Racism against American Black in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon

ABSTRACT

Racism is the doctrine that one racial or ethnic group is condemned by nature to inferiority and another group is destined to superiority. To maintain their domination and keep the minority in an inferior position, the majorities usually occupy an abuse of power. In the United State, blacks have been the victim of racism. They have been confined to subordinate statuses have not been justified by their individual abilities and talents. The situation above inspired many black writers to write several stories dealing with that phenomenon. Through their work, black writers speak out strongly against the established state of enslavement, oppression, exploitation, and racism. Toni Morison, one of the great black writers thought her novel, Song of Solomon, called for equality between blacks and whites.

Based on the background of the study above, the research problems of my thesis are the first is what are the forms of racism against American black as revealed in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon?, the second, what are the kinds of struggles of American black against these racism as depicted in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon? and the third is how does the novel reflect the real phenomenon of racism against American black that happen in American society?.

This research is categorized as literary criticism since the researcher conducts the interpretation and analysis on a literary work. The researcher uses sociological literary criticism theory in doing the analysis because in this analysis, the researcher attempts to link literature and socio-historical context at the time by emphasizing on the perspective that literary work as the historical manifestation and cultural social condition. This research uses an extrinsic method, which attempts to interpret literature in the light of its social context and its external causes.

After analyzing the data, the researcher found that racism against black as portrayed in the novel takes five forms, i.e. prejudice, discrimination, segregation, expulsion, and extermination. Facing many kinds of intimidation, oppression, arbitariness, and unfair treatmen from whites, blacks don’t hold peace. There are many struggles include economics, education, politic and nationalism that they do to against these oppressions. By their struggle, they hope it will make them free from the arbitariness of whites, get rights equality, and a better position in American society. All data that are found by the researcher reflects the real condition of American blacks in America in 1930-1960s.