The Maginot Line

Two score and six years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, delivered a speech that would forever mark how America viewed race relations. Martin Luther King Jr. said in that historic speech “One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.” (King 325) So now, forty years later, after the Civil Rights Act and Affirmative Action, we have to ask whether or not we have truly changed the status of African Americans in this country. According to the National Census blacks still maintain the highest poverty rate at 24.7%, followed by Hispanics at 21.9%, Asians at 9.8% and Whites at 8.2%. So despite all this effort that America has supposedly put in to equalizing the lifestyle of African Americans, why is it that a black family is three times more likely to be in poverty than a white family?

When trying to determine why it seems that minority groups have a difficult time earning truly “equal” status (that is equal pay and truly equal opportunity) to white Americans I think it is useful to discuss one of Toni Morrison’s witty allusions in her novel “The Bluest Eye.” Upon first introduction the prostitutes perplexed me. Not for perverse reasons, but because of their names. China, Poland and Maginot Line, what did these names mean? They seemed too planned out to truly be simple nicknames. Of course the name Maginot Line seemed to hold special significance as not only was she the one singled out by Claudia, “But the Maginot Line. That was the one my mother said she ‘wouldn’t let eat out of one of her plates,” (Morrison 77), but also because the name doesn’t fit the country pattern of the other two. I went to the best place on the web to research the Maginot Line, Wikipedia, where I discovered that it “was the line of fortification which France constructed along its borders with Germany and Italy in the light of experience from World War I and in the run up to World War II.” France concentrated all its forces on the Maginot Line, leaving its northern Belgium border unguarded, allowing Germany to tear through Belgium and eventually conquer France.

A Military Mishap Made Metaphor

Of course this information really did not provide me with the faintest idea of how this pertained to the prostitute in ‘The Bluest Eye,’ so I furthered my research to google scholar where I found excerpts from Jennifer Gillan’s book ‘Focusing on the Wrong Front: Historical Displacement, the Maginot Line, and the ‘Bluest Eye.’” It was here that I discovered the connection to this allusion:

“By focusing attention on its intervention on the international front in other nations’ racial and ethnic conflicts, the United States can repress its own domestic racial problems and histories of oppression. This tendency to concentrate attention on the wrong front is signified through Morrison’s bestowing the name Maginot Line on the prostitute on whom most of the town’s respectable black women focus their anger. While the names China and Poland signify the European and Asian fronts of World War II, Maginot Line refers literally to the failed French border fortifications and metaphorically to the tendency to focus on the wrong front.”

So perhaps this is why we are not truly solving the problems of racial equality in America, because we refuse to focus on the correct front. I think this can be clearly seen in America’s response to foreign policy. One of our big attacks on China is their intolerance for minority religious groups, and yet we subject our own minorities to similar cultural simulation.

Sure they have faults, but you know about people in glass houses

“The Bluest Eye” does a beautiful job of demonstrating how America’s white majority usies pop-culture to prioritize the beauty of white society over minority society. In the scene where Pecola buys candy, notice how the advertisement on the candy affects Pecola’s perception of beauty:

“Each pale yellow wrapper has a picture on it. A picture of little Mary Jane, for whom the candy is named. Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort. The eyes are petulant, mischievous. To Pecola they are simply pretty. She eats the candy, and its sweetness is good. To eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane. “ (Morrison 50)

True American beauty right?

It is not that the wrappers specifically said black was ugly, but by associating beautiful white people with a delicious product it is sending a subconscious message that white is more beautiful. This point would be easily refuted if there were other candies with beautiful black girls on them, but at this time there weren’t. Today with all the different ethnic Barbies we would like to believe we have surpassed this sort of pop culture racism, but alas I believe we have a long ways to go.

I remember in high school a girl in my class said “I don’t understand why they have black TV, its not like there is white TV?” To which I replied “Almost all mainstream television is white TV.” Practically every TV show and movie today still focuses on white people, and the only ones that don’t have to make a specific point of doing so. I recently read that the film ‘21’ was originally about a group of Asian students at MIT, but the producers changed the leading to characters’ ethnicities to white. Why is that?

Asian, from star to supporting actor :(

Dana’s discussion board demonstrated how this same line of thinking is being translated into our education system and work force. As far as intelligence goes, people are not judged based on what they know or how well they communicate, but how well they communicate to the white man’s standards. For whatever reason, America’s interpretation of English (despite how grammatical it stays to English’s original form) is deemed correct, and any other interpretation of the language is deemed unintelligent. Why is that?

Perhaps we can continue to fight racism with token black comedians or promoting those minorities who conform to the cultural securities or our heritage, but as long as we do this we are only fortifying our Maginot Line. We must take a second look at our ability to accept other cultural institutions as more than a semester course, but as equal. “If America is to be a great nation, this must become true.” (King 327)