Here’s the thing: she said this in an interview with Charlie Rose and even when I saw this on TV as a child, it seemed obvious that she was skinning and flaying him, not necessarily for being racist but for not interrogating the problem:
Toni Morrison: Yes I do Charlie, but let me tell you that’s the wrong question.
Charlie Rose: OK,what is the right question?
Toni Morrison: How do you feel? Not you, Charlie, but don’t you understand the people who do this thing, who practice racism, are bereft. There is something distorted about the psyche. It is a huge waste and it is a corruption and a distortion. It’s like a profound neurosis that nobody examines for what it is.
It feels crazy. It is crazy, and it has just as much of a deleterious effect on white people and possibly equal as it does black people. I always knew that I had the moral high ground, all of my life. I always thought that those people who said I couldn’t come into the drug store or had to sit in these funny places…
Charlie Rose: You felt more morally secure than they were?
Toni Morrison: I did and I thought that they knew that I knew that they were inferior to me. Morally, I always thought that. My parents always thought that.
Charlie Rose: You said your father was racist because he always felt like he was superior.
Toni Morrison: That’s right. He always felt superior, and that was a form of defensive racism.
If the racist white person, and I don’t mean if the person is examining his consciousness, doesn’t understand that he or she is also a race, it’s also constructed. It’s also made and it also has some serviceability. When you take it away, if I take your race away, there you are all strung out and then all you have got is your little self.
What is that? What are you without racism? Are you any good? Are you still strong? Are you still smart? Do you still like yourself? These are the questions. Part of it is, yes the victim, how terrible it has been for black people.
Charlie Rose: Were you ever like that?
Toni Morrison: I’m not a victim. I refuse to be one.
Charlie Rose: The victim is the other person who is morally inferior? Who can hold onto racism for his or her own self-esteem in definition.
Toni Morrison: That’s a serious question. If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees than you have a serious problem. My feeling is white people have a very, very serious problem. They should start thinking about what they can do about it. Take me out of it.
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