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<title> Why is it so hard to be and accept who and what you are? </title>
A central theme in Toni Morrison's work is "the tension between the racial self and the racial community". This according to the article" A living memory: a meeting with Toni Morrison" written by Paul Gilroy first published in 1993. It is an interview with the author where she talks about her work and her book Beloved (1988). I will discuss how this theme is explored in her book The Bluest Eye (1970).
My interpretation of the theme, "the tension between the racial self and the racial community", is that it is difficult to be, in this case, black on your own when the influence of the white race with its ideals and dreams is so big as it must be in the U.S at this time, in 1941. A community is stronger and not as vulnerable and impressionable as a single individual is. This causes tension between the self and the community in all worlds I think but the racial tension is not always the problem as it is in this world described in The Bluest eye. 
The characters all deal with this in different ways. Some are more confident about their identity than others are. Some are weak and dreaming, like Pecola. Some deny their real identity by pretending to be different, like Geraldine. As individuals we deal with ourselves in different ways. Pecola is a moving character. She is weak and dreaming. I remember myself being nine years old wishing for a good fairy to come and transform me into someone else just by swinging her magic wand. I wished so hard that I actually believed it could happen, at least for a while I did. Pecola asks God for blue eyes in her prayers. If only she had beautiful blue eyes things would be different, better. "Thrown in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her own beauty. She would see only what there was to see; the eyes of other people" (page 35). Pecola lives under terrible conditions. No signs of affections from her parents, if you don't count the abuse her father performs as affection. Her parents are fighting a lot and other children treat her bad. She is ugly. She is lonely left to her dreams about a better self. The eyes become her symbols for that. It becomes a kind of obsession and she leaves the reality behind at the end and she is finally happy in a way. If the community, all involved, had taken better care of her, given her respect and support. If the community had not turned its back on her maybe things would have ended differently.
Geraldine has the materialistic possibilities to pretend. She is in total control of herself and her appearance. She is one of those girls/women who "hold their behinds in for fear of a sway too free, when they wear lipstick, they never cover the entire mouth for fear of lips to thick and they worry, worry, worry about the edges of their hair" (page 64). She wants her son Junior to play with white children only and raises him to be of the opinion that there is a difference between "coloured people and niggers"." Coloured people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud" (page67). Geraldine keeps a distance between the black community and herself. Her behaviour causes long-term effects on the community since she raises her offspring to be just like her and Junior will probably do the same to his children. In this way people like her will shatter the community by not wanting to be a member of it, which she is. It's like racism within the race, between "coloured people and niggers".
 "The blame" is not only the single individuals. The community has of course a part in the problem. This seems to be a tight community. I come from a small town myself so I know what that is like. But there seem to be a general frustration and insecurity in this community. I have not found one character in this text that is very secure in their identity. These people are the ones forming this community. 
Shirley Temple appears to be the ideal at the time, the beginning of the1940s. The white world's ideal. Pecola adores Shirley Temple. Claudia does not adore her. She hates her. Shirley Temple is to Claudia a symbol for an ideal that she because of her race not can live up to. Maybe she is that to Pecola too but when Pecola adores Claudia hates. Consider the episode with the baby-doll she got for Christmas (page13-15)." I destroyed white baby-dolls. [...] The truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls". Pecola would have loved a little white baby-doll. The influence of the big white community on the small black community causes the same kind of tension as between the individual and the community.
"The tension between the racial self and the racial community" in The Bluest Eye is explored through the many characters, individually and as a community. The interplay between them, their thoughts and dreams and their different reactions to things, like the ideal of Shirley Temple for instance. Their personalities. It seems to me as if you deny yourself and what you are like Geraldine does and if you are caught in between, if you are weak, like Pecola, you are in real trouble. A community can be tough and really difficult to fit in to no matter if it is small or big, black or white or any other kind. Or to use Claudia's words describing her own community at the very end of the book "This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live" (page 164). 

References: 	
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. 1970
A living memory: A meeting with Toni Morrison by Paul Gilroy. 1993
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