The Stains of Colourism and Shame : An Exploration into Toni Morrison's novel God Help the Child 

Abstract: In this essay we will analyse Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child (2015), to show how colourism and racist shaming, an ordeal that began with slavery, has continued to affect the lives of the characters Sweetness and her daughter Bride, two black women living in America. These negative ideologies, which are pervasive in American society, have been internalised and created a low self-esteem in both characters. Due to colourist culture that Sweetness has inherited from her grandmother and mother, the notion of lighter being better, which is a white supremacist idea, she cannot bond with or love her daughter because she was born with dark skin. So instead, she shames and neglects her. Bride is left with the effects of that shaming and neglect, in which she feels her only way to cope is to transform several times to erase her childhood and help her to deal with her dark skin, eventually leading to a mental breakdown, which leads to her last transformation, which is the acceptance of who she is, the things she has done and the trauma she has suffered. Key words Self-esteem, racist shaming, colourism, passing, internalised racism and coping mechanisms.