BLACKNESS AND ROLE ASSIGNMENT IN ANDREA LEVY’S FRUIT OF THE LEMON AND SMALL ISLAND

ABSTRACT

Blackness  has continued  to grow  in meaning such that  its meaning  can be described  as ambiguous. Blackness in a racist environment dominated by whites assumes meanings that are negative. In a racist environment, blackness is seen as an anathema. To clarify the concept of blackness, the researcher emphasizes that blackness transcends just the physical colour of the skin. There are many that cannot be physically described  as  black but are considered black because of their ancestry, genetic history, geographical location etc. A black person can be  equated  with  the  “Other”  in  Simone  de  Beauvoir’s  term.  The  National  Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in America opines that “our nation is moving towards two societies, one white, one black- separate  and unequal… the most fundamental is the racial attitude and behaviour of whites towards the blacks…” (Bradford Chronicles 238). A black person in Britain and other white dominated societies is a subalternized person whose identity is defined by another;  a person denied  of self. This imposed or constructed  definition of blackness leads to stereotyping and role assignment. In literary criticism, role assignment on the basis of blackness is manifested in several forms in literary texts. This study examines what blackness means to the characters and the consequent role assignment as contained in Andrea Levy’s two novels: Fruit of the Lemon and Small Island using the critical race theory. At the end of this research, it was discovered that coloured people are seen as second class citizens in white dominated societies.

Chapter One

Introduction

1.1 Background of the study

Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the colour of your skin to such extent that you bleach to get like the white man? Who taught you to hate yourself, the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the sole of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much that you don’t want to be around each other… you should ask yourself who taught you to hate what God gave you.

-Malcolm X

The import of Malcolm X’s speech delivered on May 5, 1962 is an apt description of this study on colour and its dynamics. Colour politics is directly related to skin pigmentation and its concomitant stratification which both function as a result of race consciousness in a multiracial   society.   America  and  Europe   are  examples   of   societies   with  multiracial distribution.  In this situation, the black race is the worst hit  because of the joint effort of Trans-Atlantic Slavery and other historic events that necessitated the mass migration of the black people  from Africa  to America  and  Europe.  For these  black  immigrants  and their descendants in America and Europe, racism is an everyday reality made manifest in different dimensions and experiences of  people’s social existence. The colour hierarchy that values light complexions over the dark one specifically affects people with black skin as they are often treated and evaluated based solely on their physical traits.

Therefore, blackness acquires negative connotations in the European psyche as early as the third century.  Stratification  based on skin colour started during the  Trans-Atlantic

Slave period. The institution of slavery is justified by a belief system that marked whiteness as superior  to  all (Hill Mark  84).  The  consequence  of this  nefarious  system  has  had  a devastating effect on the psyche of even the people with shared  ancestry. For instance, the mulattoes who have a deposit of black gene in their blood tend to deny every affiliation with blackness  because  of the implication  of affirming  the  identity.  In the words of Franklin Frazier, he says that the mulattoes are conscious of the distinctions between themselves and the dark slaves and believes that their white blood has placed them on a better position when compared  with people  of pure black  ancestry.  The people  of African descent  have been regarded by whites as black whether they are of mixed African ancestry or not. To be black in colour or to be of African race is to be dirty, ugly, evil, deadly and devilish while to be white is to be clean, beautiful, good, lively, pure, innocent and godly. This shows that “colorism” a term coined by Alice Walker in 1982 is still a sensitive and complex phenomenon in the lives of black people in Diaspora.

Similarly,  Frantz  Fanon as contained  in “The  Construction  of Identity  in  Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon” through her work recorded the psychological damage suffered by the colonized people. She notes that the colonialists perpetuated the belief that “white” is the “norm”  and  “black”  is  the  “Other”  (Magdalena  5).  The  people  of  African  decent  have internalised white values to the extent that they turn to skin bleaching in other to be accepted into the mainstream of this society. True beauty is now given to fair people. For instance, in the world of modelling, white female models occupy the top strata in the Western societies while  black  females  occupy  the  bottom  rung.  Dami  Akinusi,  discussed  in  Layers  of Blackness:  Colourism  in  the  African  Diaspora,  confessed  as  a  producer  of  television documentary on bleaching on how she tries to bleach her own skin as a teenager. For her, [She] was branded too dark by people that [she] met at the time [and] contemplated was [she]

too dark to be successful? Too dark to be pretty? All of this different thing (cited in Gabriel

44.)

This same issue of negative connotation of blackness is what led Michael Jackson to change his original skin colour, which is medium brown during his youth to be fair because he wanted  to be accepted  by the white folks.  He even created  a dimple  in  his chin and changed the shape of his nose to look pointed just like that of the white. J. Randy Taraborrelli believes  in his article “The Michael Jackson I Knew” that Jackson  thought  that his skin condition messed up his whole personality. He goes further to say that as a child, Jackson thought that he was ugly, his skin too dark and his nose too wide which made his insensitive father and brothers to call him “Big Nose”. Jackson told his associates that “the greatest joy [he] ever had is in knowing [he] had a choice about [his] face.” He described himself as a

‘work in progress’.  It has always been a mystery to many why Jackson, king of pop, changed his skin from black to white. Some argue that it is due to a disease called “Vitiligo” which causes white splotches on the skin. But this research has unveiled that it is due to one cause, racism. This is because his social acceptance and social relationship never improved after he transformed his skin to white, which shows that it is not about the colour per say, but about the stigma of being black in a racist white society.

Similarly,  racial  interaction  and  relationship  became  even worst  for black  people during the Enlightenment  Age. The Enlightenment Age which took place  between the late

17th  and early 18th century, advocated freedom, democracy and reason as the primary values

of  the  society,  making  a  clear  boundary  between  Europeans  as  possessors  of  intellect, morality and beauty and Africans as primitive, backward and ugly. This ended up creating the concept of European racial superiority (Gabriel 43). This situation was  philosophised  and

strongly justified by the leading 17th  and early 18th  century philosophers like David  Hume

and Georg Hegel. For instance, in Deborah Gabriel’s reading of David Hume’s philosophy, she maintains that:

I am apt to suspect the Negros and in general all other species of men… to be naturally inferior  to the Whites.  There was never a civilised  nation  of  any other complexion  than Whites…  there are Negro  slaves  dispersed  all over Europe, of whom none discovered any symptoms of ingenuity. (43)

Consequently, Deborah Gabriel enunciates that Hegel’s view about the black race in quoting Hegel who observes that “Africans are less than human, because they are perpetually in a child- like state of unconsciousness where they are unaware of their existence as human” (Qtd in Gabriel 45).

This  practice  of  judging  black  as  inferior  and  seeing  them  as  the  “Other”  has psychologically damaged the victims thinking, they no longer value or see the worth in them. In their struggles to recover from the damage caused by centuries of enslavement comes the issue of colour, which is another pernicious and internalised form of racism, where you are heavily judged based on your skin colour. The colour black becomes devalued that the shade of their skin literally controls their condition and future prospects; this brought more agony and psychological trauma on blacks in Diaspora. This explains why at the United Nations World  Conference  Against  Racism  in  Durban,  South  Africa,  in  2001,  the  conference president, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, says in his closing statement…the systems of slavery and colonialism had the degrading and debilitating impact on those who are black… in an addendum, he makes himself clear that remedial action is necessary to correct the legacy of slavery and colonialism and all other forms of racism.  This is to show the damage that the denigration of blackness has had on the psyche  of dark-skinned.  In the words of  Marcus Garvey of 1923, he asserts that

Some of us in America and West Indies and Africa believe that the nearer we approach the white man in colour the greater our social standing and privilege and what we should build up an “aristocracy” based upon caste of colour and not achievement in race. (Gabriel 7)

Blacks  in  Britain  who  are  brought  up  to  believe  England  is  their  mother  country  are disappointed,  because  they  find  post-war  London  prejudiced  and  unwelcoming.  Britain arbitrarily  established  two  racial  divisions-  white  or “coloured  (Hiro  24).  The  blacks  in Britain  are  heavily  judged  by their  skin  colour. They are  more  disheartened  when they remember that their relatives fought for Britain in World War II coupled with the fact that they are brought up in colonial schools to revere Britain.  Britain shows West Indians and anyone who is not white that they do not belong and  had never belonged in spite of their colonial education stressing loyalty to the British crown.

Andrea  Levy made  it clearer  when she says: “My parents came  from a class  in Jamaica  called  “the  coloured  class.  They  came  to  Britain  with  a  kind  of  notion  that pigmentation represented class. They didn’t necessarily have more money or education, but because they were somehow closer to being white, this was seen as a badge of pride. My parents arrived  here and were surprised  to discover that they  were considered  black. No matter how light-skinned her parents were, theirs was still considered the only black family on their council estate near Arsenal” (Magdalena 5).

Having seen all these, the interest in Andrea Levy’s Friut of the Lemon and Small Island is specifically on the role assignment.  This is because blacks in Britain  have been assigned some degrading roles not necessarily because of colour but the composition of their race, of which colour is one part. Characters such as Faith, Wade, Mildred, Constance, etc (in Fruit of the Lemon) and Gilbert Joseph, Hortense Joseph, etc (in Small Island) are assigned

certain  roles  which  are  less  beneficial  when  compared  to  the  ones  attributed  to   the dominant(s) in their society. It is disheartening that British still see the black race as a slave and insignificant creature, who must die wretched doing degrading and menial jobs. These degrading roles shall be discussed fully in the textual analysis which appears in the chapter four of this research.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon and Small Island have been studied in the light of racism, treatment of the characters, otherness, quest for self, identity, alienation,  hybridity, journey motif, while some have taken the biographical study of the two texts under study. However, this study explores the idea of role assignment as seen in the two texts. Here, the task is to examine what blackness means to the characters and the consequent role assignment as contained in Andrea Levy’s two novels: Fruit of the  Lemon and Small Island using the critical  race  theory.  These  roles  reveals  that  a  black  person  living  in whites  dominated societies is a subalternized person whose identity is defined by another; a person denied of self.

1.3 Purpose of the Study

The  purpose  of  this  study is  to  present  a critical  analysis  of  blackness  and  role assignment as seen in Andrea Levy’s two novels, Fruit of the Lemon and Small Island. The intention is to study the kind of roles, positions or duties given to people of black colour or African descent in English society. The study also intends to find out how selected characters in the texts under study have been disappointed, oppressed, subjugated and exploited by their whites counterparts through the kind of roles assigned to them as a result of their complexion as showcased in the two texts.

1.4 Scope of the Study

This research cover instances of blackness and show the roles and status of people with black skin especially as it is showcased in Andrea Levy’s two texts Fruit of the Lemon and Small Island. The reason for limiting the investigation to these two texts is to prevent the project from being ambiguous and to allow a detailed thematic  preoccupation of these two texts  with  regard  to  the  positions  the  black  people  occupy  in  the  society  they  found themselves.

1.5 Significance of the study

This  research  paper  will  contribute  to  the  existing  public  knowledge  on  Afro- Caribbean  literature  and black British  literature.   It will also  add to the already  existing knowledge on the two texts and serve as a guide for other researchers who would like to carry out more investigations on the topic under study.

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