Distorted Race

Most people I interact with (sadly not all) have been taught as they grew up that discrimination is bad and that everyone, despite their differences, should have equal opportunities. Parents and educators often believe this is the responsible way approach racial issues but what they miss out is that they acknowledge these differences as a potential factor for discrimination. It is reasonable to note biological differences between people, after all there are darker and whiter skin tones. However, as I've understood as I've read Song of Solomon and learned in class, race is a socially constructed idea with weak biological evidence and disastrous social effects. Throughout the last centuries people have fallaciously claimed that different skin color and some facial features are attributes of different races. It is true and logical that geographic isolation caused that different groups of people have different traits, which could be called different races, but the social understanding of what this means is fallacious. The common understanding of race uses the many questions fallacy as well as hasty generalizations. Toni Morrison explains how the misinterpreted idea of race causes discrimination and segregation. Her novel isn't explicitly about these two issues but rather about their effects on individuals.

Throughout the book it is clear that the characters have fixed ideas about what being African American means. In the beginning of the novel many African Americans mention self-discriminating things. For example, at one point someone says, "A nigger in business is a terrible thing to see. A terrible, terrible thing to see." Later on Magdalene says, "Who’s going to live in them[the beach houses]? There’s no colored people who can afford to have two houses." Comments like these show that people absorb the idea that races exist and blame them for a lot other things that what they mean. In previous blog posts I've said that the idea of race is wrong but what's actually wrong is what we attribute to it. "True" race means that African Americans have darker skin pigments, not that they act differently. However, people take in the idea too far and use it to explain things using a post hoc ergo proper hoc fallacy, or that because one thing followed another, the first cause the second. Characters in Song of Solomon restrain themselves from what they could do by assuming that they can't because they're Black. Guitar rejects the luxurious way of living of Milkman because he feels it's not meant for people like him, presumably referring to his race. As the novel shows ideas throughout different decades, you can see that many of these stereotypes, like that African Americans wouldn't buy beach houses, turned out to be wrong. 
Morrison shows how these biased ideas cause people to be excluded from society. The African Americans that adhered to the complete stereotype were part of their social group as where rich White people. Nevertheless, people like the Dead were left without a social group. Since the beginning of the novel, one can see that social groups are not really about wealth or education but often about race. Corinthians was educated and rich but was eventually pushed by society to become a maid. Meanwhile Milkman was desperate enough to escape his lifestyle that he agreed to steal from the person who saved him as a fetus. He could not fit in with Guitar and poorer African Americans neither with the generally White upper class. In a more explicit way, white people blamed all crimes to African Americans because they backed up segregation with the idea of race. Morrison shows that society in an illogical way uses race to bully people around. Race not only affects the specific scenarios of the novel but also the whole plot. The history of the Dead family is based around the social interpretation of race. Stretching from slavery to self discrimination, the plot shows how the false dichotomy of race in the US harmed African Americans. 

Throughout Song of Solomon, Morrison shows that racism is fallaciously created by society. The way people classify themselves and others based on a few characteristics oversimplifies the unlimited aspects of human genetics and personality. Slavery divided two groups of humans into different social classes and people created racial stereotypes from this division. The effects of slavery on Solomon caused a lot of damage in many generations of his descendants. Going back to the point about biology, although Morrison barely discusses genetics, she shows that racism is truly about a socially created differences, not genes. Society was (or is) divided by skin color and the false stereotypes that creates don't allow people to truly progress or have equal rights. I think that Morrison is trying to say that as long as racial division exists, there cannot be equal opportunities because people distort what skin color means and cause people to live desperately as the Deads did.