The Bluest Eye

"Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes. In her eleven years, no one had ever noticed Pecola. But with blue eyes, she thought, everything would be different. She would be so pretty that her parents would stop fighting. Her father would stop drinking. Her brother would stop running away. If only she could be beautiful. If only people would look at her."
-- The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

I read "The Bluest Eye" in a writing class at Columbia College about 10 years ago. I was one of the few white women in a class with an African American teacher and about 6 other students, half of whom were African American. I was a minority, and felt guilt when we were discussing The Bluest Eye, and how Pecola just wanted to be beautiful, and in her mind that meant "white."

I remember thinking, in my naïveté "how can a little black girl think she's not beautiful?" I looked at the black women in my class. One woman was thin and wore the coolest, hippest clothes. She pulled her loose curls back in pony tail and bangles hung on her small wrists. Her brown eyes sparkled. I wanted to be that cool and beautiful.

Besides that, the girls had a certain rapport with the African American teacher. They were always telling inside jokes about African American culture. I felt left out. I wanted to be one of them.

At the same time, my heart broke for Pecola Breedlove, and reading The Bluest Eye gave me a greater understanding into the African American experience.

I've been thinking a lot about things like this as we move forward with our adoption. Will our little girl think she's not beautiful just because she's black? If David and I are going to bring an Ethiopian child into this country, we can't afford to sit back and not do everything we can to understand the racial divide in our country.

Listening to Jeremiah Wright over the past week, it's obvious that we as Americans have a long way to go. There's still so much anger and so little forgiveness (on both sides of the racial divide). Where will that leave us, as a racially mixed family trying to navigate and overcome that divide? Will we be a part of the healing? Will our love be enough to protect our child from racism?

None of these questions is enough to make us stop our adoption. But I know we have a lot to learn and think about. And now I'm even more determined to learn more about how it feels to be African American, and how I can do my small part to help heal racial wounds. I owe it to our child. And I will do everything in my power to help her to know that she's beautiful and made in God's image....even if she doesn't have the bluest eyes....