out passage. Through this I noticed more of how we, as people of different races, tend to use stereotypes to base our judgement of the other race. As we sat in class I would hear many people talk and analyze how the person in this story could not or could be this race based on simple descriptions that could basically describe anyone. I myself was truly shocked when finding out the race of the girl's because throughout the whole story I would base my assumption on Twyla and Roberta's race just off of little characteristics or just their names. I set my assumption, although it was the wrong way to go about it, on the names alone. I saw Twyla as more of a Black name rather than white. I guess growing up in a community with Black names being unique I jumped to the conclusion of that right away. However, I would notice others doing the same thing as they based their wrong desici decisions ons on Twyla being white simply because her mother told her that the other race did not wash their hair. I wonder how they felt when noticing that their assumption was wrong. I found this discussion one that I deeply liked throughout this whole semester. Just due to the fact that people would actually base their opinions on the other race more openly because of their confusing and longing to know which race both these girls were.

One thing That i was able to take away from this passage was we need to stop basing our judgement on people based on stereotypes alone. Obviously stereotypes and the way we categorize other races plays a big factor on our judgement of people. But we need to grow out of that phase and acknowledge people for who they are not what race or color our skin is.